Agnosticism may be the only correct philosophical position. But that's neither here nor there...

Even if we grant that God does exist, it doesn't necessarily prove the God of Abraham, or at the very least that the Abrahamic traditions are the proper way to worship an omniscient, omnipotent, omni-benevolent being.

Arguments with religious types seem to always become circular. A higher power is used to justify some actions which, in the Abrahamic traditions, breaks one of the ten commandments.

js290,

Agnosticism would likely be the correct philosophical position, but one must view atheism as the "default" position.

I.e. I can't definitively prove the negative of "the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists", but in the absence of evidence of the FSM's existence, my position is that I don't believe in the FSM.

I can't say definitively "there is no god", because I can't prove a negative. However, I can definitively say "I do not believe there is a god", because of an absence of evidence of the positive.

Whether that makes me fall into the atheist or agnostic category is immaterial. I'm first to state that "I don't know", but that doesn't mean I'm "on the fence".

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence works both ways. Isn't this the same logical fallacy that got us into/is keeping us in Iraq?

I don't really see how its the same as going to Iraq.

I have to agree - the default position is that there is no god.

If you want to get into specifics on atheism, you can do that (to a certain extent), as well. You can postulate certain traits of a particular god and then look for evidence that such a god exists. I.e. omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent -- disproveable via the problem of evil. That kinda thing.

But an atheistic a of c must end with the fact that man can know nothing, that no value can be placed on anything, that any belief that declares a right way or wrong way to proceed is entirely subjective (ie 2+2=4 is a construction of man).

Only if one posits a personal, objective, omniscient God, a God that reveals himself to his creation can the creation ever hope to have an objective stance on liberty, justice, freedom. Why? Because a world that has no God, has no basis to ask these questions--all we have is our experience and questions that we can never answer because we can never take in the whole picture of reality.

A Christian perspective, while still positing that man is entirely subjective, finds dependence on an objective God, a God that is ever revealing himself to his creation and therefore will not allow his creation to error entirely in their subjectivity. That is, we depend on God, because God knows the objective answers to our questions. He knows how the world works. He knows how to proceed.

There's a freedom there, not because we as Christians know all the answers but simply because we know that there is an answer. Hence this world is not absurd, it is understandable, even though we might not yet understand it.

It is also allows us the freedom to not depend on institutions (church, state, corporations). It is not surprising to me at all that the prize "religion" of communism is atheism. When sheepish, subjective people have no answers to their objective questions and concerns, it makes sense that they would need to take comfort in the state for those concerns. The state takes the place of God. Subjective minds abhor a vaccum.

Jeremy,

I don't follow "a of c must end with the fact that man can know nothing". That said, it seems your entire stance is that a human being is inept at drawing any meaningful conclusions about the world around him.

Therein lies a horrible "rub" for Christians who posit that there is a subjective God revealing himself to his creation. If human beings are entirely subjective, even if those human beings believe (subjectively) that there is an objective God, whatever revelations these human beings encounter are necessarily subjective.

In other words, the belief in a god does nothing to set apart a Christian from an atheist as both are fundamentally grounded in the same reality.

I also do not see the connection between needing a god in order for their to be either objective truth or to "know anything".

My point entirely is that without God a human being would be inept to know anything. But because there is a God, who entrusts himself to human beings, then a human being can know things. That is, the world is not absurd, because God exists.

Why would we be inept? Because we cannot answer completely any question that comes to our minds. There are too many variables, too many unknowns. You must admit that.

Sure what I believe or what I encounter is subjective, but I might even know a thing or two about the world, so might you, but the uncomfortable position in which we find ourselves is that nothing can be too dogmatic, beliefs must be held with skepticism, because I am not the source of my knowledge, and I can error.

The whole thing comes down to trust. Do I trust myself to reason my way out of my own and everyone elses dogma and get to the reality of our situation (which it is impossible for me to do) or do I trust that there is a reality beyond myself shaping the very actions that I choose that they might not fall too far from the tree of reality.

