LuftWaffle

Hi Bonky, The situation is very different for a Christian rejecting Zeus than for an atheist. As a Christian I can freely reject Zeus because Zeus is incompatible with Christianity. Since I believe Christianity is true, I can freely reject Zeus because both cannot be true. You on the other hand believe that atheism is a mere "lack of belief". I still maintain that this is a trick to avoid shouldering any burden of proof, but be that as it may, you claim that you have no beliefs regarding gods whatsoever, so you cannot reject Zeus because of any incompatibility with your view. Your view supposedly makes no claims, remember? Secondly don't forget the standard atheist narrative, which is that atheists are smart people who are guided by reason and hard evidence, whereas theists are gullible and delusional. So we cannot hold you to the same standard that we use, because according to your worldview our standard for believing what we believe- and rejecting what's contrary to that, is a bad standard. According to atheist John Loftus the only reason we believe what we believe and reject other gods is because of where we were brought up. So we cannot extend the same courtesy to you, because you're supposed to have a far superior standard of justification. We do not expect bad arguments, poor logic and sketchy evidence from atheists because atheists are always reminding us that they're good at argumentation, logic and evaluating evidence. Right?

I'm not sure why you're impressed by this argument...I find it hard to fathom why anybody would be, so my first instinct is to assume that you're just having a laugh and trying to get a reaction, but in case you're not this is me biting my tongue, and offering a response that's far more gratious than your comment warrants. An atheist is someone who denies there is a God. A theist is someone who believes there is a God. One needn't believe in all Gods to be a theist, one only needs to believe in one to qualify as a theist. A theist therefore is not an atheist in any sense. To say a theist is an atheist to other gods is like saying that a married man is a bachelor to all the other woman in the world who isn't his spouse. A man is either married or a bachelor. Married men aren't bachelors to other women or in any way.

In the Ancient Near East water and specifically oceans symbolised chaos and disorder. It is likely then that the water being referred to in Genesis 1 isn't H2O but a symbolic reference to chaos.

I suspect that I might be the poster who's being referred to because I commonly misspell epistemology. Whether I am the offending poster or not, though I fully accept the advice and will make a conscious effort to simplify my posts where possible. There is a catch though. When I'm speaking to someone who knows the meaning of the word and I explain it anyway, wouldn't it seem to them as though I'm not really addressing them, but instead presenting to an audience? Wouldn't it make the conversation less natural and more debatey?

Hi Bonky, I'm also chasing a deadline so my time has also been rather limited as of late. So I'll limit my response to two salient points. So basically you're changing your argument to saying that Krauss' confidence is within an acceptable range of confidence and Christians' confidence is not within the acceptable range? Who, may I ask, is the arbiter of this range? You? I have mentioned people like Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking in particular, and while you can simply deny this, I think books like "A Universe from Nothing" and "The Grand Design" are laden with conjecture presented as fact, not to mention statements that are philosophically ignorant yet matter-of-factly stated. In terms of your irritation at certainty in Christianity. Firstly I have pointed out that there is a difference between knowing and showing. Just because a Christian isn't able to convince a hardline atheist of the truth of their convictions does not mean they cannot have some degree of certainty in their convictions over and above the philosophical arguments that I have presented for the existence of God. Alvin Plantinga has made a case for a reformed epistomology that argues that belief in God is properly basic, like the belief that history really happened, or that there is a reality outside the mind. These realities cannot be proven but are considered true in a properly basic way. Plantinga argues that the conscious mind, when functioning properly, and when not being actively suppressed, knows there is a God. In such cases the Christian is perfectly warranted to believe in God even when they can't present the kind of evidence that'll convince every atheist. Another argument might be from personal experience, such as that I have offered. Those who can testify to a personal experience of God in their lives, can be certain of the existence of God, while obviously not being able to prove it to a hardline atheist. Now you could ask, "How do you know you're not mistaken?" and the Christian can simply echo the question back to the atheist, "How do YOU know YOU're not mistaken either?" Anybody can be mistaken about anything, so asking that question is really pretty useless in the absence of a case against the claim. So in the end, it seems to me that you'd have to be certain that not a single Christian has any warrant for belief in God, only then can your campaign against Christian certainty have any meaning. But if you're certain that they cannot be certain even though you cannot be certain what warrants their beliefs, then aren't you being the thing you're arguing against? That's why arguing against certainty is almost always self-defeating. This also undermines the oft claimed humility of those opposed to certainty, because they're imposing their uncertainty upon others while being ignorant of that which might warrant certainty in the believer in the first place. "I'm certain that certainty is a bad thing" Now, you could say that this makes Christianity subjective, and I would agree if the entire Christian case built on mere personal experience, but I think the many philosophical arguments for God make the existence of God more likely than not. In the absence of an objective atheistic standard of morality all you're left with is trying to use Christianity's morality against itself, and I have already addressed this. The argument that Christian morality isn't consistent is defeated fairly easily by simply showing the possibility of a moral justification for an apparently immoral act/command. This is straightforward "greater-good" reasoning. Your point therefore has no logical force, it's simply rhetorically effective. So while you've been straining at the gnat of cherry picked Old Testament verses, you've missed the camel, namely: atheism when taken to it's logical conclusion leads to moral nihilism, which means atheists have to choose between being moral or being rational but not both because they cannot rationally ground morality. The overwhelming majority of atheists agree with this. I'll leave it at that. You're welcome to have the last word if you wish. I've enjoyed the conversation immensely and I hope you did too. God bless

