And I don't let anyone tell me what I should do because there is no moral right or wrong.

So by that you mean it would be wrong for someone to tell you what to do because there's no right and wrong, but then your own statement has refuted itself because you just claimed "there is no moral right and wrong."

Dude. You're just not thinking when you say that.

TBG, As per usual you have one intellectual standard of Truth for yourself, and another for anyone that disagrees with you. I'll come back to this momentarily.

TBG:
But you must choose, either to act under the assumption that there is a God, or that there is not---practically speaking, agnosticism and atheism end up in the same place.

There is no Practical truth to this statement at all . It is only "True" by YOUR definition of Atheism: not believing in the Christian God of the Bible. An Agnostic may still have some beliefs in an unnamed, unknown God that is beyond any particular religious label. In fact, many Abrahamic Monotheists also hold to this. Some schools of Islam and some schools of Judaism hold that God is ultimately unknowable. Nor does anyone have to "choose" on your say so.

TBG:
The fact that we have an aesthetic sense indicates (to me) that there is such a thing as objective beauty, but because of our fallen cultural lenses, we may not always perceive it. I believe that the cantatas of Bach are objectively beautiful, whether or no you agree with me.

The fact that YOU believe it, doesn't make it "True." Having an Aesthetic Sensibility doesn't necessarily indicate that Beauty is Objective. The fact that you parenthetically remarked "to me," indicates that you know you are merely stating a Subjective Opinion. Therefore your use of "objectively beautiful" to describe Bach Cantatas is disingenuous at best.

TBG:
Excuse me, but I define knowledge much more broadly than you do. You seem to only want to include science as knowledge and exclude religion from the realm of rational knowledge---I want to say that religion is quite rational. Whose finger is obscuring the view?

Clearly yours is! I never claimed that religion must be excluded from Rational Knowledge. I claimed that it must be Excluded from Empirical Knowledge, and that Reason based on Religious Knowledge has a lesser degree of Certitude. Which is considerably different from claiming that it has no truth to it.

ME:
Reasoning, Inductive, Deductive, and otherwise, must all rest on the various forms of Knowledge to have any Meaning or Purpose. Thus, Reason is only as Certain as the forms of Knowledge one is basing it on.

TBG:
2+2=4: my teacher might use the four apples, but without presuppositions, reasoning, and my trust in the teacher, I wouldn't believe it.

With the Empirical Evidence of 4 apples in front of you, "presupposition", "trust", and "belief" have absolutely no bearing on the issue. One can simply count the apples before them.

TBG:
I live in the United States: here I have no physical evidence because "United States" is a human construct. Instead, I have lots of documentation evidence---which is authority. In acting as if the United States is a real entity, I am accepting the account that I have been taught and indoctrinated with for as long as I can remember---the only evidence is society's say-so.

The Fact that the Geo-Political Entity known as the United States is a Human Construct doesn't mean it has no basis in Reality. It Exists Objectively as such whether you believe in it or not, just as you claim "objective beauty" and the Christian version of God does.

This is a perfect example of how you use your Philosophical Standards inconsistently to obfuscate, and conflate; on the one hand Truth is Absolute merely on account of your belief, on the other hand Truth is Arbitrary when there is actual evidence to the contrary.

Thus, Documentation Evidence is not Authority, it is Physical, Testable, and therefore Empirical.

TBG:
George Washington was the first president: here we have even more documentation fabricated by humans, whether it be old letters, history textbooks, or people's say-so. I have no physical evidence, only human-produced evidence, which I have to trust. Far more well-documented events and persons have been doubted (the holocaust, for example).

I really have to applaud your sophisticated tactic of obfuscation here. It's quite good. Here you purposely conflate two distinct meanings of the term "fabricate", one of which means "HOAX". (Not to mention that, again, you apply standards inconsistently. The Bible is also "fabricated" by Humans, yet you must resort to "Authority" to "prove" that it is the Divinely inspired word of God).

Again, Physical Documentary Artifacts are Testable, regardless of their creation by Human hands, not to mention that they can be supported by a host of physical evidence including Archaeological and Anthropological evidence.

TBG:
Jesus rose from the dead: here again, I have authority (filtered through the SD), in this case of four well-attested ancient sources from the period.

Thanks for proving my point! (Who "fabricated" those 4 ancient sources again? )

TBG:
What exactly do you mean by "validation" and "verification"? I must admit that I've always liked Popper's theory of scientific falsification better.

Well actually, you have demonstrated time and again that you DON'T believe in Falsification in the least (see your 4 examples above). Falsification and "verification" both rest on the Testability of Empirical Evidence. I was using the term "verification" in it's colloquial sense as synonymous with Falsification. I did NOT mean Philosophical Verifiability, which is a principle of Logical Positivism. And for giving you that impression, I apologize .

