Here's a box:



If you are an atheist, you will argue in this thread that the box has a leprechaun inside.

If you are a theist, you will make your best arguments to show that atheists don't know what's inside the box.

I'll start:

I believe the box has a leprechaun in it. I heard him talking today.

Nobody can prove there isn't a leprechaun in the box. Sure the box is small, but so are leprechauns. And it sounds just like a box with a leprechaun should sound. Leprechauns are quiet.

This is the third post in a row supporting the leprechaun hypothesis. How much empirical evidence are the leprechaun deniers willing to ignore?

Open the box and look inside.

well i know theres a leprachaun in the box because i put him there as a timeout!

anyone who sees the leprachaun dies!

Well, this is a box that by definition does not open.

Concerto, if you didn't hear him talking when I did earlier, you probably aren't listening hard enough. I think maybe you don't want there to be a leprechaun inside so you can continue with your current lifestyle.

Ultrasound.

Try it and you'll see the inside of an empty box. That proves there was a real leprechaun hiding inside. If it was a midget in a green costume, you'd see him sitting in the box and you'd know he wasn't really a leprechaun. But since it was a real leprechaun, it naturally took evasive action and scurried away before you could see anything. What creature besides a leprechaun could do that?

Oh, scientific testing doesn't work on this box either.

If you are claiming your leprechaun is unobservable in principle, then it is included in the category of phenomena for which there is no empirical means to distinguish presence from absence, and The Leprechaun Forum can be renamed The Troll Forum.

You are a close minded bigot for suggesting this. The majority of this nation believes that there is in fact a leprechaun in the box. How dare you. I am extremely offended.

No, that's not it. You are of course free to go on believing in your undetectable leprechaun (especially since having beliefs that are essentially arbitrary from an empirical standpoint is unavoidable for everyone). But since the rest of us can neither confirm nor disprove its presence, we'll have to settle for trolling you with a laundry list of cleverer-than-thou fallacies and so forth.

You can't prove the leprechauns presence because you aren't listening for him hard enough and because you want to continue living your non-leprechaun lifestyle.

Look, there's a box, right?

Why would there be a box if there wasn't something in it?

What if you're wrong? The leprechaun says he has a pot of gold for you if you believe. Isn't that too much to risk?

I prayed to the leprechaun and found some maui gold at the end of a rainbow.

When I look around the room and at the box, my mind wouldn't be able to comprehend the idea of no leprechaun in the box.

Would you like me to explain why this analogy fails miserably?

There might be a leprechaun and there might not. If you think there isn't and you're wrong you're going to burn forever and ever and ever. I choose to believe there is a leprechaun in the box. If I'm wrong, no harm done.

Yes.

Why are you guys trying to take away my belief in the boxed leprechaun?

This

The evidence needed to affirm that there is a leprechaun in the box would be very straightforward. For example, if the box moves or we hear "They're after me Lucky Charms coming from inside of the box, we can conclude that there is a leprechaun inside of the box. However, because the conditions of the box lack the evidence required to justify believing that there is a leprechaun in the box, it is most sensible to believe that there is no leprechaun in the box.

This puts the "believer" in a position to defend and define a baseless claim in which the necessary evidence to believe the leprechaun is nonexistent. This is supposed to model the theists' defense of and "lack of evidence" for God.

However, the types of evidence required for God or a random physical object are entirely different. There is a difference between saying "Some guy sits in a chair in the clouds and watches the universe" and "There is a being similar to a great mind which interprets and understands the workings of the world, which it created, and gives life to all of these things."

The analogy fails in that it tries to compare a lack of evidence for two different things when the necessary evidence for those two things are completely different.

What if you're wrong?

All you've done is assert that. There's no objective evidence or reasoning showing that we wouldn't be able to see or hear god if he existed. You're just supposing it to be that way, for your own personal benefit.

Suppose someday we are able to create boxes with leprechauns in them. Would that serve as evidence that this box was created with a leprechaun in it?