RE: Choosing to/not to Believe? Not Possible?
July 1, 2018 at 8:17 pm
(This post was last modified: July 1, 2018 at 8:20 pm by Simon Moon.)
(June 28, 2018 at 2:22 pm)JairCrawford Wrote:(June 28, 2018 at 9:59 am)polymath257 Wrote: If those healings, miracles, signs and wonders are *real*, they can be documented and studied. The method of such study is the scientific method. If nothing else, science would be able to show such events do occur and that we have no current explanation for them.
Sorry, logic and understanding are what it requires to believe something.
Naturally we will disagree on the conclusion for we look at the same information with completely different worldview lenses.
First of all, atheism is NOT a worldview. It is a single position on a single claim.
But most importantly, I am not looking through an 'atheist lense'. Maybe you can say we are looking through skeptics lense. You, on the other hand, are viewing the information through a distorted lense. A lense that will not allow you to see the information in any other way than you have stated here.
My view of the information, however, does allow me to be convinced of your conclusions. But I require more than faith, I require demonstrable evidence.
As I stated previously, I can not understand why anyone would rely on faith, when we have much better paths to truth.
Quote: Nevertheless, I find your response highly intriguing, because, I've heard it before! Only not from an atheist, but from fellow Christians with a cessationist viewpoint. (Don't get me wrong here I'm not by any means saying you're acting like the religious or anything like that, just making an observation and thinking out loud.) When I debate with cessationists (Christians that are fervently sure that the gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the Bible was completed), they make the same argument that miracles are not documented therefore there is no evidence.
This is legitimately intriguing to me!
All differences aside, I am loving the discussion so far.
If a god were to interact with the natural world in order to cause "healings, miracles, signs and wonders", then those are testable claims.
And when they are tested, they fall apart.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
