Q: do you, Christian, claim that God exists, rather than you believe that he exists?

[Esquilax]

He does not reject science, but rather, he, and I as well, reject some of the conclusions of SCIENTISTS.

Big difference. Scientists are men and women just like you and I and as such are fallible. Scientist's conclusions have been flat wrong on several occasions in the past. You know it, I know it. It is these wrong conclusions we reject, not the scientific method.

But scientists are how mainstream science gets done, and the process is self correcting. Disregard science all you like, but the only time you'll be justified in doing so is when you can present competing evidence that shows a better way. All you've done is labelled conclusions you dislike for ideological reasons "wrong," and moved on without bothering to present the evidence that would correct mainstream science to be more in line with your views.

Hence, you are disregarding science.

He did not say that the supernatural existed because many intelligent people believed in the supernatural. So he has not committed the fallacy you say he has.

Restating your original assertion while ignoring my reply is not an argument.

That is your opinion.

If I sit down and say to myself: "I want to get to the bottom of these religious claims and to start with, I will examine the claims of the most popular religion i.e. Christianity first, and then find through investigation that Christianity is in fact true, then my pursuit is finished. I need not search or evaluate any other claim. For I have what I set out to find, the truth. The crux of the matter is this: Is Christianity true? If it is then it necessarily follows that all other religions that contradict Christianity's central truth claims are false. This is simple logic, nothing too difficult.

You've actually got it ass backwards: start from reality, the facts of the world around you, and build your position based on that: if christianity fits into the things you can confirm to be true, then there, you've got your position. To start from a claim and work backward just leaves you open to confirmation bias; since you've decided christianity is true and have, by all accounts, stopped looking, how will you ever find out if some or all of it is false?

I love science. I am enthralled by what science has given us in the way of knowledge of the material world we live in. I also happen to believe science has its limits. When I have a question outside the realm of science, I take up other disciplines and learn even more. I am not an empiricist and I hope you are not either!

Here's the thing: just deciding that something is beyond the realm of science doesn't mean it actually is, and it certainly doesn't mean that it actually exists. You seem to think you can just define your god out of needing evidence or falsifiability by asserting that such things are impossible for it. That's not the case.

I have yet to complain about anything here. Nor do I put God beyond the reach of any form of testability or detectability. It is the methodological naturalist/empiricist/materialist that puts God beyond their reach, for they eliminate the possibility of His existence before they even begin their investigation!!!!!!

Methodological naturalism makes no statement about god, it merely states that things that can't be detected using the only measures of detection that humanity has... cannot be detected by humans. An entirely uncontroversial statement, I'm sure you'll agree, and yet when it comes to god, you'll claim that it's somehow unreasonable to expect to be able to detect things that you think exist.

Pray tell, how do you detect god, then?

We accept a truth claim as being true if and only if it actually corresponds to an actual state of affairs in the world (correspondence theory). There are several ways we can come to know a truth claim is true. It simply does not follow that since empiricism is untenable that therefore we must accept all religious truth claims as true. That is a non-sequitur.

That's also not what I said. I said that, were you to lower your minimum expectations for evidence to the point where you could accept christianity as being true (without engaging in special pleading) then you would then be in a position of accepting all other religions as true, because despite what you may say, there is not a significant level of support that is unique to christianity sufficient to justify believing the supernatural claims within that religion.

That's a very different thing to what you think I said.

If Christ died for our sins and rose on the third day, then Islam is false as well as every other religion that denies the divinity of Christ. Christ could not have both died and not have died, it is either or. To maintain otherwise would be to violate one of the laws of classical logic. In this way it is shown that WE CAN distinguish between contradicting religious truth claims.

However, what are you using to privilege your christian claim over the islamic one? If you have no support, then you're just using special pleading to say one is true and therefore the other must be false. But in order to support your christian claim, you'd need evidence, which would put you in the position of using the dreaded empiricism to resolve your conflicts!

I am glad you are not an empiricist, but you still demand empirical proof which, if you are a naturalist, you deny even exists a priori!

Are you a naturalist?

It is you who denies such proof could exist when you say god is transcendent and undetectable by the senses or the scientific method. That's your problem, stop trying to foist it onto me. Despite your claims, I don't have any innate knowledge of god, or spiritual bull that could detect that he's there; none of us do. We've only got our senses and our instruments, unless you can prove the existence of some other way. If you can't, then this problem you're saying I have only exists in your mind.

I am very convinced. Other brilliant minds have also been convinced by certain lines of evidence for the existence of God. Anthony Flew, the once outspoken atheist turned theist comes to mind.

And I don't care about who. As has been said previously, Flew had dementia, and more importantly, he was also a deist and not a christian toward the end of his life, so clearly this shit wasn't that convincing.

My point remains, I cannot furnish any evidence that cannot be explained away by them that are unwilling to accept it.

And my point remains that reinterpreting our motivations so that we're "unwilling to accept" evidence, rather than finding it unconvincing, is nothing more than a pitiable attempt at diverting investigation.