Hi Bonky, I haven't actually forgotten about deists. In fact I've often said that even a deist can run these arguments, precisely when atheists start to object to the fact that these arguments don't prove Christianity. It puzzles me though, how atheists can think that if a single argument doesn't lead all the way to Christianity, that they needn't consider its conclusion. Some of the arguments such as the Cosmological argument and the Teleological argument could be run by deists as well. So how does that help atheism? Really? So, show me where you've criticised Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carrol and Stephen Hawking recently... I would love to see your forum posts against their certainty. The multiverse theory, it's a materialistic explanation for the fine tuning, which is why atheists almost without fail, reach for it when confronted with the question of the universe appearing finely tuned for life. But you've ignored a very important point I've made in this regard, which is, if atheists' claims of multiverses are on par with Christian's claims about God, then what does it do for atheists' claim that atheism is supposedly rational? If rational people only believe what the evidence shows, then what is your rational objection to the fine tuning of the universe? So instead of merely imagining an explanation for it, what does the evidence currently show us in that regard? I'm not sure what your point is? Is there some logical contradiction between God being strict regarding the sabbath the Torah and what I said about the Law being an imperfect system leading to a perfect system of grace? Or are you now just running through lists of what seems to be bizarre laws for rhetorical effect? If the latter is the case, which I think it is, because you're not even acknowledging any answers I give anymore, you just jump straight from question to question while totally ignoring the moral implications of atheism. Let me address the issue of bizarre laws and punishments. Israel was to be different from other nations. God didn't want customs from the surrounding ANE nations to influence Israel in anyway, which is why the punishments for disobeying the laws are far stricter than seems reasonable to us. You'll find penalties for smuggling drugs into an airport in Australia are far stricter than say Nigeria, because Australia is more serious about dealing with the problem, and/or Australia has greater numbers of attempts at smuggling into their borders than another country. Penalties generally change over time and are typically meant to deal with some issue. They have no bearing on moral ontology, though. Laws have a cultural context, which when viewed outside the context may seem bizzare. Imagine an archaeologist a thousand years from finding a Christian rule saying that it's wrong to read sports magazines in February. To him this would seem bizarre and arbitrary, because there's no obvious moral connection, but in our cultural context we know that that's when the Sports illustrated swimsuit issue comes out. Sabbath laws were in place so that everybody could have a day of rest, a day of not thinking about making money but instead reflecting about God's providence. A day to give the oxen a rest, for the slaves to rest and for the wheels to stop turning. If you've going to raise issues about the sabbath then you're not doing yourself any favours by picking troublesome versus from evilbible.com without also reading what Jesus had to say about the sabbath. God enforced the sabbath strictly so that people would not violate this for personal gain and greed. So, you could take the Bill Maher/EvilBible.com approach and say, "God says to kill people for picking up sticks on Saturdays". Ridiculous! This is fine if just want to insulate yourself from being persuaded otherwise or you really just want to dismiss Christianity without too much effort. Alternatively you can apply the principle of charity and take a more well-informed and scholarly approach to the Bible. Where you look at all the Biblical statements around a particular topic, not just select ones. And then you consider the matter in the context of Christian theology as a whole, in the context of how Jewish case law was read and interpreted, the cultural context in Israel at the time as well as the Ancient Near Eastern context in general. Those who have done this generally come to different conclusions about the Old Testament laws. I don't think I follow your reasoning here, Bonky. In many companies assaulting a fellow employee will result in legal action being taken. Does the existence of the legal rule somehow imply that people are punching each other in offices all the time? Isn't the point of the law to actually prevent things? So if you were a slave in Egypt at the time who heard about this law would the logical conclusion be, "Hey, they must be treating their slaves real bad there if they need a law telling to not beat their slaves. Better to stay here in Egypt where there is no such law"? Jacob laboured as a slave for many years for Laban so that he could marry his daughter. Slavery was also a way to work off debts so families wouldn't be left without land. Foreigners were allowed to work as slaves if their country was in famine and so on. Foreign slaves however would need to remain slaves till the year of jubilee. The commitment is greater so that foreigners don't abuse this as way easy get out of debt mechanism. If they became Jews, however they'd be subject to Jewish law. Slavery was contractual, much like any typical employment contract we have today and the Bible has rules governing it. The Bible expressly forbade kidnapping people and selling them as slaves (Exodus 21:16), which is what happened in the American South and in Rome and Egypt and so on. So yeah, very different. Slaves were seen as property from an economic perspective, this does not mean they were seen as mere property. Sports contracts work the same way. If a Formula 1 driver engages in a contract with the McLaren F1 team, they are seen as property of the team from a contractual asset perspective. The driver is ranked among assets like the cars and the technology and the team even has a say with regard to the assets conduct in public, but this does not mean that F1 drivers are dehumanised and treated like mere objects. In the in the Bible the law says that if a slave liked working for his master and wished to remain a slave (surely by your logic this must mean slaves were treated exceptionally well) the slave could get an earring showing allegiance to their master, and they'd be permanently bonded to that master. Deut 15:17 So if the slaves wished to extend the contract indefinitely, the master and the slave would agree to it and the slave would get an earring thereby sealing the contract. I also value freedom, so lets talk about how do you define freedom, and how free will works within atheism, shall we? If the universe is entirely materialistic, which is to say consisting only of space, time, matter and energy, then all our actions are determined by the laws governing space, time, matter and energy. Physics in other words. If all our actions are governed by physics, then freedom is an illusion, not so? It merely "feels" to us like we're the originators of our own actions but actually we're not. We're marionettes, right? Conversly in the Christian worldview God made man in His image and imbued man with agency. With free will and thus, the ability to act accordance with one's own volition. This is why we hold people responsible for their actions, whether good or bad because we believe that people are the originators of their own actions. When people are in a position where they cannot do otherwise, then that mitigates accountability, such events, we call accidents because the person couldn't help it. On atheism all human actions are accidental because they're all determined and the person could not have done otherwise. What are your thoughts on this? Incidentally this was one of the problems with Shelly Kagan's position as well in the debate with WLC that you mentioned. He's a moral objectivist who wishes to ground helping and not hurting in the decisions of an imagined rationally perfect being, but this assumes that rational decisions are possible in the first place. Bill Craig's question about determinism was spot on, and unfortunately Kagan brushed it aside with a quick reference to Compatibilism (a thoroughly deterministic view) and " It's too complicated to discuss in the debate". I'm still waiting for you to let me know what your stance on morality is, by the way. Do you believe moral 'oughts' are objectively true, or are they simply individual or cultural conventions subjectively based? With all your references to the old testament one would think that unlike most atheists you're a moral objectivist, but what is your grounding for morality? Do you believe like Kagan that morality can be grounding in what one imagines a perfectly rational being's decisions would be like? By the way, how is that different from a kind of "what would Jesus do ethic?" Anyway, I digress. So you believe that the United States should make absolutely no distinction between US Citizens and foreigners on a travel or work visa? If that is the case, let me know and I'll go and live and work there because my country sucks right now. Do you also believe that the United States should make no distinction between US Citizens and war criminals, enemy soldiers etc.? Are you pro-life? What is the basis for your belief that all people are to be treated with respect? Does evolution inform this belief? Does physics or chemistry? Does naturalism in any way inform that belief? I think nature has been accurately described as being red in tooth and claw, but respect and good treatment, not so much. So what is your naturalistic, empirical case for good treatment and mutual respect regardless of background, colour, origin, nationality and so-on? Christianity claims that all people are created in the image of God, that all people are valuable and that even the hairs on our heads are counted. It is with this in mind that Wilberforce and Martin Luther King campaigned against slavery. It is with this in mind that the American constitution declared unalienable rights as endowed by the Creator. But sure, I'm a bit of a geek, so I'll hear your empirical case for human equality.

