Grim

'would much prefer to believe in an uncaring evolution, than an uncaring Creator.'

You are a bit different from most fundie evolutionist. They prefer to worship mother nature but hate Father God. I give it to you for consistency.

After the 21/05/2011 Things will be better sorted we will know who is a believer and who is not. The true believers are going to walk with the, and the non believers will be left behind to carry on as normal.
So have a good look around, so you will know who is missing.

@579

Ahh we were having some sensible and comparatively polite debate (until Runner joined us of course with comments like "fundie evolutionist.").

Sadly the Loons have joined in now vis a vis 579, no doubt a Harold Camping fan! Please go here http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/harold_camping.htm to read all about this first class Loon's prophecies; it would be a great laugh if it wasn't for the fact that people like 579 believe!

Pity that and for your info 579, the most exciting thing to happen on 21/05/2011 is that Katie Melua is playing at the Falkoner Theatre in Copenhagen Denmark on that night...hope she doesn't have to stop for Jesus ;)

To put it simply,

No one I know would stand the company of runner.

If "god" wants him, he's welcome.

Any "god" that accepts runner, I would not regard as fit company.

Beings far more limited than the hypothetical "god" are both apalled and bored stiff by the sort of ignorant religious bigot runner parodies.

Keep it up runner, if every person met a christian like you pretend to be, christianity will die.

rusty.

The real problem for atheists is that they can't actually state what they really stand for, because it leaves them wide open to challenge. To state, as they would like to: "There is no God" immediately invites the question: "God who?". Can you give a name to something that does not exist?
And if there is no God, why do we need atheism? Since atheism exists solely as a reaction to another person's belief in God, it is reasonable to state there would be no atheism without belief in God.

AJ,

As it’s now the middle of a work week my responses will necessarily be more succinct. I hope the quality of dialogue doesn’t suffer as a result.

I hope I’m not coming across as dogmatic or overly argumentative- I’m only an everyday person who is reflective and likes considering these questions.

<How do you get from the philosophical concept of an ‘uncaused first cause’ to ‘therefore Jesus’, without indoctrination?>

1. Inner conviction.

Theological jargon may label this as “The Holy Spirit”. Like Dean Overman in his book A Case For The Existence of God, I believe there is one fundamental point that is often overlooked in discussions about God. God is meant to be a relational being. Inevitably, some of the way in which he reveals himself will, almost by definition, be subjective and very much personal. Most people don’t like this and think it a very poor argument, but that’s OK. As I said, God is a being and not a conclusion at the end of the argument (regardless of whether or not you believe there are any good arguments- I happen to think there might be some reasonable ones).

Also when people attack this view, they are obliged to construct another plausible method of knowing God that takes into account that he is meant to be a living being, not a concept

(tbc)