Posted by Gremlin [12.255.181.7 - 12-255-181-7.client.attbi.com] on 12 July 2002 at 20.34.20 ZuluTime:

In Reply to: are you certain? posted by Andy on 12 July 2002 at 20.07.14 ZuluTime:

First, the bible is fiction. Any book not supported by fact is fiction. Even biographies and autobiographies are often fictional. When a book states that the planet is a flat square, as the bible does, and we have overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we can state as fact that the bible is fictional. Or, at least, that it has fictional elements.
     So we work out which parts of the bible are definitely fiction by contrasting them to established facts. The planet is round; there's no record of Y'shua ever existing in any form. These biblical elements are not only unsupported by any evidence, but countered by contradictory evidence. We have established facts that living organisms are twice as old as the bible claims the planet to be. The blatant errors in the bible can be called fiction as a fact.
     That leaves the rest of the book, against which no contradictory evidence has been discovered. We can't state as fact that there are no deities; we can only state as fact that no evidence of deities has been published. For that, one could claim that it's possible that the deities in the bible exist or did exist; by the same token, one could claim that it's possible, granting the lack of contradictory evidence, that Jack Dawson was on the Titanic and that Darth Vader ruled the starsystems a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
     Things not supported by evidence are fictional by default. Asking for evidence against an unfounded claim is a dodge. Ask me for evidence against deities, and I'll ask for evidence against Vader. They're the same species of character.

As for the number of deities, you haven't shown enough [or, really, any] evidence that any exist to decree that the only possible numbers are one and zero. Polytheism is exactly as valid a concept as monotheism and deism and so on. To state that only one or zero widgets can exist is to suggest that you've defined for widgets. You haven't defined for deities yet. You've only told us that, if a deity exists, it has no peers. Which, incidentally, contradicts the story of the bible.