Hi Bonky, No, the arguments are theistic, it would be a strange form of atheism that believes in a time-less, space-less, immaterial, personal, law giver and mind that created the universe. I would say they're not on par. The multiverse is an ad hoc explanation to explain away the incredible fine tuning of the universe. The God hypothesis is not ad hoc, it's been around long before the fine tuning was even discovered. It has explanatory power and scope to not only explain the fine tuning but many other things that appear to be beyond the reach of science, as I've mentioned before. Lastly if you claim that atheists' beliefs are on par with Christian's "faith" then why do so many atheists disparage theists for being irrational, while atheism is presented as rational? Surely if you admit that atheism is just as faith based as theism then all atheism's intellectual pretences fly out the window? I think you misunderstood me. I believe your stance, but I tried to point out that the "agnostic atheism" is a poor definition, because it's either a redundancy or a contradiction. I'm not trying to force a particular belief on you, just trying to show you why Christians have a reasonable issue with the way atheists nowadays define their terms. Ok, but so what? I have offered an argument for how it is at least in principle possible that there could be a moral justification for the judgement in the old testament. The particular claim that I addressed was that Christianity is inconsistent. Now if Islam is also consistent with its own claims, then what's the point? More than one religion can be internally consistent where punishment is concerned. Moreover I don't think Christian's complaint against Islam is inconsistent with their own claims, but that Islam is a false religion. I don't know, but I see no contradiction here. Sometimes when Gordon Ramsey goes to fix a restaurant in that show of his, he lets the owner hit rock bottom first before he begins to work with them. I believe it's to strip away any arrogance that the person might have. Have you ever watched "Kitchen Nightmares"? Maybe it's like that, but I don't know. Not at all, because the slavery that was regulated in the Bible isn't the sort of slavery that we're familiar with etc. It was a bond-servantship, and not the cruel dehumanising stuff that we think of in terms of what the Roman's did to slaves or the American South. These permanent servant were from conquered nations, so if you unhappy that conquered nations were killed and you're unhappy that they were put to work, what should they have done? Make them full citizens? But there are plenty of resources available on this, because it's a common rhetorical objection. I'm an annihilationist, so I have no disagreement that the concept of eternal torment sounds untenable. I have come to be convinced that the Bible doesn't teach eternal conscious torment, but I don't think I'm allowed to talk about that here. So instead, I'll give you a breakdown of where the essential difference lies. Those supporting annihilationism (also called conditional immortality) take words like, "eternal life", "perish", "destruction" literally. Those supporting eternal conscious torment take a figurative view, saying that everybody has immortiality but that "eternal life" is a qualitative statement about the quality of life, and "destruction", "perish" and so on are also qualitative. My personal view on hell is that after judgement the wicked will be cast in fire and tortured for a finite period depending on their wickedness, and then death and hades will be thrown in the lake of fire and be utterly destroyed. Gone! Nada! Only those who accepted Jesus' gift of grace will receive eternal life (immortality). This was the view that many early church fathers also had and I imagine that this is how Jesus' followers would have understood "eternal life", "destruction" and so on. God bless, till next time.

Fair enough, but this is a different case. Arguments for theism aren't meant to be arguments for a specific theistic religion like Christianity. You cannot fault arguments for theism for not being arguments for Christianity too. The idea that "god" hasn't been defined seems to me like you've bought into something called Logical Positivism. It's the notion that things that cannot be empirically verified, or deductively proven are meaningless. Is this what you're getting at? In terms of defining God, I believe in the God as described in the Bible. Surely that statement has meaning to you? The God that's consistent with the "Moral Law Giver" of the moral argument, "The fine tuner" of the fine tuning argument, "The timeless, spaceless, immaterial, primary cause" of the cosmological argument, "The original designer" of the design argument and so on. I'm sorry. I should have taken it more seriously, you're right. The fact of the matter is that I live in South Africa, where we simply do not care about Big Foot and as such I do not write books about it, and argue with Big Footers about it. I belaboured the point of atheist behaviour because I think it's very relevant. In terms of my own beliefs regarding Big Foot. I believe it probably doesn't exist for the following reasons: This is a physical being living in a limited physical space. As such the lack of biological evidence to me is conspicuously absent. So I think there's some positive case to be made against BF. In terms of the evidence I have seen, those were blurry photos, a guy standing over a fake looking footprint and eye witness accounts. The photos could easily be a guy in a monkey suit deliberately obscured to hide the obvious. The footprint as I said looks fake although I'm not a footprint expert, but I can't image a creature who's feet brush away leaves on a leafy stretch of ground to reveal a clear dirt footprint. The eyewitnesses could simply have made it up for sensationalism or attention of whatever. I'm sure you're going to now respond with how this is parallel to my belief in God, right? I think that the philosophical arguments for God, provide a reasonable case for the necessity of God in explaining our world. In terms of the eye-witnesses for Jesus, I think the fact that they were willing to die at least shows that they were utterly convinced that they saw the risen Jesus. I'm not familiar with her or her claims. I see there's a discussion on YouTube. I'll check it out and let you know what I think. In the meantime what's your view on morality? I'm not really seeing where I quoted Dawkins out of context? What's the difference between saying that the universe has the properties of "no evil, no good" and saying "there is no evil, no good in the universe"? The Nietzsche quote is from his parable called the "Mad Man". https://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nietzsche-madman.asp I guess I shouldn't have put paraphrasings in quotes, but these quotes are familiar to many so I figured you'd get the gist of it. I don't believe God is morally ambiguous so I certainly won't fly the "We can't judge God" line. Sure Muslims can claim the same thing and one would need to take their claims on the merits. Are you arguing that Christians don't have a right to denounce Muslim attacks because of Canaan? Aren't you assuming that both cases are equal? What if Canaan really was a judgement by God, whereas Muslim terrorism are cases of misguided terrorism? Alternatively if you're going to argue that the Israelites made up the whole judgement of God story, well then I guess Canaan is no longer a problem that Christians need to account for. Well think about it: If you wanted to bring Western moral reform to the Middle East. Do you think you're just going to change their laws to Western Laws overnight and the next day, it's going to be Drive-Ins, mini skirts and Rock n Roll? Social change takes time. While the Law of Moses looks brutal to us, during it's time it was a huge step in the right direction. I've read somewhere that a historian can draw a direct line from Sinai to the civilisation of the West. A systematic change of the human heart step by painful step. The Bible is very clear that the Law of Moses wasn't intended to be a perfect utopian system, but to introduce the perfect system, which is what Jesus brought about. If you want to take on Christian morality, you have to deal with Jesus and not just cherry-pick certain Old Testament laws and descriptions of events, thus casting the baby out with the bathwater. I'm enjoying our conversation too, but it is taking quite a bit of time out of my work day, so I'm probably going to take a break from posting for a bit. My last couple of posts were rushed as you could tell and it's not fair to you, but I think we've covered a lot and we both know a little more about each other. Until we chat again, God Bless you my friend.

