TheOverExcitedDragon t1_j2l90az wrote
On your initial analogy: Looking for a life jacket or a flotation device is very reasonable in this situation given you have several instances of seeing boats or hearing about boats with life jackets and flotation devices. Even if you can’t immediately find them, you might keep looking because you have been exposed to several instances in life when boats contained life jackets. You know they often go together.
More analogous would be your crew starts sinking and you start a search for fairies, calling out to them and wishing them to come help you. Or perhaps calling out to mermaids, or Poseidon to save you. Or even looking for a hidden button in the boat which would teleport you home immediately. These things you have no evidence for, no prior experience with, at best you have legends and stories.
If calling out to the fairies makes you feel good, or looking for the magic teleportation button in the boat seems good to you, go ahead. But don’t act like it’s the same level of reasonable as looking for life jackets — which you have more than just legends pointing you to the possibility there could be one in your situation.
_Zirath_ OP t1_j2lfwid wrote
Remember, I'm not arguing what naturalists should look for, just that sitting down and accepting death shouldn't be appealing to anyone. It should motivate them to seek life. I only discuss theism as a possible alternative.
Now clearly you and I have different levels of confidence in the arguments presented by theists (I am a Christian). That's fine, though personally I don't find the comparison to fairies, etc to be similar at all given the philosophical arguments and robust intellectual tradition that theism has to offer vs fairies.
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