Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
You're not really "open to the possibility", though. You're theoretically open to the possibility, just like we're all theoretically open to the possibility that satan's playing a trick on us with fossils, or that the planet is actually flat and our data is wrong.

You'll find very few atheists who think that the existence of god is less likely than the existence of pink unicorns. Most of the people you're referring to are just honest about what they think. I'm not going to shrug and say "Yeah, I guess there could be a teapot floating around in Saturn's rings...", I"m going to say, "No, such an idea is idiotic, and will remain idiotic unless you find something that successfully indicates that there is a teapot there."

When you criticise atheists who categorically say that there is no god, because they should be as open to the possibility of god as they are genies and unicorns, you're just splitting hairs for an intellectually dishonest reason. But, as the xkcd comic says, I'm glad you've found some way to feel superior to them, too.
I think my biggest issue with this argument is that the comparison made is inherently linked to the presence of something as a physical entity (invisible unicorns and teapots), but God, as described in pretty much every holy book, is not a physical entity, per se, although there are physical manifestations from time to time. Because of this, it's a false analogy.