You find it preposterous because you do not believe in the supernatural. But there is no evidence against the existence of the supernatural. While there is at least some evidence for it. Every good empiricists should only base what he believes on what can be seen. To deny what has not even had any evidence presented against is the preposterous thing.
There needs be no evidence against the supernatural for it to be. I see this over and over in this thread and it makes me want to bang my head against my desk, unfortunately the pop bottles and paper stacks get in the way of me doing that, so instead let me make something very clear. No one needs to prove anything against god, spirits, or voodoo. Supernatural things needn't be disproved. For all intents and purposes, they do not exist. By all means if you have zero evidence to show for a "theory", then no one of a scientific mind is going to put any salt in it. If I come forth and say the universe consists of a lattice of untouchable, unseeable, unprovable particles that form a chain that links the spatial area that we call "space", it is all on my shoulders to prove it. I can't, thus it is untrue for all intents. To even for a moment to assume that an unprovable by virtue could exist is preposterous. Since it is intangible and unimportant to the mechanics of the universe by its obvious non-interaction (things that interact can always be proven or at least theorized about, by either cause (the particle) or effect (the action caused by the particle). Gravity is a good example of this. We don't know what gravity is, it's not a particle, not a wave of any detectable energy, EXCEPT for its effects. However we can suggest that matter (based on its weight) creates gravity and is thus attracted to other mass. But while we cannot prove what gravity is, it is gravity, because this is what we use to describe the attraction of matter to other matter. Now God, we have no cause, no effect. Neither, not a single iota of "this is an effect of god" of course people purport such things all the time, THIS IS GODS HANDIWORK, such as the dna is too complex, thus god must exist, this is flawed argument and deserves no more discussion beyond it is flawed.
When this all boiled down and wrung out what you get is this, you believe something that there is no proof of beyond the words of a book. You have subjective proof via the minds ability to rationalize faith based assumptions. This subjective proof does in no way effect the reality of things; schizophrenics often truly believe that people are after them, paranoid delusions, but real subjectively and if you try, you'll not be able to prove to them otherwise. I'm not saying religious people are delusional in the pejorative sense, however it borders this in that people are believing something that has zero basis in reality. In the future when trying to deride this, please word your words carefully, as you risk simply repeating statements that are circular in reasoning and serve no purpose but to increase the size of this thread. Just remember, to be right, you must have proof of existence not proof of the lack thereof. There are an infinite number of possibilities in the realm of "what does not exist" a god shaped like a loaf of bread is as possible and just as unprovable as the God of Christian literature, of course this is silly, and by silly I mean just as.
Reality comes in one form, that which you can prove, things that you cannot remain just that. If someone comes forth with an assertion that X = Y. He'll have his proofs. At this point someone may come along and attempt to disprove his assertion, this sometimes gives people of the religious argument the idea that you need to disprove the existence of something for it to be untrue. This attempt to maintain the proof still falls on the shoulders of the assertion, it must stand up to the disproving facts. Religion does NOT do this, it cannot, due to its lack of empiricality.
