Going back a couple of pages (goodness this thread has traveled far and wide and quickly) to the question of whether, to an outside observer, belief in God is comparable to belief in fairies/unicorns/etc., I will once again attempt to argue that they are not necessarily comparable.
Suppose someone tells me that they believe that unicorns exist, can be seen and physically interacted with, can be tamed by human virgins, and can magically cure poison with their horns. (Note: if one is going to be discussing whether or not something exists, one really ought to define it as clearly as possible, else the discussion will be meaningless). I will be very skeptical. I do not believe any such creatures have ever existed. I can’t prove it, but I don’t believe it at all. Why?
Because the most basic thing that I do know about the universe is that it is predictable and rational. It is possible to observe phenomena and learn from them. It is possible to perform experiments and make predictions, and those predictions will often be valid. There are rules that govern the phenomena I have observed inside the universe. Unicorns (as defined above) do not fit into those rules. In fact, they would require many of the rules that I think I know (or that science thinks it knows) to be wrong. Which doesn’t mean that it’s impossible that they exist, just that it is very unlikely, and thus, I don’t believe in them. (Of course, if someone was just talking about something that looked like a horse but had only one horn and no supernatural powers, that would be far more plausible.)
So what about God? If someone tells me that they believe in a guy on a throne up above the clouds who listens to prayers and sends gay people to hell, then my reaction is pretty much the same as the above. But what if someone just believes in some incredibly powerful and somewhat conscious force that created the universe and now observes the universe? Such a thing is totally outside the universe. None of the observations and laws and rules and patterns that make up my life’s experience say anything about things outside the universe. So the only even remotely relevant thought process that I can go through is to apply occam’s razor and say that I see a simpler explanation. Thus, I don’t believe in God. But it’s for very different, and much less compelling, reasons than my not believing in unicorns.
Fair enough?
As to the main thrust of the thread (using the term Magical Sky Pixies), I think both Jodi and MrVisible (being the two primary antagonists) have reasonable points. I think the primary factor governing how appropriate it is to talk about MSPs, and which would factor into whether I myself would ever use that turn of phrase, is what the discussion in question is about. If someone is discussing Opera, for instance, and happens to mention that they are Christian, I think it would be rude to barge in and ask them why they believe in MSPs. It shouldn’t be illegal to do so, mind you, but it would be rude.
On the other hand, if an actual full-on religious debate is going on, and (say) clairobscur wants to make the point that he finds belief in God to be no more plausible than belief in fairies, I think it is totally reasonable for him to talk about MSPs. Analogously, it would be very rude for someone who was a vegetarian to constantly refer to non-vegetarians as, say, “bambi-killers”. But in the context of an actual debate over the merits of vegetarianism, if someone wanted to use that phrase to drive home that meat eaters actually eat animals even if they don’t like to think about it, I think that would be quite reasonable
