[Serious] Time to embrace Islam!

[maxolla]

I guess I haven’t considered reasonable belief as a category apart from certainty.  I think the point is that belief is chosen and not necessarily based on complete evidence.

You reckon so, eh?  Okay, quick test - stop believing in god.  Just choose that.  Doesn't work, does it?

That's because our beliefs aren't chosen regardless of how complete any evidence may be.  Neither you nor I are capable of choosing what we do or don't, can or cant believe.  Whatever portion of your belief rests on this belief..is flat out garbage.  This usually boils down to some silly shit about how this or that thingf..in our failure to believe, aint gods fault/and or our "choosing" to believe is virtue.

Moot point, if it's not a real thing, huh?  Even if we imagine a world positively choked with gods..that's still not a thing that human beings can do.  That's a pretty amusing place for religious beliefs to be in, false no matter what else we imagine.  False even if the god they're leveraged toward is standing in the room with us right now.

My belief is more carefully chosen based on logical conclusions.  I have been given two options belief in a deity or disbelief in a deity.  After weighing the evidence I have chosen to belief in its existence.  Yes beliefs are chosen, not randomly but by weighing evidence.

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Do you have any evidence for Abraham Lincoln?  How can you be certain of anything at all?

Well, let's see.  We have a pretty well corroborated narrative of Lincoln's life. We have letters written to Lincoln from people whose historicity isn't in doubt.  We have letters written by Lincoln to people whose historicity isn't in doubt.  We have contemporaneous, extant newspaper accounts about Lincoln.  We have examples of the original wanted posters about Lincoln's assassin.  His name is mentioned pretty frequently in the Congressional Record of the period.  He is mentioned in the Illinois Militia rolls for the Black Hawk War.  We have contemporaneous, corroborating physical descriptions of him, written by people who both admired him and despised him.

And - this is the kicker - there are more than 100 photographs of Abraham Lincoln.  If you've got any photographs of God, trot 'em out.  You'll make a fortune.

In fact, there is so much evidence for Lincoln as an historical figure that it would be intellectually perverse to deny or even question his existence.  To use the 'evidence for Lincoln' argument as a counter for the 'evidence for God' argument is (no offense) idiotic. 

Boru

Good points.  Do you believe then that Jesus existed? Why?