RE: Q: do you, Christian, claim that God exists, rather than you believe that he exists?
February 21, 2014 at 11:02 pm
(February 21, 2014 at 6:41 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: If a strong belief is knowledge, and I'd agree with your definition, then I'd say that was outside of the realm of religious belief, or a worldview, an attempt at understanding purpose etc.. that is I don't think you can apply knowledge to purely mental problems, beyond helping to support the logic.
I'm still not sure we're on the same page. I didn't intend to imply that strong belief is knowledge (except in the sense of knowledge about what one believes). That is, if one has a strong existential belief in X, one could only say that one knows one believes X, it doesn't speak to the actual existence of X.
Perhaps we've just been misunderstanding each other.
In any case, my point was that one holding an agnostic position bears no burden until they expect a second party to accept their position as truth. An evangelic [a]theist can reasonably be expected to bear some burden, if they expect to be convincing. (How heavy the is another matter, and certainly debatable.)
Hopefully, I've made myself more clear.
On the second part of your reply - I think I see what you're saying regarding the applicability of empirical knowledge to purely rationalist arguments. However, I would personally say that I don't find arguments that have no apparent correspondence to observed reality to be particularly persuasive - in much the same way, I treat observations that defy reason as suspect. Reason and empiricism seem to me to be at their best when they are complimentary.
