D-word wrote:

Martin Willett wrote:

5] Finally, this is the killer, they demonstrate positive proof to the
satisfaction of everybody that there is no god.


It's fantasy isn't it? How could you ever manage to achieve point 5?
There is, surely, no possible scenario in which the religious would all
hold their hands up and admit "fuck me, we were wrong!"

Well, it is probably at least as likely as proving the contrary point
to atheists, and having them throw up their hands and say, "fuck me
Jesus, I was wrong!"  As foolish and stubborn as the god-fearing can
be, atheists are, at times, no better.  Both are resolute in their
beliefs, despite their ignorance. Both are equally stupid when viewed
from where I am sitting. What was it the little green men were going to
say? That is the question, right?

No, it isn't. Can't you recognize the form? Nothing in the story really happens, the author of the story can manipulate anything (including the laws of physics) to induce the audience to think a certain thought: it's a PARABLE. The purpose of the parable is to get people to think what sort of evidence would be required to get religious people to change their minds, and my suggestion is it cannot be done, even by a bona fide miracle performed by an alternative god! The alien bit was just to slip the idea of alternative gods past the Faith brand anti-virus protocols of the religious believers' minds.

If there was evidence for the existence of gods the vast majority of atheists would change their views. There may be some atheists who are atheists with faith and who would deny the existence of gods despite meeting them face to face, but I'm quite sure they are a tiny minority. Most atheists are atheists because they sincerely do not believe that gods of any sort exist. Most atheists simply don't *believe* in gods, there should be another word to describe people who *repudiate* gods they do believe in. Such people are very rare in reality, they exist in fantasy, such as the Christian fantasy that the Romans knew Jesus was really a god and therefore fed Christians to the lions out of fear of their real god they somehow didn't believe in yet were scared of! The reality was a small number of Christians were persecuted for their atheism, for not believing in the gods that the civilized world recognized.