How does 'criticism' prove anything? The statement isn't even correct there is a great difference in the behaviour of Atheist vs. religious people most notably the adherence to ritualistic behaviour and the tendency to argue nonsense with conviction and loud voices, while Atheist tend to be more thoughtful and measured in their arguments and responses.

Not even hardly. As Dawkin's and other New Atheist's prove atheism is by no means different from any other religion in their making of prophecy's, bound by ritualistic behavior (ie treat everything with a naturalistic outlook), and as they and Cop have proven do indeed have a tendency to argue nonsense. Heck, it's not even so much a tendency as it's the rarity when they do come up with measured points.

But this is not the aspect I was referring as it was more the criticism that religious people don't behave any differently in their daily lives from atheist's, or the criticism that atheist's can be just as moral as religious people.

In order to become and Atheist one has to first study the religious idea, consider its possibilities and then reject it. On the other hand, I don't think that you personally ever gave the idea of no-god a second thought.

No, one simply has to reject theism in order to become an atheist. I will admit there are indeed those who put some effort and study into it, but there are just as many who simply want to follow the "smart" people.

And you are indeed correct. I've never once reconsidered atheism after eliminating it from consideration, because one can deduce basic theism and thus know there is at least a God with absolute confidence. Christianity is another matter.

Considering how persecuted Atheist still are, the progress that has been made is amazing.

Hehehehe. Persecuted. Right. Must be why it's highly positioned in universities. It could never be in the minority because...I don't know....it's just flat wrong. This round about way of you patting your back has been most amusing.

He had no obligation to visit the Hebrews either.  Your point has nothing to do with this discussion.

Actually it goes directly to the heart of the matter. If God has no obligation to visit anyone, then expecting revelation all over the globe is unjustified.

What you cannot explain is why the creator of the universe would be so focused on a small tribe of humans to the exclusion of the rest of the human race, especially when it was supposed to be within his power to reach everyone.  The explanation from a godless point of view is that Yahweh was just no different from any other imaginary god that was invented as the lord and protector of a national or tribal group.

And thus another example of you missing the obvious. This issue is exactly what is addressed by my point of God not being obligated to do so. If He has no obligation to visit anyone, then sighting His excluding those He has no obligation to anyway is meaningless.

The explanation from a godless point of view is that Yahweh was just no different from any other imaginary god that was invented as the lord and protector of a national or tribal group.

Which seem to find themselves absorbed by other nations only to see other local dieties cast down by their "imaginary god".

And obviously that's the explanation. Which only goes to show for such an arguement to work it has to have an a priori godless belief to begin with.

I've addressed this before, but one last time.  God has no need to "show confidence" to anyone...

I didn't say "God showed confidence", though obviously if one simply has confidence it will show regardless of "need". That such an action shows confidence is a different matter.

...and, since his message failed to reach most of the human race and still does not resonate with most of the human race, claiming that he "had confidence" calls into question his omniscience.  In principle, omniscient beings have certainty, not confidence, in an outcome.

And when one has certainty that brings with it confidence. Though as far as "failure" to reach most of the human race goes, as Christianity isn't dead such statements are more evidence of you presumption. And failure to recognize an on-going process.

You thought I meant plastic bottles?  Really?   

Points for the dodge.

1) God is a true god or a false god.  (law of the excluded middle)
2) False gods do not exist.  (by definition)
3) Since false gods to not exist, belief in them only spreads by tradition from a local point of origin.  (from our knowledge of the world)
4) God wants people to believe in his existence.  (general religious belief)
5) If God exists and wants people to believe in his existence, he will act to support credible belief in his existence.  (based on the observation that he has allegedly done so through revelation)
6)  God could have a reason for appearing not to act to support credible belief in his existence.  (for the sake of argument)
7)  Belief in God has spread only by tradition from a local point of origin.  (from our knowledge of the world)
8)  God appears not to have acted to support credible belief in his existence.
9)  Either God does not exist or he has a good reason to have made the spread of his religion look similar to the spread of a false religion.
10)  God appears not to have a good reason for making the spread of his religion look similar to the spread of a false religion.  (Nobody able to think of a good reason)
11)  Therefore, God probably is a false god.

Feel free to attack or criticize the steps in my reasoning as presented above.  Hopefully, this will help you to focus on the real argument rather than the irrelevant one about God's "obligation" to do anything at all.

Think I will as you made it easier to point out the flaws. Thanks.

You start failing at 3 as it is automatically a proof by assertion. One can see you're trying to sneak in a premises which requires a whole arguement in itself to form as a conclusion. That's why you proved my assertion of your arguement being entirely circular correct.

