The Reasons to Believe in Yahweh

[median]

A person claiming they were abducted by aliens is indeed evidence. You may reject the claim as insufficiently supported if you like. We commonly take claims as evidence. Some people claimed that Abraham Lincoln said certain words on a certain day in a place called Gettysburg. Those claims are evidence that he gave the Gettysburg address. You can certainly hold religious or alien claims to higher standards. I do too. As atheists sometimes note, they only reject one more god than Christians do.

A person's word (claim) alone is not evidence, and just because you can CALL it evidence (because you want to open the door for your Yahweh) doesn't make it so. Just because some people try to SAY that "saying" or "claiming" is evidence, doesn't make it evidence.

Do you believe every claim you hear? If a salesman tells you he wants to sell you a magic potion, would you accept his claim as "evidence"? How gullible are you?

If they’re just unexplained phenomena and nothing extraordinary, then why do you hold them to higher standards of evidence than other unexplained phenomena? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

WOW. How inaccurate and reductionist of you. Could you be any more dishonest? Those terms are NOT exclusive. And YOUR claims are BOTH extraordinary AND unexplained. Where exactly have we "held to a higher standard" your supernatural claims?? We are holding your supernatural claims to the exact same standards as EVERY OTHER supernatural claim.

Wake up. You're in the competitive flea market of religions, magic sellers, sorcerers, alien seekers, and new agers. And you're all making supernatural claims that can't be consistently demonstrated. Should we just lower our standards of evidence because you say so?

We can’t DEMONSTRATE the Gettysburg address, yet reasonable people believe it happened.
If someone demonstrates that he can fly to a number of people, then later dies, that doesn’t mean he didn’t fly.

WOW. You ARE gullible. Flying is DEMONSTRABLE!!! The Gettysburg address is NOT extraordinary!! You are drawing false comparisons to try and smuggle in your bible (which you assumed from the outset).

Now you’re getting it a little bit. Different people have different standards of evidence. These can be influenced by, among other things, their philosophic stances. As a theist, I have a lower standard of evidence regarding certain things. As presumably a materialist, you probably have lower standards of evidence regarding other things, such as abiogenesis.

NO actually. This is 100% false. Unlike you, I do not practice hypocrisy with standards of evidence. When something is not known, it is accepted as "I don't know." But thanks for admitting that you are a hypocrite with your standards of evidence (willing to apply them unequally because of the assumptions you made from the outset).

So, I guess it's OK when anyone else does that too, eh? Great way to separate fact from fiction!

[median] Second, your "faith" indicates (precisely) a point I made earlier. Faith is not a pathway to truth. It is a pathway to gullibility and credulity. You are "having faith" in hear-say.

And? Everyone does. I find abiogenesis to be an extraordinary claim. Has anyone DEMONSTRATED it to you? No. You have faith that someone someday will figure it out, despite literally billions of observations showing that life comes from life and inert matter doesn’t come alive.

Everyone "does" what? Has "faith" in hear-say? NOPE! That is, yet again, another one of your blind assumptions (based upon your assumption of Christian theology which you accepted uncritically from the beginning). No, not all people staunchly hold to supernatural claims on hear-say. Some of us have actually decided not to practice credulity, deciding rather to hold things tentatively. But religious faith is NOT tentative. It is firm and unwavering. This is why YOU, and other apologists, are trying to "defend the faith".

If you are talking about "having faith" in demonstrable, ordinary, common occurrences the equivocation is yours - because that is NOT faith. Faith is believing when you don't have good reason or evidence, and there is a BIG difference between THAT and tentatively trusting in a previously established common or ordinary occurrence.

Thanks for admitting that you are willing to trust in hear-say about supernatural claims. How about being consistent with that willingness now.

I haven’t made a claim to have supernatural powers. You’re setting up a straw man from a passage which is generally thought to be a later addition and not authentic.

HAHAHA! WOW. This is a perfect and classic example of Christian apologist SPIN and rationalizing. You're going to play the Pickin n Choosin game now? Have you even read your bible? Open it sometime (John 14, 1 Cor 2, Matt 10). Your bible clearly states that if you are a believer/follower of Jesus you WILL do these things. Nice try at throwing out passages that you don't like though.

Of course, since you have already demonstrated that you practice hypocrisy with your standards of evidence (lowering them only for YOUR interpretation of YOUR religion), there is no reason to think you will actually be honest enough to admit what your bible actually says (because the house of cards comes falling down if you do), but it's pretty entertaining to watch.

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My goal is not to prove that Christianity is the best supported so much as it is to just show some of the ways religious claims can be examined.

WOW. So you've just admitted that you don't care about the OP of this thread (i.e. - the actual subject) and only about "how religious claims can be examined". That wasn't the question!

I asked you to bring your A Game. Provide the strongest evidence and reasons for why you believe what you believe. Why post here if you're going to dodge it? That just makes you a troll.