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Your points are well made, however, there is no need for a believer to substantiate his doctrine with materialistic theory.

There a need for a non-believer to substantiate his non-belief in the absence of priors -- the non-belief is the optimal default position. Compliments of another mathematician, Reverand Thomas Bayes.

Atheists (and agnostics) are asserting the existence of God is a null prior. Non-belief is the optimal/correct default position in this case. You cannot validly assert that the non-belief of an atheist or agnostic is irrational until you establish a non-null prior.

This is THE problem: theists can only convince atheists by establishing a valid prior. This it seems is nigh impossible, and so the default position remains.

Thank you for your reply!

This is THE problem: theists can only convince atheists by establishing a valid prior. This it seems is nigh impossible, and so the default position remains.

For those atheists whose entire worldview is based on Bayesian statistical estimation (and I doubt many would have any idea what you are talking about) - the prior distribution is the subject belief.

IMHO, the subjective nature of priors is the weakness with Bayes from the get-go. IOW, an atheist or agnostic who appeals to Bayesian distribution has already established bias either in looking at his own beliefs or those of others.

At any rate, an appeals to Bayes is not responsive to the nine specific challenges I posted back at post 189:

Until an atheist (metaphysical naturalist) can respond with a scientifically or mathematically plausible explanation to every one of the following challenges, I shall assert that atheism is a "religion" whose faith is a rejection of diety in favor of self.

IOW, the only way to defeat the assertion that atheism is a religion is to prove that it is not. The challenge does not deal with how one justifies to himself his own agnostic or atheistic beliefs. People can "justify" almost anything.

This is THE problem: theists can only convince atheists by establishing a valid prior. This it seems is nigh impossible, and so the default position remains. This is THE problem: theists can only convince atheists by establishing a valid prior. This it seems is nigh impossible, and so the default position remains.

This is a really nifty retort, tort; and would work really well if human beings lived only in their own minds, and not in their bodies, their emotional life, their connections to communities and environment, etc., etc. -- IOW, in contexts that are not limited to mental abstractions or the intellelctual life.

But they don't.