RE: how do you forgive yourself?
July 20, 2012 at 12:56 am
(This post was last modified: July 20, 2012 at 12:58 am by Jeffonthenet.)
(July 19, 2012 at 2:03 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote:(July 19, 2012 at 1:15 am)Jeffonthenet Wrote: I was making conditional statements (indicated by the "if"), and as such not assuming Christianity was true, but for the sake of argument making no judgment either way, and so not committing myself to any burden of proof for theism. If I did not do this, people would accuse me (and rightly so) of arguing in a circle. If you require me to prove the existence of God in order to say, "If God exists, then Y," I think you are making a mistake.
No, of course I don't require you to prove the existence of God to make such a statement.
However, given the existence of religions other than Christianity, each with it's own path to salvation, in order to reasonably make a statement "there is only one way to God…", you do have a burden of proof to demonstrate why yours is the correct one, and the others are wrong.
It seems to me possible in certain instances to know that one is correct but not be able to demonstrate that one is correct. For example, if I was alone dessert island except having one friend and an atomic watch. I look at the time, and shortly after, the watch breaks, but I remember the time that I saw on the watch just a minute earlier. I tell my friend it is around 5:00. However, he says it is around 6:00. There is no way to verify, in this example, that it is actually 5 rather than 6, but I still know it is 5:00 and am justified in telling my friend that it is actually 5 and not 6.
"the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate" (1 Cor. 1:19)