I have a number of problems with "Verifiability", as postulated by Logical Positivism, not the least of which is a reliance on Tautologies. Tautology, aka Circular Reasoning, is a terrible standard for Empiricism, and I am honestly confounded that certain camps of Positivists would use it as such .

Wikipedia:
Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment. The term "testability" is related but more specific; it means that an assertion can be falsified through experimentation alone.
For example, "all men are mortal" is unfalsifiable, since no finite amount of observation could ever demonstrate its falsehood: that one or more men can live forever. "All men are immortal," by contrast, is falsifiable, by the presentation of just one dead man. Not all statements that are falsifiable in principle are falsifiable in practice. For example, "it will be raining here in one million years" is theoretically falsifiable, but not practically so.

Falsifiability is an important concept in science and the philosophy of science. The concept was made popular by Karl Popper, who, in his philosophical analysis of the scientific method, concluded that a hypothesis, proposition, or theory is "scientific" only if it is falsifiable. Popper asserted that unfalsifiable statements are non-scientific, but not of zero importance. For example, meta-physical or religious propositions have cultural or spiritual meaning, and the ancient metaphysical and unfalsifiable idea of the existence of atoms has led to corresponding falsifiable modern theories. A falsifiable theory that has withstood severe scientific testing is said to be corroborated by past experience, though in Popper's view this is not equivalent with confirmation and does not lead to the conclusion that the theory is true or even partially true.

Popper invented the notion of metaphysical research programs to name such ideas. In contrast to positivism, which held that statements are senseless if they cannot be verified or falsified, Popper claimed that falsifiability is merely a special case of the more general notion of criticizability, even though he admitted that refutation is one of the most effective methods by which theories can be criticized.

This is actually closer to MY position than the Logical Positivist principle of Verifiability which is actually closer to YOUR position:

PhilosophyProfessor.com:
verifiability (or verification) principle

Principle that to be meaningful a sentence or proposition must be either verifiable by means of the five senses or a tautology of logic.

The verifiability might be required in practice or (more usually) in principle, and might need to be conclusive (strong verifiability) or could be merely partial (weak verifiability).

Mathematical sentences are treated as tautologies. All others (of metaphysics, ethics, religion, and so on) have meaning, if at all, only in some secondary way (see also speech act theories).

Sometimes the principle says that the meaning is the method of verification, and then the principle can be called the verifiability (or verification) theory of meaning, though this title sometimes refers simply to the claim that the principle, however formulated, should be accepted.

Among objections to the principle are that it cannot apply to itself, and is in danger of excluding too much (propositions in science and history, and so on); but a derivative of it has recently appeared as anti-realism.

The Irony is that Logical Positivism holds that Metaphysics and Religion are inherently "meaningless." This seems hopelessly muddled to me, as Religious Faith is inherently Tautological:

The Bible is the True Infallible Word of God, because the Bible says its the True Infallible Word of God.

The Conclusion is contained in the premise, which is Circular Reasoning, and Tautologies rest on Circular Reasoning.

TBG:
Here's the trouble: whether or not you have sufficient warrant for a rational knowledge claim depends on how you personally came to believe it. So how did you come to know that the law of gravity is true? If you personally did not test it, then so far as you are concerned, it is not empirical.

But that's not really the case, is it? The Knowledge Claim isn't based on how one comes to believe it, but on whether or not it is Falsifiable (which I will now use so as not to confuse you ). The fact that I CAN test it, demonstrates its Empiricism.

And the fact is, you just happened to pick the one Law of Physics that ANYONE can easily test on their own by dropping something. What's more Empirical than that?

TBG:
All knowledge includes faith. Faith in the authority of one's senses, faith in one's instructors, yes, faith in God. In order to have knowledge, in order to have evidence, one must have faith.

Our court system rests upon faith because it rests upon the supposition that the testimony presented is correct.

Again, Not True. Faith isn't Testable, Evidence is.

TBG:
That's a human endeavor, you do it too---by trying to convince me at all, you are trying to say that you are right and I am wrong in my belief. It isn't my fault that I have been set free by the Truth ("true Truth" as Schaeffer called it), it ain't my doing. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have signed on for this Christianity business to begin with.

The difference is that I maintain a consistent standard for "Truth" and Knowledge that is as applicable to myself as it is to you, and that I DON'T lay claim to AN Absolute Truth as you do.

"It isn't my fault that I have been set free by the Truth ("true Truth" as Schaeffer called it), it ain't my doing." And if that isn't a perfect example of Circular Reasoning I don't know what is.

Peace and Long Life

GB

And I don't let anyone tell me what I should do because there is no moral right or wrong.

So by that you mean it would be wrong for someone to tell you what to do because there's no right and wrong, but then your own statement has refuted itself because you just claimed "there is no moral right and wrong."