Hi Bonky, I'm sorry that I missed your point about BigFoot and UFOs. I try to keep the posts short-ish and try to select what I think are you salient points. Lets suppose I make a movie called BigFoot-iculous where I compile selected footage of BigFoot-centred idiocy into a mockumentary. And write several books, including "The Big Foot Delusion", "Big Foot is not Great - How BigFoot belief poisons everything", "Letter to a BigFoot nation". Then as the royalty money rolls in, I pay for a bus advert campaign stating "There's probably no Big Foot, so stop taking blurry photos and enjoy your life". I pose proudly with donation cheques, sign fan T-Shirts and at a BFReason Rally I am the keynote speaker where I encourage the cheering crowd to mock and ridicule those believing in BigFoot. Then one day a BigFoot supporter asks me, "Hey, man. Why are so you against Big Foot?" and I respond, "Dude, I'm not not against Big Foot. In fact I have no beliefs regarding Big Foot at all, I'm simply without Big Foot belief". Would that seem glaringly deceptive? Now that is of course an extreme case, but even if I simply hovered around Big Foot forums contesting pretty much every statement they make, and reserving an extremely high standard of evidence in favour of the Big Foot idea, but lapping up anything I can find against the Big Foot idea, couldn't it still be said that even a slight bias against Big Foot is contrary to a claim of "belief lacking". Would it reveal that, in fact, such a person does have beliefs regarding the issue aftera ll? This is why, if I didn't believe in God, I'd probably call myself an agnostic. If I thought I had a case against God, I'd call myself an atheist and argue the case. But I wouldn't call myself an agnostic atheist, and align myself with that which is against God, while at the same time claiming I have absolutely no beliefs regarding the matter. In terms of my mentioning to Siegi about atheisms inability to ground moral values and duties: sure, I can understand that your irony meter will go off the charts. Afterall, most modern atheists consider themselves to be very moral indeed, often campaigning for gay-rights, pro-choice, sexual freedom, legalisation of controlled substances and less censureship, while the Christian hipocrites with their archaic sensibilities thump their Bibles. The same Bibles that describe a bunch of goat herders killing women and children in the name of YahWeh. Am I more or less on track? So, yeah I get that your irony meter is smoking and what I'm about to say will probably push you over the edge, because I know that your irony meter was calibrated by the Christian ethical standards which you take for granted and are arguing against. If atheism were true, there is nothing wrong with what was described in the Old Testament. Some chemical compounds arranged human-wise reacted with other chemical compounds in a different culture according to the deterministic laws of nature and that's just that. Like Dawkins said, "there's no good or evil, just blind pitiless indifference", or like Nietsche said, "now that we have killed God, who will hold us, the greatest of murderers accountable?" So, from an atheist perspective you cannot actually say anything bad about what happened in Canaan. You can say it's inconsistent with Christianity, but you cannot say it's wrong, because atheism has no right or wrong, and this is something that you need to deal with. But is it inconsistent with Christianity? Sure it's hard to read and hard to stomach and I don't want to brush over it like it's nothing. I owe you better than that. But let me paint a picture for you: You and I are both working as slaves in a Canaanite citadel. We're starved and hungry and beaten and bruised. you and I were originally from neighbouring villages, tending to our small pieces of land, making ends meet. But Canaanite soldiers attacked us because we weren't able to come up with the ever increasing tribute. The soldiers held us down while our wives were brutalised and their throats slit. Our infant children had their heads cracked open on rocks, others were simply left to starve or for the ants and jackals to devour like scraps of rubbish. Our older daughters were taken as temple prostitutes and or sacrificed in the flames of Molech's arms and here we are slaving in Canaan. Who knows if they're even alive. At night when the cells are quiet you have often asked me how God could let the Canaanites get away with this. I've seen you in the next door cell shaking your fists at the sky, pleading for vengeange, pleading for death, pleading for and end. You have often said that you don't believe there's a God, because no God would allow this kind of thing to go on. Then one day you hear the soldiers talking uneasily about a foreign force, a group of escaped slaves from Egypt who have been attacking Canaan, and giving the Canaanites precisely what they had done to so many tribes in their conquest. Taking from them their wives and children before their eyes like they have done to you and me, and our fathers and cousins. Now I'm not saying that this is how it happened, but the Bible is clear that what happened to Canaan was a severe judgement on them and that God didn't act hastily in that matter. Now, the Bible is also pretty clear that the Old Testament is far from God's ideal for mankind. Many times Jesus repeats that the Law was because of the hardness of man's hearts and that a better Law is coming. One based on forgiveness and grace. Of neighbourly love, and virtue. So while the Old Testament is hard, it's possible that there could have been moral justification for the events that took place there such that it's not inconsistent with Christianity. Atheists however still need to deal with the moral grounding question. In terms of Euthryphro's dilemma that you mentioned. It hasn't been considered a real dilemma by philosophers for decades. Atheist philosophers openly recognise that if morality is grounded in God's nature, then it neither transcends God, nor is it arbitrary.