4 is entirely presumptuous. That He has acted is not grounds to support the notion of what God will or won't do. Your arguement particularly fails as it only focuses on the motivation of proving His existence. Under what basis is this His sole motivation, or a main motivation for Him at all? We're back to the "obligation" aspect you want to dismiss, but can't seem to address. Indeed if God exists one can see that if He acted for other motivations, then such acts would prove His existance even if that wasn't the reason for Him doing so.

I'm still waiting for you to adress when and where theism in it's entirety "appeared" for you to back up 7. 8 is only a matter of your opinion, and as you aren't exactly objective it is neither a surprising nor persuasive conclusion. Though I can forget objective and wonder if you are even rationale at all as you vaguely term "acts" in your cut-down version but never address what form that "act" can take. In your opening arguement you made it more clear that you'd only consider the "act" of seeing revelatory knoweldge all over the globe, but quite frankly one can see simply focusing on a particular tribe indeed an "act" to support His existance. This is why I can question your rationality in it's entirety as it would be any "act" itself that would give credibility to God's existence rather than "local point of origin". 10 is more presumption and unfounded given all the reasons I've already sighted.

The argument is not about what God's plan was.  It is about why he would construct a plan that was so poor at spreading his message.

Because spreading his message wasn't His sole plan. Or even His main plan. Read back to "motivation" up above. It was bringing us salvation from our fallen state. There now, you have a perfectly good reason that fits perfectly within the context of the Bible.

It is not the speed of your typing that is in question, but the coherence of what you type.  This is barely coherent.  Your definition of the "law of exclusion" tells us that "If orange is a color, it is false that red is a color".  This is not a law at all.  It is just the bare assertion that your religion is true and all others are false.

No, as your original statement reads: Where revelation of divine origin has failed quite spectacularly for all the others throughout time and location, you want us to believe that your story of divine revelation is true. Thus it's not an assertion that mine is true, so much as the logical following that if mine is true, then yes, those other would indeed be false. And also the fact that if your working from failures to find the truth, it does not follow that for those others being false means mine automatically is either.

It begs the question, which is whether your religion is indeed true.  Again, you switch premises and conclusion.  You have concluded that your religion is true, but here you merely admit that you assume it.  What you conclude is that any claim that contradicts your religion must therefore be false.  As a method of apologetics, this is known as presuppositionalism, a viciously circular method of argumentation.

Not really. As you seem to miss the "If" in my statement. --------->If<-------- atheism is true then it follows that any claim that contradicts it must be false. Because that's the nature of the law of exclusion (total pluralism is a crock). Does that help or is the point still too dense for you?

You mean

You are becoming less and less coherent.  What does this "explain" in your mind? 

Your basic reading skills are becoming less and less existant. If you refer to a "godless" explanation, obviously it's going to view "God" as being a human invention. By definition. 

What dodge?  Glass bottles have been around since 1500 BC.  Theoretically, an omniscient, omnipotent being would not need to wait until they were invented in order to stuff a message in a bottle and toss it into the ocean.  Indeed, such a being could have used a plastic bottle, if it were so inclined.  You're not even good at dodging, I'm afraid.

It is your claim that the means of import matters in concluding whether the message comes from God or is just human invention. That the means either at worst doesn't prove aything one way or the other (glass bottles), or at best would indeed be hard pressed to explain as human invention (plastic bottles during when plastic wasn't around), doesn't help your arguement. Indeed your questioning of the import doesn't mean much anyway as the Bible itself is admitted to be written by human hands. This doesn't hurt it's assertion to being the Word of God in the slightest as we can see examples of secretarial dictation where a message may be from somone, but not necessarily written by their own hand.

So again, we see the method of import means nothing in verifying a message. It is the message itself that must be examined.

No, (3) is just what we know from history books and common sense.  How else would such beliefs spread, and what else could explain their pattern of spread?

Missionary work comes readily to mind. Indeed, I long sighted your arguement's failure to take into account that being passed down threw "cultural tradition" doesn't cut it when the religion is just getting started. And when it comes to similarities in beliefs, such as the sun being a god, I would very much like to hear you sight the exact time and location the notion was made up and spread over so far an area (to different continents where the culture's never even heard of each other no less). No matter if it went by the name Ra, Apollo, etc.

Do you, or do you not, believe that God wants people to believe in his existence?  You have defended this point in the past, so I am surprised that you would want to challenge it here.

Who said I challenged it? What I challenge is how it followed that just because God desires something it necessarily follows He will take any course of action and will achieve it. God wants everyone to be saved. However God won't save everyone as it's impossible without violating free will. Again God could stop every ball from dropping or intervene in the ways you sight as "obvious" (though I would never underestimate an atheist's capacity for self-delusion), but that He wants people to know He exists it doesn't follow He will jump threw hoops to achieve it.

Belief in God seems pretty important to most Christians.  If God doesn't care whether you believe in him, then why make such a point of arguing with atheists?

