^ I'm not being evasive, I simply have nothing in my head to weigh in on. Russell's Teapot only works if you buy into the commonly marketed conception of god. I already said that that doesn't work for me. If, however, you take into account all the different accounts of a god or gods that have been offered up by other cultures since the beginning of recorded history, you're dead in the water. Is it the perfection of the universe? the universe in it's entirety? "the source" of everything? The point is I have no idea what anyone is even talking about when they use the term "god". I cannot tell you I don't believe in something that I can't even get my head around. You can use all the goofy mythological references you like, it doesn't change the fact that "god" is semantically opaque...and I feel more comfortable admitting that I don't know what we're talking about when we use the term than saying it, whatever "it" is, doesn't exist. The naive, Phil 100, arguments against the existence of the Western, biblical god hold absolutely no sway with me.
Taking into account all of the different accounts of god gives us a list of specific deities to refute. I fail to see how this is killing my case: I said that we can argue against specific deities, and your pointing out that there is a list of specific gods does nothing but undermine your claim that god is semantically opaque. We take the interventionist deities of mythology in stride, and can refute them on a case-by-case basis because they
are specific claims, and usually claims which are suspiciously self-serving declarations of racial entitlement by divine mandate.
If they are non-specific notions of god we are arguing against, then Russell's teapot works
especially well. When a deity is introduced in a debate which is not a part of an interventionist mythology, then it is introduced as a concept designed to pathologically evade the kinds of tactics which were offered as a refutation of the specific deities. Russell's teapot is a demonstration that we are under no obligation to plead agnosticism about the truth of pathologically evasive concepts.
My unknowing stems from the fact that we do not know how this earth, galaxy or universe was formed.
If we were genuinely ignorant of the processes which formed these things, it would still not appropriate to entertain every conjecture about their formation equally. But, as it happens, we do actually know how they formed
especially in the case of galaxies and the earth. And I tend to get slightly sensitive about it when someone who makes an argument from ignorance (which is the most supremely arrogant fallacy of all - "I don't know this personally, so it must be must be unknowable because I'm so smart and would have figured it out otherwise") tells me to get over myself. That's the pot calling the porcelain china black.