Scepticism reminds me of atheism

I'm not interested in the scepticism debate because it sounds to me like a nonsense. Suppose there was some Evil Demon (why is it always Evil?) out there, systematically duping me with duff sense-data. And here I am, under the impresion I'm sat in a chair at a slightly crappy computer, and there's my mother asking me if I'm not hogging her monthly bandwidth ration.

I'm not, Mum, really.

My point is, all the conditions for me being sat in a chair obtain, so I figure I'm sat in a chair. What else has to obtain for me to be sat in this chair? The Cartesians say the condition is is that an Evil Demon is not fooling me, but imagine - if he was "fooling" me with duff sense-data, what difference would that make? I'd still be sat in this chair. It would just be a chair the Demon had made in a world the Demon had created.

The bastard - my life is so rubbish, being generally warm and well-fed etc.

I guess the world I'm in could turn out not to exist, but I don't see why I should get worked up about that. Any number of things might not have happened, but everything can't not have happened. Almost everything has happened - it wouldn't make any difference if it hadn't. It therefore makes more sense to try to establish what this "knowing" thing is all about in this maybe/mabe-not existing world, than fret over whether or not we're being duped.

And that's the tenuous connection to my problem with God-botherers (I'm talking about believers and atheists both): maybe God does exist, or maybe God doesn't. The whole discussion of whether or not some supreme being exists or not doesn't make any difference to me on the ground right now. Either He is responsible for Everything, or Everything is responsible for itself.

Either way, arguing about whether or not He exists seems foolish - the interesting problems are to do with why people believe in God, how religion relates to power structures, and some other things that I was thinking about just now but fell out of my head before I wrote them down. Anyhow, these problems are perfectly accessible, and can be talked about quite intelligibly, regardless of whether God turns out to exist or not.

That's probably not a very sophisticated theology. Bugger it. Dawkins is a twat. And to Hell with ontology.