Reason is dead in the body politic; those still with their wits about them are no more than the vestigial remnants of a dying, nonfunctional organ soon to be excised. Propaganda such as excreted by Fox News et al has rather fertile soil in which to take root.

That seems to me like an abstraction that has no practical use.

You take that back! Oh, sorry. I guess there is some bullshit I believe more than others. Technically, I believe my cats associate me with petting and food and therefore are interested in not doing things that cause me to cut off the petting and food, but since I never have, they’re free to do pretty much anything. Our remaining housemate seems to be using the same logic, more or less, but is *not* *cute*.

And my gods didn’t create the world or much of anything else. Humans created them, though more or less as a side effect of living. Why, you may wonder, would I go on believing in them? No clue. If I’d still been a Catholic, I’d be an atheist already, just from an allergic reaction to the currently prominent religious adherents wandering around. But my religion hasn’t started any world wars, and has sentimental value, and the thought processes are occasionally useful in mitigating the effects of my various mental illnesses, so I keep it around. So far.

Well then, head back to the scientologists, who have absurd beliefs, relatively speaking. They can serve as an adequate substitute for a FSM believer.

But I have yet to find one person who truly believes in FSM. If I ever do, I’ll put them squarely in the same column as other dogmatic believers.

A belief is either based on repeatable results and disprovable statements or it is silly.

That’s funny, because I can’t perceive why you can’t.

Take the case of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which illustrates both our positions. The FSM has equal footing with YHWH in a logical sense, but has deliberate elements of silliness involved in order to make fun of God Ol’ Boys.

If it wasn’t more silly – though equally false – the joke wouldn’t have been as fun.

I’m still sticking on this one. A statement [of belief] is either true, false, meaningless or imaginary. I can’t perceive these degrees we’re talking about.

Well exactly. I’m not saying there are any gods, but the manifestations claimed by adherents are as knockable – more so the sillier they get – as the fact of their non-existence.

By, say, creating them in the first place perhaps? After all, what’s “I believe in God” for? If He doesn’t have the power, if He never acts, then what is it exactly you believe in again (fuzzily or otherwise)?

The second a god interferes in earthly doings he or she acquires a hefty list of get-outta-heres, and therefore gradations of silliness.

Perhaps.

“the degrees of provability are also different”

I’d like to know how.

“There’s some kind of sentient entitiy undetectable by my instruments of perception but I believe in it nonetheless.”
V
V
-degrees?-
V
V
“There’s the God of Abraham and His quasi human son, both of whom are undetectable by my instruments of perception but I believe in them nonetheless.”

An “I believe in God but I dunno what he’s like” god is an obviously less silly god than a god who shows his ass to Moses and impregnates some vagabond in order to birth himself and kill himself.

The degrees of faith required are very different, and the degrees of provability are also different, whether or not they are both false.