And I don't necessarily say that gods are, by default, more likely than fairies, just that a god, of some kind, may very well exist, and its existence is more probable than that of fairies.
On this particular Ex-Muslim forum and amongst this predominantly Ex-Theist crowd, it is reasonable to assume that when you invoke the word God you are speaking of a typical God unless you notify people otherwise. That is, when you speak of God, you mean a deity of some kind, a supernatural anthropomorphic entity, typically one that had a hand in the creation of the universe or oversees a certain aspect of it, and typically one that is documented and worshiped in the traditions of a known religion. We could assume you are speaking of the entity that ancient clerics and superstitionists decided to call “Allah” or “Yahweh” unless you say otherwise. Agreed?
Not all conceptions of God are equally likely or unlikely.
You could define God as this cup of hot black coffee sitting in front of me, and I would acknowledge the existence of that thing you refer to as God and that I refer to as a cup of hot black coffee.
As long as we understand that I’m not acknowledging the existence of anything out of the ordinary and that I am in fact acknowledging the existence of the thing I call a cup of hot black coffee. I would only call it God when speaking with you, or think about it as God when you say the word God. I wouldn’t expect anyone except you to understand I meant this hot cup of hot black coffee when I said God.
This in no way increases the likelihood of the existence of what is most commonly known as God.
And there is still a massive void of the unknown, and it's unwise to think that people who live nowadays are necessarily wiser than those who lived thousands of years ago. The Buddha was not a fool, but many who live today most definitely are.
The body of knowledge we have to draw upon is obviously much more comprehensive now than it was thousands of years ago. Science has a far more encompassing understanding of the universe than it did thousands of years ago. We know things to more decimal places of certainty than we did thousands of years ago.
It isn’t unwise to think people would be wiser than those who lived thousands of years ago if they were better educated.
As for living in a fantasy, I'm not really even trying to substantiate the existence of something here, just to show that such a thing as God is indeed possible, and this is in line with my first contention that it is presumptuous to assert the non-existence of God, without knowledge.
It’s the kind of contention that becomes redundant when posed as a question. As a question, you could put it:
If there was evidence of a thing, would there be evidence of a thing?“Once again, we have hit philosophical bedrock with the shovel of a stupid question”
~ Sam Harris
Topic: Atheist Censorship