This is in essence what Christian theologians refer to when they talk about common grace, the fact that God has left within his creation itself, certain structures of influence that curb man's ineptness and also, is Himself entirely working within history to bring creation to redemption. That is, an objective God is keeping a subjective man from absurdity, by keeping his subjectivity loosely in line with His objectivity--and it couldn't be any other way. We are dependent on Him and therefore should not be dependent on our own dogma or any other structure that man has devised to gain our dependence.

As the apostle Paul says, "in Him we move and live and have our being." That's the way creation is set up. We should have a healthy dependence and a healthy trust on the God that reveals Himself in His creation, "the cloud of unknowing" as some mystics called Him (due to our subjectivity) and also one that is strangely and wonderfully known (due to Him revealing Himself through the creation).

My point entirely is that without God a human being would be inept to know anything.

Nothing can follow from this conclusion. If a human being is inept to know anything, a human being is certainly inept to know that there is a God. This is an insurmountable (logically impossible) problem, no?

Why would we be inept? Because we cannot answer completely any question that comes to our minds. There are too many variables, too many unknowns. You must admit that.

And yet we deduce some form of truth all the time by making conjectures and testing those conjectures as either true or false. I don't mean this in a strictly scientific sense either -- I mean it in a but-for-the-predictability-of-life, which is soundly based on our ability to draw conclusions based on our observations, we would not be able to live from day to day.

If I understand your argument correctly (I might not), you are saying that man can never be 100% certain of anything. Fortunately for man, God exists and God is 100% certain of things. And somehow, uncertain man interacts with certain God, who works to keep man "in check" or proximately close to objective truth.

This all seems rather convenient to me. It is easy to postulate that human beings tend to work towards a certain ethic entirely because that ethic makes the most logical/rational sense. There's good reason the "golden rule" predominates most religions -- it has a sound basis in property rights, which have a utility-maximizing function (though this isn't necessarily the "maxim" required to determine morality for atheists).

I failed to speak to this earlier, but you noted that the predominant religion of a Communist state is atheism. That may be nominally true; however, I think the reality was (and is) much different. Any culture that allocates massive amounts of power to the government (a la socialist states and/or communist states -- or fascist states -- or even democracies) has Statism as their predominant religion -- in other words, the citizens predominantly believe that the State or government can protect/save/help them out of their troubles.

Communist states merely pay lip service to atheism -- I'd guess mostly b/c they hate competition, and religion throughout history served as the state (so naturally, any government would want to ban religion b/c religion is a competitor to their monopoly).

For the atheist, what is the reason we are able to draw these conclusions and have them work out as true? I'm trying to get you down to your presuppositions. Before your posit your atheism what do you presume to be true? That you can reason logically? Then logic is your God. But if we can't see the big picture beyond ourselves the only thing that we can say is that logic is a convention of man. And if it is only a convention, then how do we know it is sound? If we say it sound by testing it, then how do we know that we've asked the right questions to come to our conclusion? How do we know our questions didn't lead us to the conclusion and that our answer is entirely wrong? After all there are so many questions, right? There must be an eternity of them, and so many things that we're basing our answers on--our experience, our history, our culture. Given, I'm trying to reason as if I were an atheist. I'm a Christian and so I believe in logic in the proper context. But these circles are vicious. There are so many damn circles, so many traps that lead to oblivion.

Have you read Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"? In that book, he talks about how science is essentially game playing. Science does not find truth persay, but it finds a way to structure reality as they see it, paradigms are created, and most scientists find themselves playing in the game with the rules that they have. Paradigm shifts occur when the rules are upset and a new game occurs with different rules.

This is life, my friend, at least how I see it. We are playing in the paradigms. The point is not to get trapped in the wrong one. It's silly to fight about proof's for the existence of God, as if man could reason his way to God. God reveals himself. Your reason is not God. It did not make God. God made your reason. God is the context in which we live. He is the only circle that isn't vicious. He is the magic in reality.

I agree with you. Communists are probably worshippers of the state. I was just goading you with that, thinking that it might make your atheistic blood boil to think that your religion was somehow wrapped up with that stupid political system:)

Anyway keep up the great work. I like the site. My wife is going to kill me if I spend any more time on this blasted machine.