Hi Sieglinde, Good to hear from you again. I'm happy to try and answer your question as best I can. Generally I avoid scientific discussions so I guess my answer will reflect more of a philosophical approach than having people posting links to Talk Origins, Answers In Genesis and Reasons To Believe and getting agitated with each other. I used to be a YEC, but I have become more open regarding such things in the last couple of years, now I'm just a plain creationist who doesn't know or care how old the earth is. However I am still a creationist so there are some definitions of evolution that I reject. So lets talk about that, because evolution is a slippery animal. Some have defined evolution as change over time. This kind of evolution I accept. I totally agree that things change over time. Some have defined evolution as changes in the frequency by which certain alleles appear in a genome. This is Dawkins' definition. That I accept too. I totally agree that alleles change. I even agree that new species can arise as a result of mutation and natural selection, if by species you mean things that are no longer interfertile. Where I disagree with evolution is where it is defined as universal common descent. I do not accept this definition of evolution and I don't believe the evidence leads one to conclude that this is so. I think this is an interpretation based on a very small set of evidence, but one can easily offer a creationist alternative covering the same evidence and with a different interpretation one will reach a different conclusion. Let me clarify it like this. What is the evidence? It's that things change over time and that many species share commonalities, both genetic and phenotypical (their physical features) This set of evidence is shared between creationists and evolutionists alike. What interpretations can one draw from the evidence? I think one interpretation is universal common descent from some RNA world or whatever. I think another interpretation is that a Creator created the initial bodyplans and imbued the creatures with genetic diversity so that they could adapt to their environment on a small finch-beaks kind of level. I don't believe the scientific method or the evidence favours either theory on the strength of the evidence alone. Both interpretations have strengths and weaknesses. I think the Creator theory explains not only the origin of the original genetic information, but is also the best explanation for why there's a universe to begin with, it explains our moral experiences, free will and rationality and the fine tuning of the universe. This theory has tremendous explanatory power and scope. While universal common descent might explain why there are squirrels and tulips, it's pretty poor at explaining morality. And cosmology and teleology is out of it's reach, let alone free will and reason. So accepting the insane odds of evolution isn't enough, you also have the embarrassment of subjective morality, dreaming up multiverses and of course having to explain how you're responsible for your actions and rational in a fully deterministic world. On the plus side though, it is naturalistic and science favours naturalistic explanations but ultimately we want explanatory power too. I think appealling to chance is just too weak an explanation. Also I think a creator far better explains the origin of the initial genetic information. So in terms of why I accept the genome project but not universal common descent. I think the HGP's conclusion is modest enough and follows directly from the evidence whereas I think universal common descent does not. In terms of your question about the age of the universe. What YECs generally do is identify assumptions in the radioactive dating methods and dismiss the dating methods. In terms of other lines of reasoning such as starlight travel time, I believe the best explanation is that the actual Creation Ex-nihilo event may have created a reverse blackhole (a whitehole) which would have spewed matter and energy out of it. This event would have created an event horizon which would explain the startlight travel time problem. This could be complete and utter rubbish. So too could Horizontal Gene Transfer and Dark Energy. I simply wouldn't know. The point though is that YECs aren't dismissing the evidence but trying to come up with theories explaning it. I think this is a good thing, I'm just not qualified to evaluate it. Old earth creationists will simply accept the general scientific interpretation, and say that the Genesis creation days aren't literal days or that the creation account is meant to be understood more poetically. They'll refer to the fact that the creation account refers to evening and morning on day 1 through 3 when the sun was only created on day 4. These arguments have merit, and in this instance again they're not dismissing the Biblical evidence, but trying to come up with an explanation. So in both cases you have two sets of evidence: the words of the bible and the facts of nature. Both YECs and OECs accept the evidence, both accept the rules of Biblical Hermeneurics and both accept the scientic method, but they offer differing interpretations based upon the evidence. YECs will assume the genre of Genesis as a literal historical account and work to incorporate the natural facts into their system. Old earthers will see Genesis as a poetic creation account, and thus square the words of the bible with the facts of nature. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who are the better Christians? I can't say. So in short neither YECs nor Evolutionists, nor OECs have a problem with the scientific method. The differences generally stem from the differing interpretations of the evidence. I hope you don't have a headache after reading this

Hi Bonky, Thank you for clarifying your understanding of "agnostic atheist" to me. Obviously, as I pointed out lexically atheist has nothing to do with belief, but assuming the "new atheist" definition, then I'm afraid it still seems redundant to me. Knowledge and belief goes hand in hand. So much so, that epistomologists will typically define knowledge as "justified true belief", sometimes called JTB for short. The reason why knowledge and belief go together is because it's impossible to know something but not believe it. It would be irrational for me to know there's a tree by my front door, while believing otherwise. To say that you don't know whether or not there's a god, but you believe there isn't a god, means that your belief is at the very least unjustified and at most contradictory to your knowledge. I am not an agnostic theist. There is a difference between knowing and showing, and while I cannot prove God's existence, I have a personal awareness of God's existence and God's hand over my life for many years. Frankly I don't think agnostic theist is a legitimate term for the same reasons as "agnostic atheist". One cannot know one thing and believe another. The problem with your courtroom analogy is, in the courtroom situation the defence and the prosecution builds a case and argues for it and presents evidence. While atheist will of course write books, make movies, get paid royalty checks for their books and movies, many retreat to belief lacking whenever asked to justify their worldview. I wouldn't say this is frustrating, but like I said before it does come across as disingenuous, because there's such a difference between the atheist claim and the atheist behaviour in many cases. "I'm saying that a Christian who is not heavy into the spirit world is still committing the same error when they refer to the spirit world to explain a mystery" - Bonky I would say it depends on the argument. Arguments from design, contingency arguments and teleological arguments aren't mere superstitions, but generally appeal to known scientific evidence and reasons from that to a probable conclusion. Surely you can see that this isn't remotely the same as the satanic panic of the 80s which was based on poor scriptural exegesis and what not. Again it seems you're making the same mistake as before: categorising anything supernatural together and dismissing the whole lot, instead to looking at the merits of each claim. What I mean by "positive or negative" in terms of Christianity is the strengths and weaknesses of the worldview. Atheism and Christianity are both worldviews and both worldviews need to make sense of the world we live in. Both worldviews will have strengths and weaknesses and those will play a role in how one evaluates the truth of each. A Christian equivalent of Bill Maher's movie would be if a moviemaker, selected atheists from your average YouTube comments section, Richard Dawkins' fan page, and pretty much anything that Bill Nye says about philosophy or religion and compiling it into a movie showing how stupid and arrogant atheists can be. There's a thing called the principle of charity, which says that one should engage with the best version of your opponent's case, not the worst. Bill Maher didn't. Can we agree that both sides have bad apples and they should stop? Instead of following Richard Dawkins' advice and mocking and ridiculing I think what you and I are doing is best: Open and friendly reasoned discussion. 'I just have a hard time hearing people say things like "You know there's a God you just won't admit it".' - Bonky I know you do which is why I am opposed to posting that in the seekers section. It stifles conversation instead of promoting it. "One of my major stumbling blocks is trying to grasp that a God would resort to religious belief to commune with it's followers." - Bonky This is a good question and one that has bothered me too in the past. I'd like to ignore loaded terms like "resort". I don't think God is "resorting" to religious belief. In fact I don't even think that religious belief is the thing by which God communes with us. I find my own conscience is one way that God communes with me. When I mess up, it's there. I have experienced God's comfort many times in my life. Sometimes though God has felt distant in those times often last wrong and are hard, but I think those strengthen us. So I think there are many ways that God communes with us. Now it seems your question is why God uses these subtle mechanisms and not something more direct, something tangible, like an audible voice and a bright light? One theologian once said (I forgot the name) that God gave us enough light so that we can find our way, but enough darkness for those otherwise inclined. I don't think God wants robots, but wants people who freely trust in Him. I believe there is much stock in that line of reasoning. Sometimes when you want people to show their true colours you need to let them believe you're not there. Perhaps it's something like that. I think more can be said but this post is getting long. We'll talk more in the next round

