What do believers say when you ask or tell them..

[tavarish]

Not quite: "you would not be able to be saved without" Christ paying for your sins. Salvation is through having sins paid for. Belief does not pay for sins. (1) Christ paid for the sins of all those who repent and believe. (2) All those who repent and believe therefore have their sins paid for.

Got it.

TAVARISH: There is no objective evidence to support the claim that God exists.
ARCANUS: Is that claim true?
TAVARISH: Yes.
ARCANUS: On what basis is that claim true?
TAVARISH:

For the very reasons I illustrated in my previous post. At the very face of it, it seems like there can be no objective evidence that God exists at our current point in time. I don't have empirical evidence to prove the non-existence of something, I can only provide counter examples that falsify the validity of any objective God concept.

True. But then a belief in God is subjective—by definition, for 'belief' belongs to the thinking subject. However (you might not be consciously aware of this), you are conflating belief in God with the existence of God. You must pick one or the other, but not conflate them as being one and the same thing.

I'm talking about the belief that God exists objectively. I'm not talking about any other attributes other than existence. I understand that every theist has their own personal, subjective relationship with God. What I'm trying to describe is that the concept's existence can only be verified through subjective and rather questionable means. This presents a problem for those who make the claim that he exists objectively.

I hope I made that clear.

Also? "A lack of belief in God is anything but unbiased."

I'd have to disagree with you. However, if you had worded it "A belief that there is no God is anything but unbiased", then I'd agree. A lack of belief would be the default position. A positive claim would be acknowledging bias and affiliation.

According to who?

On the Christian view, faith is partly about personal feelings—that's fiducia—but certainly not wholly: notitia is objective, insofar as informational content exists independent of the thinking subject, and assensus is cognitive, which is distinguished from affective (feelings).

As you have said before, faith would not work without all three concepts working together. Would not faith be dependent on personal feelings? And such being the case, would not faith be considered purely subjective by the very definition of the word?

I don't want to grasp at straws, I used the word "wholly" because without personal feelings and profound emotions of trust (fiducia), you would not have a necessary tenet of faith. You can replace it with "partly" if it suits your purposes a bit better.

From the claim that God exists objectively (independent of the thinking subject), one cannot reasonably infer that God must be evident to every thinking subject. My coffee cup exists objectively—i.e., indepedent of you as a thinking subject—even though it is not evident to you in any way.

What would be objective evidence of God's existence?

If I fail to defend my claim that life exists on other planets, does that mean life on other planets doesn't exist? No, for that doesn't follow (non-sequitur). It does mean you have reason to not accept my claim, but that's quite a different thing, isn't it?

Exactly my point. The fact that you fail to defend your claim gives me reason not to believe it.

I never made the claim that no God exists. I simply withhold judgement and take the default point of view, non-belief in such a claim.

Probably not, if my hunch is correct about what you think those terms mean. I suspect that inane Christian fundies influenced your ideas about those things, and my views often have little in common with them.

As long as you don't try to convince me that dinosaurs wore saddles, I think we'll be good.

It's not my standard of evidence. My standards of evidence are broad and varied, as there are many different types of claims that can be subject to evaluation. However, at bottom of my entire world view lies the fundamental presupposition that the Bible is the divinely revealed Word of God. It is the basic axiom upon which everything else is built. It is not the entire structure itself. And it is my basic axiom because it is the only presupposition which produces a world view that reflects and explains the world as it really is.

As the foundation of your worldview (The Bible), how would you verify its validity independently?