Creation, Evolution, and faith

There is no single definition, standard or otherwise, for "faith". You are trying to use a semantic argument, conflating different definitions of faith in order to give religious faith the same level of confidence as faith derived through experience and evidence. They are not the same thing.

There are presuppositions that underlie the scientific methodology, but theories are derived independently of these presuppositions.For example, we would look at radiometric dating. The uniformitarianist presuppositions of the scientific methodology allow us to use the ratio of isotopes in rocks to determine how old they are. However, the actual age of the rocks is not derived from the uniformitarianist presuppositions, it is derived from the actual ratio of isotopes in the rocks. It is not as if a rock is presupposed to be a specific age. That is, the age of rocks is not an axiom of the scientific methodology.

The problem here is that there is no difference between subjective evidence and faith based beliefs. They are one in the same.

So list the evidence and the reasoning. You have failed to lay out the evidence, premises, and conclusions for these examples of theological reasonings. How is asking multiple times for the reasoning in this theology ignoring it? Just lay out evidence, premises, and conclusions. Show how one leads to the next.

What evidence and reasoning was used to reach this conclusion? This does nothing more than define what is being claimed. What I am interested in is the evidence and reasoning that leads to the claim. This seems like a repeat of Acts 17, a lot of assertions about God but no evidence or reasoning. I thought we were talking about religion, not linguistics.

What was this logic and reasoning? How is divine revelation either logical or reasonable? Actually, we are having serious problems trying to get theists to explain these reasons.

What I am interested in is the logic and reason Paul used to reach this view. The GS rule only allows us to discern what Paul believed, not why he believed it. Again, defining the claim is not the same as using reason and logic to arrive at a claim. If I gave you a specific definition for "leprechuan" would that be a logical and well reasoned argument for the existence of leprechuans? I did. What you gave me was reason and evidence as it is applied in linguistics.

This is not a well reasoned argument. What you are saying is that once someone is correct that they can never be wrong. This fails every test of logic and reason. From what I have seen, no one has unearthed archaeological evidence for the existence of God. Yes, there is archaeological evidence for groups of people who believe in God, but not of God himself (or herself ).

You do know that many books were excluded from the NT, and that groups pushing apocryphal texts were strongly persecuted by the Roman Catholic church, right? At a minimum there were at least two to three gnostic gospels that were excluded. The books that did make it in were voted on, and the vote wasn't unanimous.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Do we have verified letters written by Pilate to his wife that not only speak of the crucifixion but also Pilate's first hand account of the resurrection?You can't compare first hand accounts with second hand accounts written 50 years after the event. And even then, the simple act of writing something down does not make it true. You need verification from several primary sources.

Neither of which were contemporaries of Jesus of Nazareth. Because Galileo left instructions on how to build one, and upon building one you can observe the very same things that Galileo reported observing. You know, objective evidence, that very thing we lack for the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth.Do you really think that the existence of telescopes is on par with the existence of supernatural deities?Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

But we do have the methodologies that other scientists used to produce this data. Therefore we can verify it ourselves if we want to. Again, this is very bad argument you are making here.Have you ever read a real scientific paper in a peer reviewed journal? Every article includes a section called "Methodology" or something to that effect. In that section it tells the reader how to duplicate their experiments. The point being that we don't have to believe it. We can test for it ourselves. No faith required. Also, if the speed of light were wrong GPS wouldn't work. Millions of people test the speed of light every day. Of course not, which is why it is called blind faith. You believe it because you want to believe it, not because of the evidence.

I think we are getting closer to what passes for "logic and reasoning" in the theistic argument. It's a combination of an appeal to authority and an appeal to emotion.

And yet you continue to conflate the two. You say that both theists and scientists use evidence and then fill in the holes with faith, as if they are the same thing.I'm sorry, but it's dishonest to conflate religion and science and then turn around and deny the conflation. For example, in message 164 you wrote:

quote:

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The thread started off about faith and moved to logic and reason, which is fine. If anybody here wants to just make the claim (which kb is arguing against, even though we disagree on probably everything else) that there is zero logic in the Christian belief then fine, there's really no sense in me trying to convince you otherwise. All I'm saying, that in my brief studies, there is enough evidence for me to belief A, B, and C, in the Bible, thus I can believe X, Y, and Z. Faith fills in the rest but it's not blind faith. If we want to debate all these other things such as archeology and prophecy and problems that Christians run into in the Bible, we can do so in another thread.

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I'm of the belief that although I disagree with it, evolutionists believe based on reason and logic and a little bit of faith to fill a few holes.

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You implied that theists are no different than scientists when it comes to religious beliefs and scientific theories, respectively. Care to explain?

How does this evidence the claim that God exists in the first place? Many non-theistic organizations give people purpose and meaning in their life. I don't see how providing purpose and meaning leads to the conclusion that God exists. Can you lay out that reasoning?