You know by now or ought to what it takes to convince a critical thinker - a sound, evidenced argument. Apologists don't have that to offer, and so can never make any progress. What do you suppose is the likeliest reason for not being able to make such a case would be? Hint: no false belief can be demonstrated to be correct, which is the corollary to no correct belief can be successfully refuted. For the critical thinker, the apologists continual inability to support their claims or refute those of their critics by those standards is the evidence that they are wrong.
That's not my experience, and I don't think that describes anybody I socialize with. That's not because such people don't exist, but because many charitable and loving people do exist, so many that it is easy to accumulate the one in one's social orbit and exclude the others, especially after retirement and expatriation, which eliminates coworkers and family - both the kinds of people you don't choose but might have to endure - from daily life.
God isn't similar to extraterrestrials, and that's why the assessment of the likelihood of the existence of each is different. Moreover, experienced critical thinkers don't say that extraterrestrials exist, but rather that there is no known reason for them not to exist, and that all of the elements necessary for them to exist are known to be abundant in the universe. Proof isn't part of the process at all, the closest one can come is "proof" beyond reasonable doubt - an unfortunate phrase that should read compelling evidence. No faith is involved in critical thought, because it is designed to exclude ideas that depend on unjustified belief to be believed.
God as the Abrahamics conceive of it is a metaphysical concept, immune to detection, meaning unfalsifiable, and thus further consideration of the topic will be fruitless, leading to agnostic atheism). But this is not the case with possible extraterrestrial life. That's why we have SETI, but no search for anything called supernatural .
The latter is a meaningless term. What you can have are spiritual experiences, but they don't tell you anything about reality except that you are capable of having such experiences - not what they signify about that reality. What you have are intuitions that resonate with you and which you interpret as descriptions of reality, a common habit, but not a helpful one. The critical thinker doesn't think like that. He understands that that experience is endogenous and purely subjective, like his experience of something being beautiful or valuable or funny.
They why think about it?
How is that evidence of a god? The implication is that nature couldn't generate human beings with what human beings consider virtuous inclinations and acts.
The most transformative worldview by far has been humanism, which transformed alchemy into chemistry and subjects into autonomous citizens and moral agents.
But they have been practiced for millennia, and you see the result. The pinnacle of the Abrahamic religion in the West was medieval culture. Then came humanism, which set the world on the path to mutual tolerance, but it has been hampered by the religions and by authoritarian regimes since it appeared. Look at what the Christian church is doing in the States now with both its attempts to recriminalize abortion and oppress LGBTQ+. The religions need the humanists to teach them about freedom, tolerance and the Golden Rule, which they do by example, not lip service in sermons nobody is listening to. How about we go with what has a demonstrated track record instead of what has failed for centuries?
No, religion is the opposite of science. One is evidence-based, the other pure metaphysical speculation.
I don't. Maybe you saw my response to a similar comment above. This is the dismal nihilism of these religions - that the world is a terrible place and only they have the answer - escape. But that's simply not true for growing numbers of people, who are relatively happy and comfortable, and love life. From "Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress" by Steven Pinker, 2018:
"Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In 75 jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature—tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking—which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation."
