Christian Paradox

[tavarish]

I do understand, and also, I never said that Sherlock Holmes' methods proved the existance of God. What I was saying is that he had to believe in the indivdual he was tracking down, and then look for evidence of their existance.

He used deductive reasoning, coupled with his own experience to re-create what happened at the crime scene. He didn't take any leaps of faith. He used tangible and verifiable evidence to solve cases.

Not only this, what you are saying is that many of you were initially believers, but that you examined the 'evidence' and found none for proof of God. What I am saying is that you do not understand God, and you are looking for the wrong individual evidence of him. You are looking for scientific evidence where there is none to be had.

So it's like Sherlock Holmes, except with no evidence of anything. Who's chasing ghosts here?

Saying "You don't understand God" is a cop out, because your definition of God varies greatly with many other Christians. If the only experience and truth God has is subjective, then guess what, anything anyone says about God would automatically be valid. I can say God is crazy and he talks to me every night. It wouldn't make it any less valid than what you're saying, and I can attest to knowing God on a much more personal level than you ever can. See how it works?

If you don't have objectively verifiable evidence, especially for someone who is apparently everywhere, in everything, intervenes in our lives, and grants us gifts on a daily basis, there should be at least SOME proof, don't you think? Considering my eternal soul is on the line here, I would think God would make his existence a bit more apparent.

When Sherlock Holmes looked for evidence of a wooden legged man in the Sign of the Four, for instance, he knew he was looking for a wooden-legged man because of his clients claim that their father had shot a wooden legged man out of fear, and then been killed later. Sherlock then found evidence of this man in the form of footprints where one 'foot' was just a circle; the print of a wooden stump.

This is called deductive reasoning. He gets clues, forms a hypothesis, and tests the hypothesis and eventually catches the bad guy. I don't see any faith involved here.

You must understand the individual you are looking for evidence of first, then look for evidence which proves their individuality and existance.

I find it comical that most religious people won't even admit that it's a possibility that the concept of God exists purely in their mind.

Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existence

In common usage, existence is the world of which we are aware through our senses and persists independently without them. In academic philosophy the word has a more specialized meaning, being contrasted with essence, which specifies different forms of existence as well as different identity conditions for objects and properties.

I don't consider evidence of God being events in my life that I don't understand right away. I don't consider evidence of God being things that I could have felt from being in a highly excited, suggestive state or the placebo effect. This is the creator of the UNIVERSE we're talking about. We have trillions of things he could have put his mark on, or left for us to find, since I'm assuming he knew that this would be an issue in many parts of the world. Yet there is no scientific evidence for his existence. The only thing left is to simply believe, and rationalize things to fit that belief system.

I hold myself to a higher standard than blind faith. I'm not a sheep, I don't need a shepherd. I have a brain, and I can think for myself. If God exists like you assert he does, he's reading this right now and can do something about it. If it is important to him for people to believe, he should do something about it. It's the 21st century, we don't sacrifice goats and burn witches. Blind faith is for chickens in the slaughterhouse, not for thinking and capable human beings.