Dude. You're just not thinking when you say that.

Andrew didn't say it was "wrong"....he just said he doesn't let people do it. Seems more like a personal choice to me. I also agree with him...to a certain extent

I never claimed that religion must be excluded from Rational Knowledge. I claimed that it must be Excluded from Empirical Knowledge

Then there's been a huge mistake here: knowledge is knowledge. As long as you are not privileging empirical knowledge over other types, then we are in basic agreement. This is my contention: my basic belief that there is a God has just as much rational support, under my model, as my belief that I have hands. The way to challenge this model is to challenge theism.

Knowledge, again, is defined as warranted true belief, with warrant being the quality of "arising from a properly-functioning cognitive faculty."

With the Empirical Evidence of 4 apples in front of you, "presupposition", "trust", and "belief" have absolutely no bearing on the issue. One can simply count the apples before them.

Not until one has (implicitly) answered the following questions:

Are my senses functioning properly?
Is nature uniform?
Do the laws of logic hold true?
Am I sure we're not operating in base 2?

The Fact that the Geo-Political Entity known as the United States is a Human Construct doesn't mean it has no basis in Reality.

Here you miss the point: the point is not how I verify my belief, or whether the belief is true, but how I came to believe it in the first place. Upon what basis did I come to believe that I live in the United States? Supporting evidence helps to corroborate a belief, but it doesn't create the belief. My belief that I live in the United States arose from someone's say-so.

Again, Physical Documentary Artifacts are Testable, regardless of their creation by Human hands, not to mention that they can be supported by a host of physical evidence including Archaeological and Anthropological evidence.

Let's say I lived in the 17th Century, before archaeology and anthropology were disciplines: would I have been warranted in believing in the existence of Cicero, even though the only things I would have had to go on were a couple of manuscripts purporting to be written by him?

Again, the issue is not whether we can corroborate a belief, but whether we were rational to believe it in the first place.

And I meant fabricate in the technical sense---it's not obfuscation.

Well actually, you have demonstrated time and again that you DON'T believe in Falsification

Falsification only applies to scientific theories intended to explain physical phenomena.

And no, I have no sympathy with the self-referentially incoherent system that was logical positivism (though I happen to like Wittgenstein's Tractatus just as a work of genius---too bad it's false).

The Bible is the True Infallible Word of God, because the Bible says its the True Infallible Word of God.

Except that this isn't my reasoning: I believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God because upon reading it, I find myself believing (through the SD) that its words are inspired by the God who is there. The reading is the occasion of my belief.

The Knowledge Claim isn't based on how one comes to believe it, but on whether or not it is Falsifiable

Not at all. I know plenty of things that I can't falsify. I know that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth. I know that Barack Obama is the President (all I observe empirically is a bunch of people calling him the President).

Again, Not True. Faith isn't Testable, Evidence is.

Faith is quite testable: never heard of a test of one's faith?

When I put my money into a particular stock, I am demonstrating faith in that stock---a faith that I am testing. When I sit in a chair, I am demonstrating faith in the fact that it will support me. In fact, all experimentation is a test of faith.

Religious Knowledge has a lesser degree of Certitude.

Here you should really know better: certainty is incredibly subjective and totally depends on the standards that one is using. I have more certitude regarding my physical senses than Descartes did because Descartes was operating on a different (and I believe false) standard of certitude.

There is no Practical truth to this statement at all

Law of the excluded middle: there is no middle ground between theism and a-theism. The statement did not specify which brand of theism, but if you would like to provide some Islamic/Jewish existentialist theists, then we'll put them on the table as viable options.

The fact that YOU believe it, doesn't make it "True." Having an Aesthetic Sensibility doesn't necessarily indicate that Beauty is Objective.

All of our faculties must be pointed at an object. Therefore, they point to something objective.

on the one hand Truth is Absolute merely on account of your belief, on the other hand Truth is Arbitrary when there is actual evidence to the contrary.

Evidence does not speak for itself---it is interpreted via some set of preconceived notions. For example, scientific theory rests on the notion that nature is a fairly stable system that operates uniformly, at least in some local sense. Naturally, I am going to interpret evidence in light of my belief system.

Let's take the example of psychology: now, we all know that Freudianism is mostly bunk, and yet it can account for all the evidence---it has great explanatory power. It just also happens to be false.

Truth is not arbitrary---it is interpretation of evidence which is.

While we're at it, I have a question about your signature: I suppose that applies to hippogriffs, vampires, and the Easter Bunny as well?

No. None of these correspond to the description, "Greatest possible being."

Only you're mistaken in thinking that I want to be a god, or want my own universe.

Oh yes you do, you go on to say so:

And I don't let anyone tell me what I should do because there is no moral right or wrong.