And if it is only a convention, then how do we know it is sound? If we say it sound by testing it, then how do we know that we've asked the right questions to come to our conclusion?

We know by testing them. It's like gravity - we experience gravity and we test gravity every day, all the time. Sure, there might be a time when gravity fails to perform as we would expect. However, given the amount of testing that we each perform individually, its reasonable to posit that there is a "law" of gravity. This law directs our understanding of an immense number of processes.

Understand that I'm not trying to disprove the inherent subjectivity of human understanding -- I acknowledge that our logic can (and often does) fail to exact the correct answer. However, logic is the best tool we have.

What I find interesting is that individuals who profess faith in some higher being directing their lives tend to default to their own logic in most of their day-to-day decision-making processes. Driving their cars; making work decisions; having conversations with friends, etc. Reason is the driving force behind all these routine processes -- yet when it comes to more complex decisions, reason suddenly isn't good enough. Why?

This is life, my friend, at least how I see it. We are playing in the paradigms. The point is not to get trapped in the wrong one.

I agree - life is complex and often less than concrete. Sure no one wants to get trapped in the wrong paradigm. The best way to avoid getting so-trapped is to test out varying paradigms with regard to how well they fit life/reality. Which brings me to:

It's silly to fight about proof's for the existence of God, as if man could reason his way to God. God reveals himself. Your reason is not God. It did not make God. God made your reason. God is the context in which we live. He is the only circle that isn't vicious. He is the magic in reality.

I find this problematic in that God, a being outside reality, a "magic[cal]" being, can somehow "reveal himself". I can't even elicit meaning out of God revealing himself to man without the inherently fallible, subjective man failing to understand the revelation. Is this divine intervention?

I can understand God as existence, but I can't understand God as someone who periodically injects himself into our lives. I've never experienced this personally -- perhaps were I to experience it, I might convert (back) to Christianity.

As for God being the only circle that isn't vicious, I don't see how that can possibly be the case. Surely someone created God -- if God exists, he had to be created by someone, right? Or is it turtles all the way down?

Glad you like the site -- and truthfully, I haven't spent much time on here recently, so I appreciate the lively debate.

That 2+2=4 is an absolute, not a construct of man. Mathematics was not an invention, but a discovery, and its basic tenets are universal irrespective of man, or indeed any life at all.

Now, of course, the -expression- of 2+2=4 is an artifice of man. I could write it as ..+..=...., or 10+10=100 (in binary). But the universal fact is that the first thing plus the second thing equals the third thing.

To Justin and Matt:

Prove to me that you love someone. Prove to me that you believe something, anything. Prove that you're happy, or sad. With all matters of the heart or of belief we have only words, sometimes actions, to express what we feel or what we believe.

The question of God's existence is not a question to prove right or wrong. It is a question of belief. Of course there is a God, because God exists within the hearts, feelings, and beliefs of individuals. Such things cannot be proven. The same argument can be made for people who believe there is no God. For them there exists no creator, no divine being or force. And who am I, or you, or anyone to say another man's beliefs are wrong?

Albert Einstein spent his final years grappling with the conflict between his own discoveries as they related to the creation of the universe and his heartfelt belief in God. Einstein said this when asked of the existence of God.
"Do I believe that someone plans the daily life of Albert Einstein? No. Although sometimes I believe he may have been leading me up the garden path."
"But didn't he make the garden?" The inquisitor asked.
Einstein replied, "I think, he IS the garden. And all of my life I have been trying to catch him at his work."
If Albert Einstein believed in God, I ain't gonna argue with him.

I watch as Democrats and Republicans, the left, the right, secularists and believers, Christians, Muslims, Jews, all go at each other's throats as if they themselves were God and knew that only their belief system was absolute. When will we ever evolve to the extent that all beliefs are accepted for what they are, beliefs. We should honor and cherish every person's right to believe and get beyond this notion that one belief or the other can ever be proven right or wrong.

You are both right. There is a God. There is no God. You choose.

P.S. Right now, Henry Paulson is God.