(July 13, 2022 at 9:14 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: I agree with you that people do equivocate between the differnent connotations of the word faith. To me that's the kind of natural confusion resulting from an ambiguity in overlapping meanings of the English words, trust and faith.
With respect to first principles, I was thinking specifically about the principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason. More generally, I consider the efficacy of human reason and the intelligibility of reality to qualify as first principles, although I call these positons "existential stances". All of these, the two transcendental certainties, plus the two existential stances, are my first priniples so to speak. On AF at least, most critiques of theistic demostration are based in a rejection of one or more the above mentioned first principles. That means that the critique tacitly asserts variously that reason cannot be trusted or that the universe is not intelligible. And maybe they aren't. Who is to say? People will never agree on first principles.
I think that it is clear that all (or, at least, nearly all) atheists agree that minds are real and that other human beings (and, indeed, some animals) also have minds.
If God exists (and, especially, the Christian God), let him spontaneously heal an adult amputee, and I, as an atheist, will convert to Christianity. Now, I propose to you, what empirical observation would convince you to abandon your theism and embrace an atheistic position?