If that's not a desire for godlike control, I don't know what is. The ability to set your own moral standards, run your own little kingdom? That's as godlike as it gets! You want to be morally autonomous: a law unto yourself---only God has that right, and that is because He is Holy, other than we are, He is not a creature.

All this talk of having no moral rules is really just about autonomy: having control over your own life without a pesky God and His moral judgment.

TBG

If that's not a desire for godlike control, I don't know what is. The ability to set your own moral standards, run your own little kingdom? That's as godlike as it gets! You want to be morally autonomous: a law unto yourself---only God has that right, and that is because He is Holy, other than we are, He is not a creature.

I don't set moral standards, though, certainly none that I expect others to abide by. When have I ever told anyone on here to follow what I believe? I don't do that, I merely present my case and leave the thinking up to you.

Dr Elwin Ransom, MoonlightDancer answered what you said already:

Andrew didn't say it was "wrong"....he just said he doesn't let people do it. Seems more like a personal choice to me.

I don't set moral standards, though, certainly none that I expect others to abide by.

You set your own---that's enough. Whether or no you expect others to abide by your rules, you are still setting your own, and that's autonomy.

TBG

You set your own---that's enough. Whether or no you expect others to abide by your rules, you are still setting your own, and that's autonomy.

So what? That doesn't mean I consider myself a god, in fact I am just a human.

I don't want to speak as if I know you, but it interests me how you have so much biblical knowledge yet ignore 1 Corinthians 8:1.

You set your own---that's enough. Whether or no you expect others to abide by your rules, you are still setting your own, and that's autonomy.

So what? That doesn't mean I consider myself a god, in fact I am just a human.

Then why do you take what belongs to God? You want autonomy, yet that belongs to God alone. Every claim assumes a standard and every standard shows who you serve---if you do not serve God, then you presume to set yourself up in His place.

I don't want to speak as if I know you, but it interests me how you have so much biblical knowledge yet ignore 1 Corinthians 8:1.

How do I ignore it? What do you think Paul's point is here? Is he talking about knowledge itself or what we do with the knowledge we have?

TBG

Then why do you take what belongs to God? You want autonomy, yet that belongs to God alone. Every claim assumes a standard and every standard shows who you serve---if you do not serve God, then you presume to set yourself up in His place.

It only belongs to him if you subscribe to theism, which I don't. I do not serve god - I put myself in charge over myself, and there's nothing right or wrong about that. It's just a choice.

How do I ignore it? What do you think Paul's point is here? Is he talking about knowledge itself or what we do with the knowledge we have?

I think he is talking about people who think they're better than other people because they know more about certain things.

"You know we're all ignorant, just in different areas.

- Will Rogers

And also I think he is saying that acting in such a matter will never win hearts for Christ like love does.

But what do I know, you're the expert.

Fencer, let's talk about God requiring a sacrifice for our sin. Why is that required? Why did God say, "this is evil, and you're going to hell for it"? The only answers I can think of are: there is a force more powerful than god, a legitimate "good" and "evil," impersonal as they may be, they do not actually exist, or our very existance is just an experiment, sort of like that movie that came out last year, I believe it was called "The Box." If you have any other options, let me know.

Alright. First we must establish a foundation, which I have several times. I do believe in the Biblical God and I believe that he is a perfect being. And for perfection to remain perfect, it cannot have any relationship with something that is not perfect. Water and oil is a frequently used example. If you have a glass of 100% pure water and drip one tiny drop of oil into it, do you have 100% pure water? Answer is obviously no. If you mix it up, that one drop will mix and taint the entire glass. Same thing with a box of apples. If you have 249 solid good apples, but have one bad one, it will be a very short time before all 250 go bad. This is the reason God cannot tolerate even a little sin.

But let's take another example. Test taking. God set a standard for us to live by and one day every one of us will answer for what we have done on Judgement Day (not the invasion of SkyNet in Terminator). Now, in school, we just need to pass our classes with a 70% or better. We are allowed to make errors. In fencing, to be a certified referee, you have to pass with a 90% or better (way easier said than done). In the Gospels, Jesus said we have to be 100% or we fall short. I think you understand this concept.

Now why the sacrifices? Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Leviticus 1-7 is the chapters on the sacrificial requirement on the Israelite people. In there, we learn that the life of the flesh is in the blood. So in order to pay for sin, blood must be shed. In Genesis 3, the first blood was shed, when God clothed Adam and Eve in animal skins. But not just any animal. The animal had to be pure, clean, and perfect. But we also learn in Leviticus that this would never be enough. The animal 'sacrifices' were just visual pretenses to what Christ would have to do.

