I don't think that whether it can be proven he existed historically or not is really all that important. I said I don't have any problem believing that such a person existed, just as did Confucious and Muhammed and so forth. I was just pointing out that the statements that such evidence does exist is not in fact true.

In terms of falsification of the existence of God, it's a fundamental axiom of logic that you cannot prove a negative. If someone says pink elephants exist, that's not disproveable unless you've looked every possible location on the entire planet, because it could just be somewhere you've never looked. All that logic can do is prove positive things. I.e. once you find a single pink elephant, not one can claim that they don't exist, because one's been found.

So the whole argument about the lack of existence of God is in a class of problem that cannot be proven because no matter where we look, he could just be somewhere else. However, OTOH, the complete lack of any positive evidence clearly carries some weight. The things that people put forth as evidence of God's existence are not really evidence for that at all. The fact that you had cancer but it went away is not evidence for God, it's just evidence that sometimes cancer goes away. Sometimes we can make it go away artificially. Sometimes it doesn't. There's no grand plan, just happenstance.

Some could argue that, well that's what you say, I say it does and I don't need proof, I have faith and that's all I need. But, once you go down that road, you get us into the situation we are in now in the world, where a lot of people believe things without proof and the things they believe are not in our best interests. But, you can't say that they aren't correct, because they are basing their decision on the same criteria as you. You can't say that, oh well, sometimes God lets children die because it's part of his plan, we can't try to understand what his plan is, but then claim that when someone blows up a building because God told them to, that this is someone demonstrably not part of his plan.

You see what I'm saying? Once you go off the logic reservation, then you no longer have any firm ground to argue against someone else who is using the exactly same justifications to do things that are not good for you. What's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that. It's impossible to say that God didn't tell those guys to fly planes into buildings. They have every bit as much proof of it as that God told you to adopt a puppy. If there's no human logic to God's plan, and he's happy to kill 200,000 people in a tsunami, then a few thousand in NY is clearly within those parameters.

I just feel a lot more comfortable myself taking the stance that those things that are not proveable should not be assumed to be true. I don't feel that my comfort is more important than the proveable truth. I'd rather live without the assurance that there's some God looking over me, than to give up my right to look at those hijackers, and say you are a bunch of insane people and your rationalization for this action is completely without merit.

And, just on a more general level, I want nothing to do with any God who would require that I believe something that is not proveable. If he's not willing to make his existence unambiguously and proveably known, I want nothing to do with him, because I think any God who did that would be a serious sicko, of the worst sort.

And, once again, I have to say I'm not poking fun at anyone, or trying to belittle anyone. I'm just pointing out what I see as the facts, and some of my own personal opinions. I think that these things can be discussed like adults, and so far it's gone well.