I see you haven't learned much from talking to Christians to know what is most important to Christians and God. It's not belief in God existing so much as accepting His gift of salvation that's what's important. Sure, accepting He exists is important. But frankly, even the demons know that. That it has to do with atheism is because obviously knowing God exists is just the first hurtle to get to recieving His gift.

The expression "Belief in God" in 7 refers to the biblical God, also known as Yahweh.  Our only record of that belief is the Bible, and it differs from other god-beliefs that have sprung up all over the world throughout recorded history.  All of them start with a person or group of people, and the belief spreads from their location.  7 is not about the general belief in gods, which is irrelevant to my argument.

Dodge. It is indeed relevant as you have every theistic belief being examined and determined false under your arguement. That you have argued that atheism is only a "reaction" to theism makes it even more prudent a question. If you have every notion of theism being an invention, it logically follows you must answer where and when theism itself came from. Otherwise we're back to what I've said previously: You hold that for belief in God to be credible it would be all over the globe. You freely admit a theistic view in some form has existed everywhere preceding atheism. Thus if you truly followed your own standard any theistic belief would be more credible than atheism.

True.  This argument is all about what licenses the conclusion that God does not exist--a conclusion that would be accurately described as an opinion.  What I mean by 8 is that God does not intervene in our lives in a way that makes his existence obvious.  He does not perform miracles, write letters in the sky, or talk to us.  (At any rate, he doesn't do such things for me.  There are people who claim to have witnessed miracles.)

In which case it makes your statments of "He does not" all the more question begging. As well as going back to the matter of what obligation God has to do so in the first place.

Notice that this is an inductive argument.  That is, much of the reasoning follows from our common experience of reality.  I have been clear from the beginning that this is not a purely deductive argument.  God could exist, but this chain of reasoning leads to the conclusion that his existence is unlikely, given what we know of the world.

It doesn't even come close to casting doubt on "likeliness" since if you are truly using this to examine a particular (ie Yahweh), then you have to take it on an individual basis. In which case the best you can do is get to a point where it doesn't prove anything one way or the other.

I have asked you for a good reason, and you have cited none.

I have given plenty of good reasons. The problem is your standard of "good" is dependant on your opinion rather than on logically probable. But then I've already sighted how heavily your arguement depends on presumption.

All you can say--and you've repeated this ad nauseam--is that God had no obligation to spread his religion any other way than he did spread it.  My consistent response has been that he had no apparent obligation to spread it at all.  So that point is totally irrelevant.  So I still find 10 quite convincing.

Probably because you don't grasp the implication of your own admittance or how your conceding the point doesn't make it any less relevant. If your arguement is founded on the notion of God making Himself known all over the globe, or God taking such an active intervention in our lives then His obligation for doing such things goes directly to the heart of the matter. If He has none than such expectancy is unfounded and your arguement completely crumbles.

Here is what you appear to be saying:  "God had something more than spreading his message in his plan.  He wanted to bring us salvation from our fallen state."  I really don't get what point you are trying to make. Is not spreading the message the means by which one receives salvation?  If so, then why not spread it to a wider audience?  This is the question that I've been asking, and you have been evading.

Indeed it is the means. Or at least of hearing the means to recieve salvation. The problem for you is that God's plan wasn't in spreading the message, but in achieving what the message would be about: Christ's death and resurrection. And thus it goes back to a point I brought up long before. The way you sight how the message is spread is the way all news spreads. As the means for our salvation was a real event according to the Bible, then the news would spread like any other news.

Your statement on the "law of exclusion" sounds more like a "law of confusion".  Look, there are many possibilities:  Your religion is true, and everyone else's is false.  Your religion is false, and someone else's is true.  All religions are false, because the true religion is not believed by anyone.  Your religion is partially true, and some elements of it are false.  Et cetera, et cetera.  There is no "law of exclusion", just a statement that various possibilities exist.

The level of your denseness no longer surprises me. Especially as you can't seem to fathom your own statments:

Where revelation of divine origin has failed quite spectacularly for all the others throughout time and location, you want us to believe that your story of divine revelation is true.

Read it again. Very slowly. You'll notice most of such "possibilities" has nothing to do with such a statment, or is even excluded. Indeed there are no other "possibilites" as you would believe as revelations of divine origin have little to do with "elements".

You miss the point by a mile.  Your "law of exclusion" has nothing to do with the current discussion.  All religions could be false, not just yours.

Not really. Since if all claims of divine origin are false that would indeed leave atheism. ( *gasp* it's a religion). In which case that's the law of exclusion.

Humans are clearly prone to making up false religions on the basis of false revelations.  There is nothing in the pattern of how your religion came into being and spread that distinguishes it from any of the others.

How fortunate that such aspects mean nothing to it's validity.

All false religions are spread by tradition.  If your god is present in all times and locations, then why would he only choose to reveal himself to such a narrow range of people?  This is the question that we keep returning to and the one that you cannot answer. 

