I diarist on Daily Kos put up this post on why he believes in God. Here is my reply:

I must disagree with the conclusions of the author of this diary. This is what I call the "argument by personal sense of wonderfulness" for the existence of God. It goes something like: "There are so many absolutely beautiful, amazing, deeply good and wonderful things in my life, therefore I know there is a God." Other commenters have pointed out what is wrong with this argument: it denies the reality of those who do not have such things, whose lives have an overwhelming amount of suffering and misery.

The images and feelings that occams hatchet present may be a good argument that there is some personal god or angel watching over him, but that says nothing about whether a universally powerful, knowledgeable, and benevolent entity is concerned with all of humanity. Of course, it could be that occams hatchet doesn't believe that God has those traits.

A common pitfall of these "Does God exist?" arguments is that people have radically different ideas of what God is. So there's a lot of people talking past each other. For some people, God is simply good things. So since good things exist (who would argue against that?), God must also exist. But the God you end up with in this case is rather abstract and impersonal. I don't think this kind of de-humanized God is what most people are talking about, but then unless they're more specific we can't know for sure.

But what bothers me particularly about this "argument by personal sense of wonderfulness" is that it makes such strong rhetorical links between good, yummy things and God that any attack on the argument seems like an attack on children, sunsets, love, punishment for wickedness, hamburgers, justice, and all things good and wonderful. It makes anyone who attacks this argument seem like a misanthropic curmudgeon who, filled with spite and envy, is wickedly attempting to destroy a happiness they are unable to obtain for themselves.

That is not what I wish to do. I just wish to point out that there is not necessarily a link between the wonderful things occams hatchet shared with us (which I accept as good and wonderful) and the bold metaphysical claim he makes about the entire universe (i.e. that there's God in it).

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