But the heart of the issue was not for the people to do sacrifices. In 1 Samuel 15, King Saul saved all the best cattle and the Amalekite King Agag, when he was supposed to wipe them all out. Samuel told him "To obey is better than sacrifice". Also Isaiah tells the Israelites in his time that their sacrifices mean nothing and that he owned the cattle on a thousand hills. God doesn't want 'sacrifice'. He wants repentence and obedience. Why else did he reject Cain's offering?

It still all boils down to what I said on the previous page: we cannot do it on our own. No amount of sacrifices can cover it. We cannot obey 100% 100% of the time. I am talking about myself as well. I can't do it. It is only by the mercy and grace of God that I have a hope of life, and I don't have to worry about my shortcommings. I don't have to worry about it, because Jesus paid the price for me.

And until you answer the question of the supernatural and miracles, you cannot make a solid claim that God has abandoned us.

Give me an example of a confirmed "miracle" that cannot be explained by natural laws.

Where do you want me to start? Shall I list the sudden dissapearances of cancer tumors, a suddenly repaired knee or back, food multiplying, personality changes, or the raising of the dead? I know people who have been through this, and I've experienced some of them myself. I mentioned couple pages back about a young boy with a tumor that was there on the scan minutes before the surgery and was gone when they opened him up.

Just a year ago, at an Intervarsity Chapter Camp, a young woman (college student) had serious knee problems, was slated to go up for her seventh knee surgery in four years, and the mountain location was killing her. During one of the prayer times, her knee was suddenly healed and she could jump up and down. Then this year, another young woman, this time from my own chapter, has an extra vertibrae in her back and is in almost constant pain. During the week, she was in prayer and has not felt any pain since.

I've seen food multiply before my eyes. A live version of the feeding of the 5,000. I was at a Children's Home in Juarez, Mexico and gave the staff, kids, and our team a sloppy joe meal: food for 40. As we set up, the whole neighborhood showed up and we had 74 people. Well, with sloppy joes planned for 40, you could stretch the meat, and the chips, and the canned mixed fruit, but you can't stretch the buns or the plates. We had exactly 40 buns. We served all 74 people heaping plates, served seconds and had leftovers. This has happened a numerous occasions.

Or how about a man, who was an alcoholic, stole money from his family for drugs and alcohol, and could honestly claim to have seen the inside of every single penitentary in California? One day he was like that, the next he never had a single craving for alcohol or drugs and he never went back. I knew him for 15 years before he passed away.

Or how about a young boy that drowned when he was 2 and was truly dead. This young boy is now in his early 20's and his father is a deacon at my church.

The list goes on. And I'm not even going into the encounters I've had with demons.

From what you have told us, I can safely say if it really came down to it, you would not be able to do so.

I have never been in such an extreme situation as the holocaust of course, but there has been nothing done against me yet that I hold a grudge for.

Here in America, few of us have, and the only ones I can really think of that did are POW's, and victims of serious crimes like kidnapping and rape. And I pray you never do have to endure something like that. But I will say this: if you keep thinking about something someone did to you, you are holding a grudge. I am guilty of this too. Not to the extent that Corrie Ten Boom did, but you still didn't answer my question about it. Can you explain how someone could get the ability to forgive someone who did those atrocities to you, your family, or someone you loved? Now forgiveness for us does not mean that you are letting the perpetrator off the hook? It means you are letting the case be in God's hands who will deal with it. I followed a case where Joseph Duncan III killed a family in Idaho and kidnapped the two youngest children. He raped and tortured them, killing the boy in the process before the girl was rescued. Do you know what the girl said to him? "You need Jesus." This from the mouth of an 8-year old girl who witnessed the entire tragedy. I have to say I am speechless at this remark.

Did God abandon her in it? No, he got her through it. Jesus never promised an easy life. He promised trial and difficulty. We always want God to take us around the storms in our life. But that's not the way God works. He needs us to go through them, to strengthen us and prepare us for the next one. If we skirt around the stoms in our lives, we eventually get overtaken and are no longer hit by one storm ahead of us, but several from all sides. And Jesus is the only one that promises to go with us through the storm and get us out on the other side. I've been through some very nasty storms myself, including having my faith challenged and shaken far worse than anyone here could every do by a demonic entity bent on destroying me. And if I wasn't so grounded in what I believe and if God didn't protect me (at the least physically), I would have fallen to that thing or worse. And it is times like these, when it is so clear that there is no way out, that God shows up and proves to us that there is no other answer but him.

TBG:
Then there's been a huge mistake here: knowledge is knowledge. As long as you are not privileging empirical knowledge over other types, then we are in basic agreement. This is my contention: my basic belief that there is a God has just as much rational support, under my model, as my belief that I have hands. The way to challenge this model is to challenge theism.

Knowledge, again, is defined as warranted true belief, with warrant being the quality of "arising from a properly-functioning cognitive faculty."