Hi Bonky, The quote system on this website is driving me nuts so I'm going to put your statements in red I can fully respect that you wish to define what you believe in your own terms, and I fully agree that it's better to find out what people believe rather than to jump to conclusions, but I also know that if I'm going to use non-standard definitions in my discourse that I can reasonably expect people to misunderstand me. In an earlier post you referred to atheists versed in philosophy and logic, in a way that seemed you also valued such things, so it's surprising to see you now take such a low view of proper philosophical definitions. As such I've always been puzzled when people have a problem with so-called "labels". Labels are really just a way of distinguishing concepts and even those who say they don't like labels, distinguish between themselves and those who label things. Labels are inevitable. What is an agnostic atheist? If using the standard definition of atheist, then "agnostic atheist" would appear to be a contradiction, because an agnostic doesn't know whether or not there's a god while an atheist denies that there is a god. If one takes the "new atheist" definition then agnostic atheist is redundant, because not knowing whether or not there is a god implies that one would also lack belief. Perhaps you can shed light on what precisely the practical difference is between an agnostic and an agnostic atheist. "I'm sorry but that doesn't seem smart to me at all. I think we should be able to take the position, "I don't know" - Bonky Isn't that agnosticism So why redefine atheism to mean essentially the same thing? "You said that the new definition of atheism doesn't really say anything...please define in very exact terms what a "soul" or "spirit" or "God" is." - Bonky You're misunderstanding my point. "Lacking belief" is not a claim about the way the world is, it's simply an autobiographical claim about the persons psychological state. As such, those claims do not offer anything to the conversation and cannot ever be challenged. My point is that this is so by design because it avoids shouldering a burden of proof. Theism does make claims about the way the world is, so it's not the same thing. I also disagree with you that the topic of religion is rife with weakly defined terms and sloppy language. Proper definitions needn't be exhaustive, they simply need to capture the essense of the point being brought across. "I'm not aware of any one single Judeo Christian view" - Bonky I find this statement somewhat incredible, Bonky. How many Christians would disagree that God created the universe? That Jesus rose from the dead? That Jesus died on a cross for mankind's sin? That there is right or wrong? etc. In fact C.S Lewis' book Mere Christianity is a book length attempt at captured precisely what the core commonalities in Chrisitanity are. "Besides, I think the logic you're using is very flawed. An ancient religion that contains many true statements might still be wrong about the things we can't investigate." - Bonky My logic would have been flawed if I offered the instances where Christianity's claims were consistent with discovery as proof of Christianity, but I did not. In order to evaluate an idea one needs to look at both the positive and the negatives of the idea. I find many atheists will cherry what is negative about Christianity and completely ignore what is positive. "I don't know if you've seen Bill Maher's movie Religulous but the theme he keeps bringing to the forefront is that one of the fundamental flaws of religion is it's certainty about it's claims." - Bonky This, to me, is probably the most surprising part of your post. Bill Maher's mockumentary far from exemplifies the humility, and thoughtfulness and careful contemplation that you're espousing here. He essentially went around looking for the worst examples of Christianity that he could find and compiled it into a film that was meant to show that religion is ridiculous. And despite having a problem with certainty he seems fairly certain that religion is ridiculous, and that belies the self-defeating nature of claiming that certainty is bad. How does one attack certainty without being certain that it's worth attacking in the first place? And atheism is far from immune to it, afterall, what else could drive Daniel Dennet and Richard Dawkins to boast that atheists should be called "The Brights" and what else could drive a person like Peter Boghossian to say, that Christians need to sit at the kids table while atheists get to sit at the adults table? Having said that I get your point and I can understand the value of humility, which is why my claim has always been that I cannot prove Christianity, but instead that I believe there are good reasons why one can rationally accept Christianity. So, in that regard I'm on your side, but I also know that "I don't know" can be used to avoid accepting a conclusion that one is biased against. In such cases, it's not humility talking.

Hi Bonky, Nice to see you again. I'd like to respond to two of your points if I may. There's actually a very good reason that many folks believe an atheist is someone who says that God doesn't exist. It's because classically that's precisely what an atheist was. It was only with the rise of the so-called New Atheists, around the turn of the century, that the term "atheist" was redefined as meaning "lacking belief in a god". The Latin itself shows this clearly, Latin after all is used by law, medical professionals and scientists because it's a very expressive language. Now you, or a group of atheists, can of course stipulatively define "atheist" to mean anything you like, but then you can't blame people for using the lexical definition, which is actually the standard. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "'Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God" According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Atheism is the view that there is no God." The other thing is that many Christians, including myself, actually view the redefinition of "atheist" as somewhat disingenuous, because "lacking belief in a god" is an autobiographical statement that really says nothing, but it frees the atheist from any burden of proof. The atheist can now freely disagree with Christians, write blog posts, join atheist rallies, and even ridicule Christians, while never having to substantiate their beliefs because they can retreat to a position of "belief lacking" whenever it's convenient. In short it comes across as a sneaky loophole to avoid a burden of proof rather than a legitimate position. Think about it this way: suppose Christians defined themselves as "lacking belief in a godless universe". "We're not making any claims, we simply lack belief." Wouldn't atheists think that this is really just theism pulling a sneaky move to avoid having to justify theism? If nothing more, the autobiographical nature of the statement stifles discussion because it's impossible to disprove. It's like saying , "I feel lazy". How does one disprove such a claim? Please don't think I'm questioning your intentions, rather I'm just hoping to clarify why many Christians view the redefinition of atheist as non-standard. Perhaps if you understand where we're coming from it'll alleviate some frustration. I think one must be cautious when grouping disparate views into categories and then arguing against the category instead of the particular view. When you use the term "supernatural" it includes tribal gods, superstitions, pantheons of storm gods, ocean gods, volcano gods, faeries, dragons, ancestral spirits and a whole host of things that nobody here is actually promoting. Christianity, through missions work, actually played a key role in dispelling pantheons, tribal gods and superstitions, so lumping all of that with what we believe in with that isn't entirely fair. You'll need to address our particular claim, which is the Judeo-Christian worldview not a general "supernaturalism". So, lets looks at how many times in history Christianity's claims have been shown to be false by scientific discovery: how many do you know of off the top of your head? You might think of "flat earth", but that's not a core Christian claim, it was actually an Aristotellian view that was wrongly adopted by the church. You might want to say Heliocentricity, but neither is that a core Christian claim, in fact Copernicus was himself a Christian and the bible no more claims heliocentricity than I do when I say, "sunrise" or "sunset". Now we also need to look at how many times Christianity was right. In the 19th century and early 20th century most atheists believe the universe was eternal. This gave them a way out of having to explain its origin. Big Bang cosmology seems to side with Christianity that the universe has a beginning after all. Even Lawrence Krauss reckons if he had to bet, he'd bet the universe began to exist. Christianity also claimed that all humans are related, and the Human Genome Project's findings are consistent with that view.

