Fair enough. Substitute “believe” for “claim” in my statement if you wish! Although personally, if I believe something to be the case, I’m generally prepared to claim it as well.
It’s rarely stated quite so explicitly, but some of the arguments made for atheism seem to imply it.
For example, when Ockham’s razor is cited: “do not multiply entities needlessly”. An underlying intent behind the universe is a “needless entity”, it adds nothing to our understanding of the Universe, although it may fulfil a psychological need. An “Intender” is likewise a needless entity - the existence of such an entity is just as inexplicable as the existence of the universe itself, and what is the underlying intent behind the “Intender”? If such a remarkable entity as an Intender needs no underlying intent behind its existence, why should the Universe? By Ockham’s razor at least, there is no intent underlying the universe. Although Ockham’s razor is a guiding principle, and doesn’t actually prove anything.
Your own example of leprechauns is an interesting one - you admit the “possibility” of leprechauns, in a certain sense. Do you also admit the “possibility” of the IPU and FSM and any other entity that I might spontaneously conjure out of my imagination? I’m not sure that admitting to the technical possibility of something and yet claiming it doesn’t exist are mutually exclusive. Personally I’m an IPU strong atheist - I do believe, and claim, that no such entity exists, and this is more than mere disbelief through lack of evidence! And there may well be a teeny element of faith in that…
Yes, I think that leprechauns, God, the IPU, the FSM, and any other crap you might dream up are pretty equivalent, as long as you define them in a way they can’t be disproved. After all, each of those things was dreamed up by other people in the past.
No, in fact, admitting to the technical possibility of God while claiming it doesn’t exist is exactly the position that most atheists take.
Really? Atheists admit the technical possibility of an invisible being that can raise the dead, is immortal, all-knowing, all-seeing, infinitely powerful, and is the creator of the very universe that it inhabits?
If I admitted to the technical possibility of that, I would just have to strike the word “impossible” from my lexicon, wouldn’t I?
Cegstar, if you’re still reading - it seems to me that you’re rejecting a lot of these arguments because you’re seeing a fundamental difference between all these mythological creatures and characters that people keep mentioning, and the concept of God. Sure we can all dismiss the existence of Santa, Leprechauns, Zeus, Thor. Some of us can dismiss the Christian God along with them. But, you’re thinking, to completely deny possibility of the existence of an abstract concept of a higher power that could be called God? Surely that takes faith?
Couple of questions:
It’s possible that we’re all part of an incredibly complex simulation being run on some alien computer. Does it take faith to believe that we’re not?
It’s possible that the entire universe came into being last Thursday lunch time, with trillions of objects in motion, light in transit from distant stars, and fake memories in all of our heads. Does it take faith to believe that it didn’t?
Being both omniscient and omnipotent is technically impossible. Raising the dead may be no big problem for an advanced technology, especially one who set things up in advance.
“Technically possible” is sometimes used to mean “anything we can concieve of that doesn’t involve a logical contradition.”
So it’s “technically possible” that there are regions in the universe where the laws of physics are different and mass and energy can be created, C can be exceeded etc., it’s “technically possible” that the laws of physics we know and love will be spontaneously revised in the next instant. We can’t prove, or know for sure, that they won’t. But this is rather pushing at the boundaries of logic and language - there’s so little difference between this definition of “technically possible” and “impossible” that there might as well be none.