@fresco,
fresco wrote:Okay. The argument put forward by most atheists is that "the (independent) existence of a deity" cannot be proved.
Never mind proof. Evidence that makes it more likely than not is good enough.
fresco wrote:But "independent existence" of anything at all is unprovable because it requires at least one observer to assign the nature of thinghood within a social context, in order to denote what might constitute "evidence".
So to translate that into plain English, you believe that if a tree falls and nobody is there to listen, nobody can prove whether it made a sound or not. I'm not convinced that this is true. But even if it is, it
still doesn't put any circularity into the statement, "I believe it
did make a sound" --- nor, for that matter, into its opposite, "I believe it did
not make a sound". Naive realism, then, may be too simple-minded for your sophisticated tastes, but your claim that its reasoning is circular remains unsupported.
I guess this is where I let go of this particular point.