It seems you're responding to a point I'm not making. Let me try and be as clear as possible: Speaking the truth and being kind and gratious are not mutually exclusive. You can and should actually try and be both. Nobody is suggesting that you become inclusivist or silent, but rather that you continue to speak the truth, but try and do it in a way that doesn't appear like you're just trying to stick it to the atheists. And if you've had dozen of atheists laugh and poke fun, join the club, we've all had that and we've all lost our cool too. Oh, 4 x 4'ing, ok. I enjoy the outdoors myself. Actually hoping to go camping and carp fishing in the next month or so. I live in South Africa, so winter is approaching but it's still nice outside. What sort of fishing to you do? Fly fishing? Bass?

I wish I had a buck for every time I've seen this approach used in an attempt to justify being ungratious and insensitive. The danger with doing so is not only that you're being ungratious, but that you're trying to make it into a Godly virtue... This works out great because one gets to be as offensive as one pleases, but as long as God is mentioned and scripture then anyone taking offense is just demonstrating offense of the gospel. Win Win! Of course Jesus chased the money lenders out the temple, but he also supped with tax collectors, healed the sick, raised the dead, gave grace to an adulteress, dished out wholesale forgiveness and so on and so on. In fact the people who got into trouble with Jesus were the people who thought they were allright. Who viewed themselves as servants of Yahweh and using scripture to justify themselves. It's good that you desire to emulate Jesus, and I'm hoping you'll try emulate Jesus' other virtues too and not just His righteous indignation. Jesus was called "Friend of sinners" more often than "Offender of sinners" "Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man." "And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will." I don't want to belabour this any further, just wanted to let you know that I disagreed with your approach in the OP. I see you've listed wheel-driving as an interest? I've never heard of that, what is it?

I'm not sure what is meant to be achieved by insulting atheists on the apologetics forum. What is the goal here? To show that apologetics is useless because atheists don't really exist? To annoy and insult unbelievers to the point where they agree with you and convert? To get an "amen" from the Christians, promoting a kind of "us versus them" mentality? There are some of us who are serious about apologetics, who really care about unbelievers, and reading this kind of thing presents a smug, elitist kind of Christianity which is off-putting and unedifying. Precisely the kind of thing that drives many believers away from the truth in the first place. Sure you can claim you're only quoting the word of God, but you're not doing so in a spirit of genuine care and concern, but in a spirit of condescension. In a section of the forum which is meant to be a place where atheists can ask questions and discuss our beliefs with us.

I'm afraid this thread is full of pious sounding falsities. If God is Truth, then it's simply false to say that biblical truth is something different to the way the world is, and the Bible doesn't expect this of Christians. In fact just the opposite. Christ's physical resurrection is probably the biggest piece of evidence there is. This whole anti-intellectualism and the notion that faith is believing without evidence or contrary to evidence isn't based on the bible but instead was popularised by the Romanticism movement in the early 1800s and unfortunately pervades Christianity to this day. The bible clearly command us to give reasons for our trust in God, and the Bible is full of instances where God showed great signs and wonders to demonstrate His power and authority. The idea that there are separate truths, namely God's truth and natural truth makes the whole concept of truth meaningless and arbitrary. To say that God is truth would simply mean that what's true for God is true to Him only. This is nothing more than relativism. All truth is God's truth! Forgive me if my response is rather spirited, I don't mean to hurt people feelings, but it saddens me to see how many Christians have bought into this 19th century notion that's been hurting Chistianity for more than a century. I say this because it's precisely for this reason that Christians think that they needn't bother giving any thought to their beliefs, good answers to non-believers who ask questions and not bothering to engage thoughtfully with the world in which they're supposed to be salt and light.

Hi Siegie, You are right, evaluation of evidence in order to justify a certain belief is indeed epistemology. Faith is an act of trusting in the belief that emerged from that prior epistemological work, it isn't itself a way of determining warrant for belief. I'm not saying faith has no relationship with epistemology, all I'm saying is that faith is not part of the epistemic process, it follows it.

HI Bonky, I was responding to the specific claim that faith is an epistemology and a poor one at that. My point was that faith isn't an epistemology at all much less somehow contrary to evidence. It seems you're on board with that because it looks like you're saying that Thomas' faith was grounded in evidence. Now, in terms of what evidence there is for the Christian religion today, that's a completely separate question than the one I was addressing. For that, you might want to try William Lane Craig's book reasonable faith. For something a little more philosophically rigorous you can try Alvin Plantinga's Two Dozen (or so) theistic arguments. I can highly recommend J Warner Wallace's Cold Case Christianity and his latest book God's Crime scene. I haven't read them myself, but I'm hoping to buy God's Crime scene soon, not so much for the apologetics stuff (I'm pretty familiar with that) but for the criminal law and crimes solving stuff. I like that sort of thing. In terms of the OP I think a pretty interesting inductive argument can be made that for DNA intelligently designed. Perry Marshall has a website called Cosmic Fingerprints where he deals with this. So there is certainly evidence for God and the sheer bulk of it, I think, makes it more plausible than not, that God exists. Now of course if you require a stronger standard than "more plausible than not", if you instead require certainty, then I can't help you. I'm not even certain that you're not a figment of my imagination