The big mistake is believing that with equivocation one can declare all types of Knowledge as equivalent. When that is clearly not the case. And you do this with the tacit admission that your goal is to reduce Empirical Standards to the same level as Faith, for the ultimate purpose of declaring that Faith in God (not just any God, but the Christian God) is as "provable" as any scientific endeavour.

To do so you destroy the very edifice of Reason by wielding Philosophy as a battering ram. In the end, you only undermine the very construct which you wish to use to declare the Bible as Absolute Truth Empirically.

You artificially create your own definition of Knowledge as "warranted true belief" utilizing a most blatant tautology. You should get along just fine with Logical Positivists . And you attempt to set up your own rules by which others should challenge "your model" on your terms: declaring that one can only challenge it by challenging Theism.

Well Sir, Your model does not exist, it is a sham, a house of cards, a flam flam, smoke and mirrors. And I don't have to knock it down, because you already have. In order to claim Truth, you have destroyed Truth. So, sorry, TBG, your dog don't hunt.

The rest of your "analysis" is the same gobbledygook, Philosophy turned on its head and twisted into knots. I would just be repeating myself to demonstrate it's falsehood. Thus, We have reached the point in our debate which becomes pedantic and repetitious, in a word...boring .

The fact is, you have demonstrated that you are unhappy with Faith alone as a means to to hold onto your version of God. Many other Christians are just fine with accepting Faith as a kind of unprovable self-knowledge on the one hand, while on the other going about their Existential day to day Reality accepting that Science, Technology and the world around them operate on a different level of Knowledge which has standards of Proof that can be shared.

Well, it's too bad for you that Faith isn't enough for you . But no-one outside of your peer-group is going to buy your pretzel logic. It's not going to win any converts. And no doubt you think "Too bad for them. They don't know the Grace of Christ."

For me, the best advertisement for Religious Practice, is the appeal to the comfort of Community and connectedness with "Creation", and the exercise of the Imaginative Faculty. And I honestly couldn't be happier for people who are happy in their Faith.

Insofar as some traditions can train people to sense and direct their Spirit, or Life-force, they can be be said to promote an indirect form of Empiricism. And Philosophy can be an important means to develop Reasoning Skills and ruminating on things otherwise indefinable.

If I actually thought you engaged in philosophy for those purposes, I would happily engage you in a discussion of how we "know" ourselves and the world around us. But those sorts of esoteric discussions are best suited to those without a theological ax to grind, like Buddhists (or Agnostic Pagans ).

So continue on as you will , and I will pop in from time to time to challenge your most obvious inconcistencies . But if you start up again with this "how do you know that you know, presupposition this, authority that..." malarky, I will ask you if you are a Buddhist or Christian (the "serious" response).

Or, less seriously: Are you a New Age Dreamer? Life is but a dream? There is no Reality, therefore there is no ontological distinction between a Private Faith and Empirical Evidence, no ontological difference between the Individual Reality and the Collective Reality?

These are the sorts of places your "model" leads, which are fun to discuss with people that actually enjoy such a model. But it really is a waste of time playing with a model you don't really mean.

Peace and Long Life

GB

The big mistake is believing that with equivocation one can declare all types of Knowledge as equivalent. When that is clearly not the case. And you do this with the tacit admission that your goal is to reduce Empirical Standards to the same level as Faith

All knowledge includes faith. Again, the definition of faith:

The assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition advanced by another; belief, or probable evidence of any kind.

I don't really expect you to listen to a common sense epistemology (this is, after all, just another version of the work of Reid and Moore) as you seem comfortable with a mystical empiricism (though I am surprised, really surprised that you seem to think that I would identify with the incoherent mess that is LP---have you even read Wittgenstein I?).

The fact is, you have demonstrated that you are unhappy with Faith alone as a means to to hold onto your version of God.

I'm fine with faith---as long as we accept that faith is not opposed to reason, but necessary for reason to function properly.

standards of Proof that can be shared.

Again, it's pointless for me to try sharing my standards with you because your faculties in this area are not functioning properly. You don't see why I believe in God for the same reason that a colorblind man cannot see why I believe that the leaves turn red in the fall.

But no-one outside of your peer-group is going to buy your pretzel logic.

If you think that convincing you is what I've been trying to do, then you've missed the point.

Again, let me point out that my concern is with what is necessary for a rational knowledge claim. All that is necessary is warrant (Plantinga's definition). All that I have been proposing is a slightly modified version of Plantinga's warrant-as-proper-function model.

In order to claim Truth, you have destroyed Truth.

Are you complaining that I've destroyed your nice little sense of scientific superiority? I haven't destroyed truth, just the pretensions of science, much as Lewis himself did. My goal is to get Christianity a seat at the intellectual table, just as much less warranted belief systems, such as Freudianism, Marxism, and the like already enjoy.

