[chezlaw]

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Perhaps this is a semantic issue. I say that the position of curious neutrality is best on most topics. Skeptics tend to overemphasize the unlikelihood of a proposition, while credulists (is this a neologism?) tend to overemphasize its likelihood.

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I disagree a bit here, don't think its semantics. Skeptics don't underestimate the likelyhood of a position in the sense I think you mean. It's not that I think god is less likely than you do, rather I can see no reason to believe (or disbelieve) in god at all and so do not assign any likelyhood.

Its only when you start to believe in god that you can assign a strength to the belief. That's what credulists (I like it) do. Their response to a question is to form a belief about the answer and then give it some strength. As a skeptic I receive the question, try to understand it in terms of what difference the possible different answers make to how I understand the world, and when I fail to see any difference between any of the answers (as I do with the god question) I simply fail to form a belief of any strength.

chez

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Chez,

I think your answer is a bit disengenuous. You have formed a belief and given it weight. You're telling me that you don't believe that the chance of a Judeo/Christian God actually existing is relatively LOW? Or any other particular denomination's notion of a particular deity?
Perhaps I am misreading your answer, but to say you have given NO weight to any particular position regarding a god's likeliness seems like a misleading statement.
Now, if you said you don't completely rule out a god's existence, that would be one thing. But how can you give equal weight to all of them, including the possibility of no god's existence?
To use the Unicorn analogy, saying you have no position on unicorns is misleading. Your position on Unicorns, or bigfoot, or Jim Morisson (I assume) is that they are UNLIKLEY to exist.
No?
-g

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Hi -g, I'm not being deliberately disingenuous, I think its actually very simple. That doesn't mean its obvious and, of course, I could be completely wrong.

Skeptics have no belief about the existence of god because they have no handle on the concept (no different understanding of the world with or without god). It then follows that talk of gods nature is meaningless. Religon is not right/wrong about god, it is actually independent of god (If it wasn't true that nothing about religon is in any way dependent on the existence of god then as religon exists we would have a handle on god.)

So ask me about christianity and I say it is meaningless with respect to god but is actually about the idea of god that credulist have created.

The main reason this could all be wrong is that god is not necessarily a metaphysical concept - it could be that god provides evidence of his existence. Some religous people insist they have such evidence and hence have a handle on god. I think they are wrong, they only believe the evidence is in anyway credible because they have already formed a credulous belief about god. This would explain why so few skeptical people (who are in general very impressed by evidence) find the evidence anything but risable.

chez