Christian Paradox

[tavarish]

It's largely a forum thing tavares. Definitions we've thrashed out over time, not necessarily widely accepted outside of here. Christians don't 'know' god exists... they believe he does by faith. Well a small minority might do... just as there are potentially atheists who 'know' God _doesn't_ exist.

We keep coming back to this, and I'm tired of it. You don't get it, nor do you want to.

You make a positive claim that he exists. Whether or not you have knowledge backed up by evidence or you take it on faith, it is irrelevant as you still maintain a positive claim. I disagree with your assumption that most Christian are agnostic. Many, and I mean MANY believe that God is as real as the chair you're sitting in, and know that he's there, not just believe or have faith primarily. They absolutely know that what they have experienced is the hand of God and could have been nothing else. It has never been the church's prerogative to say "well we don't KNOW that there is a God" - quite the contrary.

The fact that you're making a positive claim denotes that you have knowledge of something to make you believe a certain way - at least in a subjective sense. If you're believing something without a reason and some sort of supporting knowledge (subjective), you are, in fact, delusional. You are believing in something for absolutely no reason at that point.

You don't 'know' the chair will not fail, yet you believe without 'knowledge'. you're happy to reason the possibility and take a safe bet.

Your analogies suck. A chair falling still falls in the realm of objective evidence and confines to the laws of nature. What you're demonstrating is taking bets on chance and hoping you'll come out unscathed.

You're using faith in a different context. Faith in religion is belief without verifiable evidence.

Faith in the chair context is trust based on past experiences and objective, verifiable evidence.

The positive claim of belief in God cannot be an absolute from knowledge. That _would_ be illogical.

I never said it was an absolute, but many religious individuals make the claim that a God exists, and it cannot be any other way and won't explore the option that perhaps the God that they've built in their mind, simply isn't.