Here's how this goes for me: get asked for evidence/reasons for my belief, write an essay, get told I'm a moron because my interpretation and logic doesn't fit with materialism. Does this happen to anyone else?
Sure. Not always in that order, and never (obviously) about my evidence/reasons for belief in god(s). But being an opinionated sort with some unorthodox beliefs I find them often challenged, belittled, misunderstood, mischaracterized, and dismissed. And, of course, I like to think that I am constantly challenging myself to determine if I am justified in believing what I do (or not believing what I don't).
It feels to me like theists provide evidence and valid logic for gods ALL THE TIME, to what avail?
Too often providing evidence in any debate or discussion, from one about religion or philosophy in a forum to statistical practice in academic conferences and peer-reviewed journals (especially those in the cognitive, social, and behavioral sciences, but also the medical sciences and even particle physics), doesn't seem to have much effect. For example, the literature on the problems that riddle the most commonly employed statistical paradigm across the literature is enormous (dating back before the paradigm even emerged and filling pages in countless journals, monographs, volumes, and so forth), yet even though the various critiques and the evidence backing their legitimacy go largely unanswered by would-be defenders, this methodology is used in an increasing number of fields and shows no sign of slowing down. Small wonder that, in areas that lend themselves far less to rigorous scrutiny, opinions about what the evidence is and what it shows are wont to diverge (even in more formal settings).
If a materialist put aside their preconceived belief that pure materialism is the proven answer they would see evidence and arguments that can be used to support gods all around them.
At this point I'm not sure whether or not modern physics makes materialism a sensible worldview. That is, I find it difficult to defend a materialism given that our most fundamental theories have long since ceased to deal only with the "material" and render difficult the question of just what "material" is supposed to be (do causally efficacious but nonetheless "virtual" particles count? functional emergence? how about information, now regarded by many physicists as the most fundamental layer of "reality"?). Certainly, I find reductionism particularly ill-founded, and to the extent materialism is reductive this is yet another reason to abandon it.
Yet, despite my critiques of materialism, I don't see evidence for god/gods (not evidence I find convincing, although the issue of fine-tuned parameters is something I can't justify dismissing the way e.g., Victor J. Stenger does).
Is it the theist's fault that we can't break through dogmatic faith?
No. But in general holding a position means defending it or arguing for it. Maybe that's not a good thing (certainly, one shouldn't feel constantly challenged to defend their beliefs by those who refuse to contemplate a worldview compatible with these beliefs, let alone evidence for them).
If I was King of RF, I'd make it illegal for anybody to refer to a generic logical fallacy in a reply to a post. Anyone who violated this law would be broken on the wheel or stuck inside an iron maiden.
They have just become stock cliches that are almost always incorrectly used and seem to serve no other purpose than to dismiss a point out of hand without recourse to addressing any of its actual content.
Well put. I started a thread a while back on the fallacy of referring to fallacies.