You artificially create your own definition of Knowledge as "warranted true belief" utilizing a most blatant tautology.

Actually, I'm drawing the definition from Plantinga, who is drawing on Reid. Where exactly does the tautology lie? All that it does is to substitute warrant for justification in the standard definition (first proposed by Plato).

And you attempt to set up your own rules by which others should challenge "your model" on your terms: declaring that one can only challenge it by challenging Theism.

If Christian theism is correct, then the model that I have presented is quite viable---it's really no different from that espoused by Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. If Christian theism is incorrect, then obviously, this model is too.

The big mistake is believing that with equivocation one can declare all types of Knowledge as equivalent. When that is clearly not the case.

Please, provide counter-definitions: set up a counter-model. What you don't like is that this sets up an equal playing field for all kinds of models, but reallly you're about fifty years behind the times. In his "Epistemology Naturalized", W.V.O. Quine opened the door for it, showing that normative epistemology on a strict empiricist basis ends up being nothing more than psychology.

Frankly, this tone of lordly disdain does not become you, GB. I'm surprised by just how much faith you have in science and what it can do and how much stock you place in its superiority. You realize how much like Wittgenstein you sound?

And also I think he is saying that acting in such a matter will never win hearts for Christ like love does.

Love doesn't win anyone to Christ---only the Holy Spirit can do that. The Scriptures say to speak the truth in love, which is why I love people by speaking the truth. Very often the truth isn't pretty: it's offensive, repulsive, and I don't like having to speak it. Yet for me not to would be unloving. I wouldn't debate you if I didn't care about the state of your heart.

Is it loving for a physician to withhold the information that a patient's eating habits are killing him? Of course not. But it's going to be unpleasant. Truth offends and love is not afraid to offend.

TBG

Fencer, all of those options either take power from God or make him indifferent.

As for your miracles, I will try to hit them all:

-Tumor disappearance: Could be equipment failure, misreading of the results, etcetera.

-Knee problems healed: As somebody recently recovering from my own knee injuries, I know my injury went as soon as it was gone - one day I could barely stand to run, the next I was skateboarding. Granted it still gives me problems if I use it too much, but that is the nature of such things.

-Multiplying food: Perhaps you didn't notice all of the food, or somebody brought some more in, maybe even anonmyously?

-Alcholism cured: My science teacher's mother was a nicotine addict for 35 years, one day she hired a hypnotist to hypnotize her to never smoke again, and she hasn't touched a cigarette since.

-Boy who drowned to death: Not uncommon for people to come back from "death," as they must be brain dead for 5 minutes to remove all possibility of their regaining of conciousness.

Can you explain how someone could get the ability to forgive someone who did those atrocities to you, your family, or someone you loved? Now forgiveness for us does not mean that you are letting the perpetrator off the hook? It means you are letting the case be in God's hands who will deal with it.

Yes, I don't need god to forgive (in fact I don't need to forgive at all). If life has no purpose, then, as Plato said, "No human thing is of serious importance." I do not personally like to waste my life holding grudges, and I forget who said this but I recall this quote as well, "Forgiveness is almost a selfish act because of the benefits to the forgiver," or something like that. Forgiveness to me isn't letting God deal with it, it's saying you are not going to hold it against them in the future, once it has been delt with (if necessary).

Do you know what the girl said to him? "You need Jesus." This from the mouth of an 8-year old girl who witnessed the entire tragedy. I have to say I am speechless at this remark.

It is amazing, though I have to wonder if I would have said the same thing myself at that age. I can remember being about 9 or 10 years old and witnessing to my dad's business associates. Did I believe? I'm sure I did, I haden't learned to think for myself yet.

And if I wasn't so grounded in what I believe and if God didn't protect me (at the least physically), I would have fallen to that thing or worse. And it is times like these, when it is so clear that there is no way out, that God shows up and proves to us that there is no other answer but him.

Of course everyone on this planet will hit "storms" at one point of another, mainly because free will causes suffering. I accept the consequences of my actions, I don't ask for someone else to do it for me. And there is always a way out, if you really want to get out.

Interestingly enough, the worst time in my life (not externally, but internally) was caused by what? My desire to follow Christ. What was my escape? Learning to see the truth.

Now,

I AM NOT PUTTING THIS IN ALL CAPS TO IMITATE SHOUTING, BUT BECAUSE NOBODY HAS ANSWERED THIS YET: IF GOD LOVED US, HE WOULD EITHER NEVER HAVE CREATED US, OR HE WOULD NOT HAVE GIVEN US FREE WILL. HE CREATED US, APPARENTLY, BECAUSE WE ARE THE ONE THING HE CANNOT CONTROL, AND OUR LOVE FOR HIM MEANS SOMETHING MORE. HOWEVER BY DOING SO HE ALLOWS US TO BURN IN HELL FOREVER, OUR CHOICE PERHAPS, BUT WOULD YOU LET YOUR CHILDREN YOU CLAIM TO LOVE JUMP IN A FIRE, EVEN IF THEY WANTED TO? GOD IS EITHER MALICE OR HE IS INDIFFERENCE.

