WmTrevor,

Thanks for your kind words. Your answer to my question is pretty much what I was thinking too.

OUG,

Until you can demonstrate any of your assertions, I have no way of knowing whether or not you’re just making all that up.

But thanks for sharing your take on what god is and is not.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how billions around the world have a personal relationship with this god and yet no two of them can completely agree on who he is or what exactly he wants.

And Trav,

I think you need to go back and a re-read my last posts a little more carefully. Assuming that an atheist is arguing in absolutes is a common tactic you’ll get from Christians in debates (I guess it makes their arguments easier to attack) but I don’t talk or think in absolutes, sorry. I find them largely useless and unhelpful for reasons even you pointed out.

<<The issue here is that you treat reason as an absolute.>>

No, actually, I didn’t. And I’m surprised you’ve set-up this strawman as I went to painstaking lengths to choose my wording very carefully.

I said, “Applied reasoning based on logical absolutes is the only reliable method we have of arriving at the truth given what we currently know.” That I went to the extent of adding the words, “...given what we currently know”, when they weren’t even necessary, shows a conscious effort on my behalf to be anything but absolutist and remain open-minded as to what discoveries may lay ahead.

Now sure, there are other ways we can arrive at the truth. I could flip a coin and you may guess that it was ‘heads’. You arrived at the truth via a guess, but that doesn’t mean guessing is as reliable as applied reasoning based on logical absolutes. It’s a similar case with intuition.

So everything in my response to weareunique still stands and there’s not really much point in me addressing the rest of your comments as my clarification has rendered them irrelevant.

Thanks for your response all the same.

AJ,

I'm not sure I understand how my arguments are supposed to be circumvented here.

Labelling reason the "only reliable method" of determining the truth WITHOUT acknowledging it's limitations is putting it on a pedestal it doesn't deserve to be standing on, regardless of whether we agree on the semantics of whether this means you consider it "absolute". And adding "given what we currently know" to your claim makes no difference to the force of the objections I've made.

Cheers.

Trav,

I didn’t need to acknowledge limitations of reason (in unison with evidence, of course) because it is currently - and demonstrably - the only (or, at the very least, the most) reliable method we currently have of arriving at the truth.

<<adding "given what we currently know" to your claim makes no difference to the force of the objections I've made.>>

Actually it does, because it demonstrates a lack of absolutism.

So the rest of your points are still irrelevant and your argument was still a strawman.

I still think you've failed to face the full force of my objections merely by the convenient fact that you've chosen to ignore them. They do not rely on whether or not we agree on the semantics of what "absolute" means.

Fundamentally, my objections show that unaided reason and evidence alone cannot actually get us very far, and that it is a far flimsier tool than you are willing to admit. Personal experience, intuition and background presuppositions all play a part in our use of reason because reason is incapable of functioning without them. Any time anyone proclaims the greatness of reason, these things must be mentioned.

Atheists often somehow expect that this grand instrument which they faithfully idolise -PRAISE REASON! - should somehow fully reveal both God's existence and everything about him, and when it doesn't they consider it a flaw in a belief system, when in actual fact it's their own faithful idolatry of rationality which often needs to be called into question. Reason isn't infallible. It can't be. Never has been and never will be.

Thank you AJ for all of your wonderful time and effort.

AJ, the Bible (both Old and New Testaments) should be sufficient for people to be introduced to Jesus, God, Our Lady Mary and all of Jesus Disciples regardless of the vintage/times, additions or deletions made over thousands of years.

Secondly, there are so many wonders and unexplained facts about this earth from an evolutionary perspective.

For example, how do you explain AJ the fact that darker skinned people originally were born in hotter parts of countries, while fair skinned people were born in the cooler parts of countries/climates?

As per the Engineering point AJ, I still believe that many Engineers and Scientists take risks initially based upon their first sets of beliefs, talents and skills that God gave them, similarly, all of us, given our unique sets of gifts.

My point here is that I 'believe' God gave us options to either use those talents and gifts, or to ignore using those talents and gifts, travelling another path.

Similarly, the teachings of Jesus Christ.

God left Jesus, Mary Magdalene and His Disciples to spread His (God's) word throughout the world via scriptures, then put into a book entitled "The Bible".

I have just finished reading Margaret George's book 'Mary Magdalene' another version or interpretation of some biblical extracts that Margaret wrote and published. Heart wrenching in many places for me).

The options were left (and explained) within the Bible, by the Disciples, that those who choose to believe in Him will be saved and raised to His Kingdom.

Given the Commandments left to Man are all positive and good, I chose as a young child to follow as best in everyday life those Commandments, although to be honest, have broken just about every one of them in trying circumstances through life AJ.

I can honestly say that if I never had been introduced to praying for other people as a child, or not believed in both Jesus and God, I may not have been as compassionate for other people.

Children yes, some adults may be not as much

Hey Trav, on the question of a 'reasonable' person making a ridiculous statement (strawman argument); if it could be demonstrated and proven that the statement was ridiculous, the reasonable person would say "oops. My reasoning was faulty". IOW, it was not the failure of reason, but the application thereof. Like computers, reason rarely makes mistakes; it's almost always a case of 'garbage in, garbage out'.
WAU, darkskinned people are less prone to skin cancers, but are also less capable of absorbing (or creating) vitamin D from sunlight. Hence, natural selection has favoured the dark skinned in sunny climes, and light skinned in less sunny regions.
Thank you for bringing up a classic example of Darwinian Evolution.
Yuyutsu.,,sigh.
"Judge not, lest ye yourself be judged" When we presume to judge others, we inevitably demonstrate our own foibles -which we apply in judgement.
I did say exactly what was on my mind. The fact that you chose to bring sex into the discussion tells us much more about you, that it does about me.
Trav's point about religion not being the root cause of war (which I have to agree with) is an excellent example of what I meant when I wrote about how remarkable it was that a True Believer's God always agreed so implicitly with the true believer. True Believers, right up to and included the recent Dubya, have always believed their God was right behind them, supporting their every action, no matter how morally reprehensible -by Humanist standards.
Of course, other True Believers whose God doesn't quite mesh with the first True Believers will say they (the latter TBs) weren't really True Believers at all...