And a true religion is spread by such a pattern. Since that's how human socialism works. And as far as your question goes we're back to the answers I've already given:

He had a plan for salvation that necessitated only a narrow range of people and no obligation to any others, and He had a covenant with this particular group and no obligation to any others.

These are the answers you won't accept as it shatters your arguement.

Again, you are going off into irrelevancies.  We were not talking about the possible or impossible, but about the probable or improbable.  I have been clear about that from the beginning, so you can hardly accuse me of misleading you on that score.

Oh, I'm not accusing you of making a misleading arguement. I'm accusing you of making a bad one as probability is indeed irrelevant in determining truth.

The Sherlock Holmes statement is about eliminating the impossible.  And I have repeatedly defined atheism as the rejection of belief in gods, not merely the absence of beliefs.  The geographical argument is an argument for rejecting belief, not an argument that God is impossible.

And thus you give no solid reason for rejecting the belief. Since the improbable can indeed be true it will never be reasonable to reject something on such grounds.  And thus you will never have a reasonable basis for atheism under your own definition.

Sorry, Grasshopper, but you cannot find insight in others.  It can only come from within.  My only advice is that you lose the snotty attitude if you really want to find it. 

Like the "If" you missed to accuse me of circular argueing, you once again miss how it's wisdom and intelligence I'm looking for (which can be found in others). All I can do is repeat the long standing advice for you to go back to where you can recieve proper training in basic reading. Only now I can repeat it with the "snotty attitude" more reinforced and justified than before your comments. Way to go.

The problem is not with my reading skills, but with your writing skills.  Readers can usually figure out the bad spelling ("existant" for "existent", "arguement" for "argument", "threw" for "through") and bad grammar, but you too often come up with such jumbled sentences--dangling participles, missing antecedents--that I really don't have time to try to imagine what thought you were trying to express.  When I ask for clarification, I get lame insults about my reading skills. 

Dodge. That I don't treat a forum discussion like a term paper, and thus don't use spell check, has no barring. Especially when you miss something as simple as "If" to froth at the mouth about circular logic.

In any case, you clearly don't have anything new to contribute to the "geographical argument", so it is past time to move on.

Or one could look at it as you giving up after I kicked your "probablity" tact in the teeth.

You insist that your "obligation" ploy is relevant, and I have explained why I do not consider it relevant.

That's false. You've never explained anything. You've just conceded that it's true and asserted it's irrelevant.

The nonsense over plastic bottles and other trivia is little more than a distraction from the topic. I have seen nothing from you that would begin to explain why a being such as God would attempt to promulgate his religion in the same manner as false religions are promulgated.

No, you've simply not accepted the explainations given. But then, I doubt you're honestly looking for one anyway.

That he is not "obliged" to do so is beside the point.

See? No explanation. Just proof by assertion. You fail. Again.

You've pretty much embraced the Panglossian argument that there must be a reason for God's behavior, even if we do not know it. I take that as insufficient to license a belief in such a being.  It is only a desperate excuse for not letting go of belief in an unlikely being.

Hehehe. Careful reading shows you've focused on that aspect more than I have in this discussion. Nor have I asserted that the belief is based on that either as, again, examination of the message and the described events is what the belief is based on rather than this dismissal grasping at straws.

And as shown "likeliness" is insufficient to license a dismissal. What you "take" or "see" is merely a result of your personal preference rather than objective examination.

One last comment, because your evasive answer is just too priceless.  Denial of God is a religion in the same sense that denial of the existence of the tooth fairy is a fairy tale.   

This is why you don't "see" much, if you can't seem to grasp a belief about reality is a belief about reality.

Look, you do not understand conditionals, and I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to teach you grammar or logic.  You do not seem to understand what it means to call something a circular argument, although you use them often enough--e.g. your frequent confusion about the difference between a premise and a conclusion.

That you missed the "If", only to assert that I don't understand a conditional is truly hilarious. 

Not only did you fail at that, but you couldn't even spell it correctly.

More dodge and more assertion. And a flimsi one to assert I failed when your rebuttal consists of....oh that's right nothing. Because you very well know what is "improbable" can indeed be true.

Nor am I obliged to prove the irrelevance of an argument whose relevance you have failed to establish.  I explained why it was irrelevant to you several times, but to no avail.  It is a waste of time to pursue it.

This is false. Even outright false. You have not explained anything. You've just kept on asserting after conceding it to be true. And there is a very obvious reason why: You can't, because it goes directly to the heart of your arguement. Much like your use of "probability", one can see you're floundering and thus resort to mere assertion of failure.

So like I said before, never underestimate the atheist's ability for self-deception.

That logic seems sensible but is not real.  Give me a few days to pick out the right words.  :)

You mean you think it's sound, but not valid?

Oh, and next time I promise to use spellchecker. Keep up the good work.