(August 29, 2012 at 2:09 pm)CliveStaples Wrote:(August 29, 2012 at 2:03 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Although I appreciate your honesty, you do hold a very frustrating position.
I'll bet you don't apply this to any other aspect of your life, or any other supernatural claim. It is an amazing feat of mental compartmentalization that you are able to do this.
Shiva. Bronze Age tribal deity. No evidence or rational justification to believe he exists. I don't believe it. Check.
Ahura Mazda. Bronze Age tribal deity. No evidence or rational justification to believe he exists. I don't believe it. Check.
Yahweh. Bronze Age tribal deity. No evidence or rational justification to believe he exists. I don't believe it. Che.....
Suppose there were a Bronze Age religion that claimed that certain entities existed in the sky that devoured light and crushed everything--ala a black hole. Let's say that Bob lived back then, but didn't have any tools for measuring things like red-light shifts and so forth, so he couldn't actually detect the presence of a black hole.
Should Bob believe in the existence of black holes, which actually do exist? Or should he refuse to believe in their existence?
Bob is free to excercise faith if he wants. However, Bob's future generations aka 21st century folk, are able to go back and analyse the claims being made. What you belive in then depends on what you're after.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
