You insult me for no good reason. Also, by not showing me the logic behind your argument, you destablize your position. Therefore, until you can come up with solid logic to the contrary, I have to declare your argument less than logical--an argument based on faith. Either put up your sword and fight, or go post in the Graveyard.
Russell's Teapot
That's where our paths diverge. You see the OP's argument as logical. However, if you follow the collective teachings and texts that Christians claim to base their profile of God on, you'd understand that their God has always been, with no start, and no end. Therefore...according to the Bible, the supposed authority on the Christian God...there is no issue with existence as He is existence, and he has always been, just as I argued previously.
And the evidence for this is...where? Because you have a book that says so?
Do I have proof this is true? No. Do you have proof that an infinite God doesn't exist? No. Therefore, you must either conceed that your argument is based on faith...or you must prove me wrong with facts.
Nope, this is the most common fallacy in literal interpretation of religion.
The problem isn't that you're factually wrong; it's that you're not even approaching the question in terms that will allow you consider it meaningfully.
The argument that "well we can't be 100% certain either way, so I guess it's 50/50" doesn't hold up because it attempts to answer an inherently unanswerable question with absolute certainty.
In real life, we virtually never have absolute certainty, so we're forced to use intuition to consider things in terms of incomplete information. Frankly, the need to have a 100% definite certain answer on this question is the very thing that leads you to a poorly formulated position.
You can't prove 100% that Russell's Teapot isn't actually there, but this is why we use intuition in science--we use the information available to make a guess as to what is most probably true, but we never really know for certain.
Lacking 100% certainty is not sufficient reason to believe in arbitrary absurdities. When you make a supernatural claim, the burden of proof is on YOU, not on people who don't believe you!
In the real world we consider problems such as "Does God exist as a conscious and self-aware entity with a moral agenda?" in terms of probability clouds, not definite yes-or-no binary propositions.
So the answer to that question is neither "Yes" nor "No", but rather: "[Given the available evidence and the fact that our information is not and will never be complete],
probably not."
Get back to me when you've read up on Russell's Teapot. When you can explain why your conscious entity God with a moral agenda who's judging us for the afterlife is a more credible proposition than the Teapot, we'll talk.
Demonstrate to the NF how the hell any of what he said was based on logic? Isn't logic based in reality? How can you prove to me what Mycroft said was real? Just the same as I can't prove the Christian God to you.
This is more rehasing of the "WELL WE DON'T KNOW FOR 100% SURE SO I GUESS IT'S OKAY TO BELIEVE IN ARBITRARY MADE UP NONSENSE" argument, which utterly fails for the reasons listed above.
I'm not so sure you're "my size" after all.
Those Christians who bother to think see this as much a viable path as yours. Unfortunately, logicians on both sides can become rather stubborn in their reasoning after they've accepted something as an absolute truth. Pretty soon you start looking for things to justify your position on both sides and neither of you has a shred of real evidence.
lol, no, Christians who bother to think are intelligent enough to recognize that God can't be considered in absolute binary terms. Christians who bother to think recognize that the literal existence/non-existence of God is irrelevant and that the Bible's only real purpose is to provide guidance for how to live more a happier and more productive life.
Christians who bother to think recognize, also, that it's highly improbable that God actually exists in literal form--they've just moved beyond the childish need for supernatural validation and recognized the value in Christ's words purely for its own sake (not because they think they'll be rewarded for it later.)
Christians who bother to think don't rely on the flimsy "less than 100% certainty = absolutely 50/50!" nonsense that you seem to think somehow justifies arbitrary belief in anything, no matter how ridiculous.
It's not 100% certain that I won't be attacked by a dragon when I leave my house today, but that doesn't make the probability of dragons existing 50/50. It's still ~99.9999999999% likely that dragons don't exist based on the mountains of scientific evidence we have against the existence of dragons, so if you want to run around claiming that dragons exist, the burden of proof is on you and you're not going to be taken seriously just because nobody has 100% empirical evidence to definitively show that they don't.
Facts don't really come into play when discussing religion and philosophy; only inductive reasoning is used.
I don't say, "WELL WE DON'T KNOW FOR SURE IF DRAGONS REALLY EXIST, SO I'LL JUST STAY IN MY HOUSE FOREVER INCASE THEY DO--AFTER ALL, WOULDN'T WANT TO GET EATEN BY A DRAGON!"
I hope you see why that's so silly, and why it also applies to fundamentalist interpretation of religion equally well.
Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia OH LOOK! WIKIPEDIA HAS AN ARTICLE!!! That means, if you are able to reference it, that there's obviously enough consensus to have a Faith (and hey, look, I even included a LINK for you). There are varying views everywhere, but to be Christians, you have to follow Christ, and believe in his mission, his miracles, and his claim to divinity, no matter what you decide to call yourself! Obviously, there's enough to go on to have a philosophical, non-logical argument about faith on both sides.
I've studied Christianity in depth, thanks. The fact that your position is easily destroyed via something as simple and common as Russell's Teapot indicates to me that I probably know a lot more about the background of your faith than you do.
I know it's important to your value system to consider your position "equally credible", to try and muddy the waters by equating religion with science, but the fact is it's not. There are definitely intelligent and reasonable Christians out there who have a deep and expansive understanding of the concepts involved in the faith, but
none of them rely upon the "YOU DON'T HAVE 100% EVIDENCE AGAINST IT SO I'M GOING TO ASSUME IT'S TRUE HEHEHEHE" defense.
In fact, such people aren't even preoccupied with proving God's existence because they know it's a waste of time--again, God isn't really the point, only the effect that behaving as if he exists will have on one's real life (I'll offer Peguy as a case in point...there's an example of a smart Christian who isn't even bothering with this argument because he knows that the only real reason to have faith is for the positive effects it can have on your external life and the goals you complete..."proving" or "disproving" it is entirely beside the point.)
When you grow out of the need for a 100% certain answer on this topic, you'll start to appreciate the real value in Christianity...which is primarily philosophical, not dogmatic or supernatural.