Religious debates often reduce to accusations of justifiable assumptions.
How does one go from Non-belief in a God to a belief in God without making an unjustified assumption?

I've heard a few vague accusations coming from thesits that we make assumptions all the time in our beliefs, but I don't know of any assumption I make that is a pure and blind leap without reason such as using the word "God", and assuming it is a coherent word.

Noticing that there appears to be logical consistency in my experience of the universe seems to give reason for me to assume that logical consistency is true for the universe. However, invoking the word "God" as an entity to which it should be attributed to makes no sense. I don't understand why this is at all necessary or how one can justify it.

I see logical consistency in all my experience.

My intuition tells me this can be expected.

It's quite a jump to add...
A God does not have any properties until I invoke it, and begin attributing to it the origins of all things which I am ignorant to. A really old book tells me that God is not the catch-all for ignorance, but the source of ALL KNOWLEDGE, the book validates my claims of God's personal interest in my life, and gives me credibility in doing so. One's inability to prove it wrong, shows that my belief is more justified than their lack of one. I have answers, they don't, mine must be true. Fair assumption made, no logical crime committed.

That certainly appears to be a bold assumption. There seems to be no correlation with reality that justifies one to invoke the word "God', much less begin to attribute everything unknown to it. I thought that perhaps somebody would like to offer their answers to the following questions with justification...

Does God exist?

Why?

(Keep in mind, the question is not "If God exists, then...")

God exists the same way Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny do. The only difference is that some grown-ups have a hard time letting go of certain Fairy Tales. Children aren't always being taught at a young age how to differentiate between real and make-believe.

It makes me weary of prolonging any Christmas fantasies with my son.

You don't reason _to_ God, you reason _from_ God.

You don't assume that "God" is a coherent word, you understand that it is. The concept of "God" is a logically coherent one.
Of course an atheist position would be to discredit that. Hence the endless attmpted refutations of biblical logic in presenting what is clearly defined. This is ass about face because of the above: The world makes sense considering God, and never the other way around. You would be denying your son intelligent thought in denying this.

(July 30, 2013 at 12:45 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: You don't reason _to_ God, you reason _from_ God.

You don't assume that "God" is a coherent word, you understand that it is. The concept of "God" is a logically coherent one.
Of course an atheist position would be to discredit that. Hence the endless attmpted refutations of biblical logic in presenting what is clearly defined. This is ass about face because of the above: The world makes sense considering God, and never the other way around. You would be denying your son intelligent thought in denying this.

Presuppositional fallacy at its finest.

Fr0d0 nailed it on the head. There is no way to reason that god exists unless you reason with the assumption that it does.

Quote:You don't reason _to_ God, you reason _from_ God.

Disclaimer: Works best if god actually exists.

(July 30, 2013 at 12:45 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: You don't assume that "God" is a coherent word, you understand that it is. The concept of "God" is a logically coherent one.

I find nothing about the concept of God to be logical. What makes sense about it?

Quote:The world makes sense considering God, and never the other way around.

A world under God makes sense...if we assume God exists and every detail we've learned about God is factual.

I've typed this before but will repeat for those who haven't yet read this:

For me, it's a truce between my skeptical brain and more lofty sentiments, a way to be spiritual and keep it all grounded in the natural universe. It's largely instinctive, I admit. I look at the fantastic universe, from the micro to the macro, and see a machine. I look at human civilization driven not just by higher reasoning but many other factors that came together in our evolution, and I see intent. But I will stop short of making a "what are the odds" argument. It's just a feeling. Maybe I'm deluded. Maybe not.

I will say the natural universe contains greater wonders than a burning bush or parting waters.

I'll never forget stepping out of the New York planetarium one Sunday morning and saying, in a moment where I lost my inhibition and dropped the nicety of not bringing up religion with my Christian sister, "why would anyone waste their time in a church". For me, it was a spiritual experience no less profound than what hopping and singing pew dwellers feel during a service. In fact, moreso since it's all about what's real and requires no faith.

She didn't get it, needless to say.

(July 30, 2013 at 1:48 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Disclaimer: Works best if god actually exists.

Actually, that line of thinking "works" regardless of whether god exists or not, which is why it is a bullshit way to reason.

Imagine I put a tooth that I lost under my pillow, and then I wake up in the morning to find that the tooth is missing and a dollar has been replaced. Now, I could posit a fairy that collects teeth and pays humans for them that could be entirely consistent with the evidence left behind, but the ability to posit a solution consistent with the evidence has no bearing on whether that solution is accurate. In other words, I am no closer to having demonstrated that fairy exists, but I have reasoned(read: rationalized) my way to justifying that I can believe it does.