This one is for you, Perry
Today I was reminded of a comment I wrote someplace else, responding to someone coming up with the 'a house in the desert must have been designed and built'-analogy:
About that building in the desert...
No doubt you would be confident, without a shadow of a doubt that someone constructed that house, and put the food there.
Who would you think built it?
Camels? Martians? Humans?
Probably you would say the latter.
Why?
Because you know camels can't do that, you have no evidence martians exist, and every similar building you have ever seen was built by humans.
Not so with God as the creator of the universe.
Like with martians, you have no evidence he exists.
And since you have not seen any other universes being created by God, you don't know whether universes are normally created by Gods.
So looking at the universe, you have no reason to assume it was created, and you don't know who did it if it was.
But let's just assume God exists anyway.
If you and I were in that desert and we found that building, we might quickly agree on it's builders being humans.
Evening falls, you are playing some guitar, and I am writing a letter.
When I'm finished, I hand it to you.
The letter states this:
This building we just found, it's awesome. You can see the intelligence of it builders.
There were 15 of them: 9 men and 7 women.
Their leader is called Erwin, he is 162 years old, lives in London, loves garlic and salmon. He hates flowers and cucumbers. Since we should be so grateful to him for building us this awesome shelter, we should thank him by having garlic each breakfast, and destroying all flowers we can find!
Would you believe my claims?
There are contradictions and unlikely claims in the letter.
Also, like you I just got there, wondering about the building. I don't know anything more than you.
The claims are not supported by any evidence.
I think you would not accept my claims.
Well, accepting that the universe has one or more creators is already not supported by evidence.
But claiming all kinds of knowledge about this unseen creator is just foolish.
And yes, in this illustration my letter is any document claiming knowledge about god (Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon, Gilgamesh epos, Ayyur Veda, etc.etc.)
These books all contain claims not supported by any evidence.
Their writers were humans who just got here, wondering about the universe. They didn't know anything more than anyone else.
Since you are dismissing all Holy Books but one, apply the logic you use for dismissing most of them to your own Holy Book.
If you're honest, you'll be surprised what happens.