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"The statements that it can easily be discerned and that the supreme being would bother to remedy it if it did discern it are a pair of presumed conclusions. Even if there is a creator it is entirely likely that in the universe as a whole human beings are a totally insignificant and irrelevant accident as far as the creator is concerned."

And yet you presume that the Creator would not care. Once again, we will have to agree to differ, I see that even if it is an accident, that the Creator would treat us with care, and you presume that he would not.

"In this case your extension of my analogy works against you. The experiment (life on earth/the petri dish) may be already completed and the interesting results are noted. The scientist/God turns away and doesn't care as the cleaner/devil holds the dish of believers up to the flames. Perhaps the dish containing believers makes a pretty colour in the bunsen whereas the non-believers aren't so interesting and just get tossed in the trash. The point I am making here is that the motivation of supernatural beings might well be completely inscrutable to us (I would expect them to be inscrutable, you don't). The burning bacteria screaming in what seems like eternal pain wouldn't understand the cleaner's motivation, or why their creator was no longer interested."

Your entire argument lies in metaphor whereas mine lies in logic (i.e. post #126). By this analogy, you admit the existence of a god, and therefore are doomed with the rest of us anyway (if your analogy is true).

Let's extend the analogy some more: If the creator is omnipotent, as you are now indicating, why would he need a cleaner? He would not need one. He could merely create another for his next in a series of never ending experiments.

Sorry for waiting so long to repost. I've been playing a new computer game, and have otherwise been working the rest of the time.

And yet you presume that the Creator would not care. Once again, we will have to agree to differ, I see that even if it is an accident, that the Creator would treat us with care, and you presume that he would not.

I don't presume that he wouldn't and I don't presume that he would. I don't presume anything about Him. You project your own niceness onto a being whose motives I maintain are likely to be entirely inscrutable to us were He to exist.

Your entire argument lies in metaphor whereas mine lies in logic (i.e. post #126). By this analogy, you admit the existence of a god, and therefore are doomed with the rest of us anyway (if your analogy is true). Let's extend the analogy some more: If the creator is omnipotent, as you are now indicating, why would he need a cleaner? He would not need one. He could merely create another for his next in a series of never ending experiments. Sorry for waiting so long to repost. I've been playing a new computer game, and have otherwise been working the rest of the time.

The purpose of my metaphor was to explain a hypothetical case in which belief in a divine creator could be punished.

I would have thought it clear that I only admit the existence of a God for the purposes of that analogy, not in general. I have not indicated that the hypothetical creator is necessarily omnipotent; omnipotence is merely one possibility. For the avoidance of confusion please attach the words "might" and "possibly" and "hypothetically" to all statements I make in analogical arguments about the creator; I would have thought that obvious seeing as I am an atheist.