HI Siegi, I'm not actually that old, but most of my friends are younger than me, which is why they tease me about being old. You said, "So, if I understand you correctly, there is always either certainty (mathematical tautologies, basically) or faith." No, that's actually the opposite of what I said. You have various degrees of certainty, ranging from uncertain all the way through to a mathematical certainty. This degree depends on interpreted evidence and the evidence can be empirical, historical, deductive, properly basic etc. So in short you have reality, and you have beliefs about reality that are formed hopefully upon evidence. This is where epistemology ends. Then when one actively trusts in one of those beliefs and acts accordingly, then one can be said to have faith in the object of the belief. So faith acts upon a belief, but it says nothing about the certainty of the belief. It's not an epistemological certain maker such that the evidence may provide 80% certainty and faith picks up the balance and makes it 100%. You said, "If my knowledge of the speed of light translates into faith in the speed of light" My point is, that knowledge doesn't translate into faith. Knowledge doesn't care whether you trust in it or not and knowledge certainly doesn't necessitate or cause faith. Faith is a separate act from the knowledge enterprise. You said, "Surely there must be a difference between faith in God and 'faith' in the speed of light." Why? Because you need there to be a difference? The entire apologetics enterprise, where Christianity is concerned, is an exercise in providing reasons to trust in Him, not so? While you may not believe it, the Christian claim is that Jesus rose bodily and appeared to many witnesses so that those may know that He is the Son of God. Jesus even let the unbelieving Thomas touch the spear hole in His side. Does that strike you as a religion that advocates the idea that faith is contrary to evidence? But this notion is very much a matter of atheist lore. The idea that science is real knowledge and faith is "belief without evidence" and doesn't belong in science is very popular nowadays, but it's completely wrong headed and actually is a belief that itself isn't supported by evidence. I heard Neil DeGrasse-Tyson recently claiming that very same thing, quite matter-of-factly, without actually realising that how silly that claim is. But it has become so common and repeated so often that people take it for granted and accept it unquestioningly. So I guess I don't blame you for insisting the same, but it's not accurate at all. Evidence doesn't speak for itself, it is interpreted based on certain assumptions, theories and givens....this is Philosophy of Science 101 and is true for every field of study, be it history, science, psychology, literary analysis, theology, ethics, aesthetics, politics, economics, etc. Does that help at all?

Hi Siegi, O, you were in Israel? I'd love to see Israel at some point. It's seems like a harsh place, but with a beauty of it's own. Maybe it's just the tourist brochures, though. Have you been to Petra and the Dead Sea? My friends say that I'm so old that I was around when the Dead Sea was just slightly ill. Onto your question, I wouldn't put faith on the scale of certainty and knowledge at all. Like I said, faith is not a way of knowing or a degree of knowing, it's what you do with the knowledge. So your question is a category error, like asking what the weight of fast is Faith is an act of trust in a belief which one holds to be true. That belief could be anywhere on the certainty scale (assuming quantifiability for the sake of argument), but faith is an act and has no real impact on epistemology. The mental process of determining certainty preceeds what one does (an act of faith) with that certainty. I think the fact that your professor would raise eyebrows at claiming either faith and certainty in the speed of light, shows that these aren't points on a continuum, but are unrelated. If, however you risked your life in a space craft that somehow relies on calculations of the speed of light, then of course it would make perfect sense to say that you have faith in the speed of light.

Hi Bonky, I think you've misunderstood slightly. I'm definitely not defining faith holding onto what is true, but rather acting on what you believe is true. I don't equate faith with unshakability or dogmatism, in fact I don't get along with dogmatic people and I know theists as well as atheists who are dogmatic. For example I might place my faith on a bridge, because perhaps based on my assessment it would look like it could carry my weight. But maybe tomorrow after a flash flood broke some support pillar, I might not be willing to place my faith on it. So faith isn't unchanging, if the evidence changes to the contrary then perhaps faith might become unwarranted. I believed the author of Hebrews' point was however, that just because the Jewish Christians were suffering tribulation, it didn't warrant forsaking belief in Christ because the Christian hope isn't for a cushy comfortable life in the here and now, but the hope is for the future which is yet unseen. I hope that makes sense? I'm glad that you don't think Christians are stupid or crazy. That is a refreshing change from most of what I encounter on the internet so I thank you for your charity and I urge you to tolerate uncharitable Christians who accuse you of things just as we have to tolerate atheists who accuse us of things. I believe that I've changed, because I used to be all fired up and smug and judgemental too, and oddly enough the more I've learnt the more I've become charitable. I still get annoyed at stupid arguments and sometimes I can be sarcastic, but I like to think that I've improved somewhat. Don't be too harsh on young Christians who get all fired up. They're just trying to help and they probably believe that you're worth annoying if you can come to know Christ. So please bear with all of us, we're all works in progress and at various stages of our pilgrimage toward becoming like Jesus.

Hi Siegie, It been a while since we spoke. How are you? I like to respond to something you've said that ties in with the discussion I'm having with Bonky. You said, "And my point being that there are no known water proof arguments to prove the existence of (any) God. And that is why faith is required. If there were proof, there would be no faith." 2 + 2 = 4 doesn't require faith, because there's nothing at stake. Faith is an act of trust in a certain proposition where there is something to lose. When I jump out of a aeroplane I have faith in the guy who packed the parachute. It's not as if his experience as a packer and his qualifications as a packer makes me 90% confident and so faith makes up the 10% remainder. Rather I can trust based on the evidence that I should be safe, so faith is the act of trust demonstrated by me jumping out of the plane. If he was drunk and untidy, such evidence might convince me to not jump, and so I wont be placing my faith in him. Faith is not an epistomology, it's simply acting on what I believe to be true. The reason why jumping out of an aeroplane requires faith is because something's at stake. With 2 + 2 = 4 nothing's at stake. On the other hand, if I put a gun to your head and had an illusionist place 2 rabbits in a black top hat, and then placed two more rabbits in the hat, and then asked you to guess how many rabbits he'll pull out with the warning that if you're wrong, you're dead, now the stakes would be different and guessing four would be an act of trust. I mean you saw 2 + 2 rabbit going into the hat, right? I'm sure your retort will be that with the illusionist example uncertainty is introduced, to which I would respond that virtually nothing in life has the levels of certainty that mathematics provides. Life is full of uncertainty. Faith is an act of trust upon what one believes, not an epistomological tool.

Hi Bonky, It seems you're making a different point now, though? Initially you said that faith isn't necessarily useful in determining what is actually true, as well as "Wouldn't we all agree that as a mechanism, faith is an insecure way of discovering truth in our lives?" Now it seems you're saying that the claims in the bible aren't convincing to you today, which is fine and somewhat obvious seeing that you're an atheist. I have agreed to the former and actually went further by saying faith isnt an epistomology at all. In other words it's not a mechanism for arriving at truth but rather an act of trusting in what you believe to be true. The latter point you're making is subjective and autobiographical, so at best I can say, "sure". If you say that it doesn't convince you then I'm not in a position to say that it's false. Subjective statements about your psychology are just that. We have talked a little bit about my own rationale for believing in God and I think there's a cumulative case that can be made, that would convince a reasonable person that God is more likely than not. Often times atheists, at least when it comes to arguments for God require a standard that not even courts use: They want 100% certainly or "beyond possible doubt". As such they believe that they dismissed arguments for God by simply imagining some undercutting defeater. So out of curiosity, what is your standard? Do you want 100% certainty? Do you want beyond reasonable doubt? Do you want more than 50% probability? Second question, do you apply that same standard to all areas of life?