one under god,

I read your post and found it unconvincing.

All right, so I found Trav a more interesting, coherent and civil interlocutor than you and we wandered OT, God is an interesting subject for discussion, it was not a debating tactic. I shouldn't need to say any more about life after death, see my earlier posts. For the umpteenth bleeping time, the burden of proof is on the believers. You have presented no proof of life after death.

In reference to Law's thesis, I didn't presume to summarize his arguments, I simply indicated what a professional philosopher had to say. No, I didn't find Law's article through Google but through a site I regularly visit www.butterfliesandwheels.com which is dedicated to clear thinking, you should visit it, I'm sure you would benefit greatly. You seem to be implying that there is a life force that distinguishes "living' from "dead" matter, this is an archaic idea and not useful in modern science( think of viruses).Finally, patiently, the burden of proof is on you.

Mac,

Re fine tuning, we'll need to leave it there, as I really do think your Gaps charge is rather unfair, and without much basis. But as a final comment on the issue- Science itself can't prove or disprove God, but I think fine tuning strongly points towards some kind of divine design- Robert Jastrow recognised this when he called one fine tuning discovery "the most theistic result to ever come out of science".

"As to the New Testament, you're basically asking me to believe what you consider a profound truth without any real evidence, why those books rather than a thousand other religious texts , I am still a skeptic."

But why do you reject the entirety of the text itself? You've kept repeating your charge of unreliability, without either A. Giving any reasons why you reject it or B. Answering any of the positive evidence and arguments I've laid out.

I really hope (and I'm guessing you probably do...) have more reasons than the mere existence of other religious texts as evidence against the bible...But as of yet, you haven't really provided them. You've just made big blanketed general statements.

For example, and as a starting point for further discussion, many historians have shown that Luke was a very, very reliable historian by showing that the historical references in Luke and Acts are extremely accurate. The New Testament is very strongly confirmed by many archaelogical discoveries.

And regarding your link to Stephen Law, I really don't have time to read the whole thing- it's a very long piece. I had a brief skim, but if you think his argument is so strong why don't you summarise his best point or two and we can go from there. And btw, he is one of many philosophers. There are many, many Christian philosophers who would disagree with him, many of whom have dealt with this particular question at hand. Well known and respected Christian philosphers include Peter Kreeft, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, Alvin Platinga...I could go on. There's stacks.