Andrew,

Have you tried, recently -- perhaps with the help of Biblically based books -- to find answers to these questions in Scripture?

I agree with you that they cannot be found in experience or anecdotes.

You're also determined not to see any true-life "miracles" or supernatural interventions anyway (regardless of whether Fencer's recounting of experiences are from God or the coincidences you've interpreted).

But such answers also cannot be found from human reasoning alone. One can posit God's existence from a philosophical argument, but unless that same God reveals Himself and wants to be known by people (even in part), you can't figure out Who He is.

Christians operate on the assumption that God has revealed Himself, not just in experiences or human reasoning, but in the Bible.

May I suggest that if the Bible is not true, then God does not want to be known by anyone -- which means He doesn't care for His creatures, which means He isn't love, which means He is an idiot.

So I would agree with you: if that were true, don't waste your time.

But any of this is a waste of time if the Bible is untrue. You seem to have some familiarity with it. But the way you keep ripping verses from context and (rather comically) acting as though they support your views, means that you've learned from the worst kinds of Christians who act as if the Bible is so "special" they can read it any way they like, ignoring genre, context, the authors' (and Author's) intent. In other words, reading it in a way totally different from the way any of us would hope to be read.

Such misreadings of the Bible also take away verses and meanings about "love," then ascribe their own definitions to it. But if the Bible is true, and if it is God's Word, then it -- and its ultimate author, God -- defines love.

You and I can't define "love," then claim that definition is at all Biblical.

So ask yourself what you're really hoping to get out of this. I also thank you for your previous responses about why you've come to this point. But let me also remind you that this kind of thinking is not new, brave or original. It's also not consistent with itself, much less so with the real world. Your universe sounds like fun (and would certainly come in handy if I wished to commit some sin!). But it's not real, and actions have consequences. If God is love, then He will also have a Law to keep us from doing wrong. He is, and He does.

But again, if He does have a Law that He has not revealed, He is cruel and an idiot. So don't waste your time.

I suggest to you that you may not like the Law that Scripture does claim He has revealed. Or, perhaps, someone has come along and piled made-up laws on top of the real Law, or replaced the real Law with the fake ones -- something Jesus condemned the Pharisees for doing. And in response -- with some resulting convenience, too -- you've thrown it all out. If this is partway true, that I can understand, but basing your entire life or new beliefs on what the Villains have said or done does not justify rejecting Jesus, Who came "full of grace and truth" (John 1) in perfect balance, and Who tells His people to be the same (1 John 1-6).

I suggest to you that you may not like the Law that Scripture does claim He has revealed. Or, perhaps, someone has come along and piled made-up laws on top of the real Law, or replaced the real Law with the fake ones -- something Jesus condemned the Pharisees for doing. And in response -- with some resulting convenience, too -- you've thrown it all out. If this is partway true, that I can understand, but basing your entire life or new beliefs on what the Villains does not justify rejecting God.

I'm backing up Dr. Ransom on this, especially that last sentence. I have no issue with anyone being atheist, or Christian, for that matter if their intentions in becoming so are sincere. I've met so many people who call themselves Christian because their friends are Christian (I was one of these people myself), and so many people who call themselves atheists because it's considered the "in" thing to be and they feel that being so will grant them acceptance in whatever group they consider to be the best. I've mentioned my friend before, but she is a perfect example of what Dr. Ransom is talking about. Her choice to be atheist was a reaction against the specific attitudes and actions of her Catholic relatives and out of a desire to please her father. She uses it to "one-up" people by making flippant "oh, I'm an Atheist" remarks whenever the conversation might be straying into religious territory. Whenever I do manage to keep a religious conversation going in her presence, her discomfort is beyond obvious which says to me she still has personal discomfort with the Atheist label she gives herself in order to garner her father's approval (And approval from men in general).

On the other hand, I've met may atheists who are perfectly comfortable believing how they believe, in letting everyone else do the same, and are happy, healthy people. I've also met several Christians who really do comport themselves in a Christ-like manner every day and are happy, healthy people.

Andrew, you seem to pride yourself on thinking for yourself, and I'm glad you do. But in this instance, try taking stock of your beliefs. Why did you come to the conclusions that you have? If you come to them out of bitterness at what someone who called themselves Christian has done or said to you in the past, then are you really thinking for yourself? Or is that person thinking for you through their impact on you?