4God

Read:Bold statement, not necessarily arrogant.


As for me, I will concede that God does exist, Jesus Christ is His Son, and that every knee will bow at the sound of His name.

Read: Bold statement, not necessarily arrogant.

...However, I think you can easily see that depending upon your frame of reference either one of these statements can look arrogant on the surface. On the flip-side, either one of these may well seem like fact to you.

foxjazz

I have learned something tonight, which I knew, but didn't know.

I have learned that at some poine in our lives (if we deem origins important) that we all have to deal with how our brains process information that creates a world view we can live with.

I have know this, but now I am just one rung on the latter higher than I was before.

I apprciate your compassion, 4God. It is refreshing.

Fox

Yangja Isuko

doesnt the fact that not every knee does in fact bow at the sound of that name tell you something is not quite right with that sentence?

Howard

Okay. I say Jesus� claim as the Son of God and Savior is unmitigated horse poop and has no more credibility than that of the Tooth Fairy. Damn I feel better.

crazyfingers

To me, that statement appears to be trying to make a statement of fact. It is claiming that a god exists, that christ is the god/son, etc..

It's not simply a statement of faith or belief but claiming knowledge of a fact. However, I don't believe that it's possible to honestly claim such knowledge as fact. That is what makes it arrogant.

It implies a superior ability to know the truth. As I mentioned above, I believe it confuses faith or belief with knowledge of a fact.

King Rat

Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

variant 13

not all the time, depends what you'd have to do while down there really

4God

FOXJAZZ...glad to offer an alternative to normal christian rhetoric.

Um, if it were present tense, of course. But, this is a futuristic claim.

Honesty is the best policy(cheesy cliche) and you are honest.
Revelation 3:16 says
crazyfingers i'm about purposely butcher your quote....

let's first start with foxx jazz quote
now let's say you were atbible.com...you can make your quote read in response to foxjazz's comment as follows

...and again depending on where you fall on the debate, you can argue either way.

crazyfingers

Hold a second there. The problem with your response is that I have never said that a god does not exist.

What I always say is that I have seen no evidence for a god so I do not believe in one.

Care to try again?

Hugo Holbling

Perhaps i can?

I suspect you already know that this formulation is far too simplistic to explain how you actually come by your beliefs; the question is, when it is seen in a similar form so often here, is it any wonder that some people fail to appreciate why it should be convincing? There are a number of interpretations, for instance, that could be taken of it:

• A literal one: if you have not seen or studied the evidence for something then it does not exist; that would be uncharitable, but an example of the lack of clarity.
• A methodological one: your approach to knowledge consists - at least in part (but to what degree may be of interest to others who want to understand you) - in some form of empiricism, in which you believe that testing propositions is the best or a good way of proceding, with advantages over other methodologies that are not specified.
• An epistemological one: you think that existence is determined by evidential support and have reasons to justify this.
• Another epistemological one: you adopt (at times) a coherence theory of truth; the evidence that some people see for god does not cohere with the propositions you already accept, so you do not consider it supportive of God's existence.

And so on - there are plenty of others. If the person (or persons) you choose to debate with holds different presuppositions to you on ontological, epistemological, axiological and methodological matters to mention a few, then it may be that they will not understand; in that case, perhaps you could try to appreciate their perspective and see if you can argue from there? (Lest they not understand me, there are discussions at my homepage on all these terms.)

Suppose we take the quote again and try to see how this might work: "What I always say is that I have seen no evidence for a god so I do not believe in one." A person who both believes in God and has some form of experiential justification for so doing (in part, usually) has seen evidence of God - all around them for some. It is also reasonable for them to suppose that you have access to similar experience to them, from which to make the same conclusion. Therefore, it could seem to them that you are either unable to do so, or unwilling, leading to confusion or - unfortunately - contempt in some cases. We can see that this is no more charitable than a simplistic reading of your position, so it indeed seems likely that the assumptions employed different significantly. Perhaps it would benefit both sides of a discussion to examine these? Not at a technical level, of course, but just in order to facilitate discussion and avoid it breaking down at the same points over and over?

Previously, you said:

We could look at this in the light of the above remarks. Does arrogance, for instance, lie in the statement itself or the interpretation of the reader? Are you using a different understanding of the term "fact" - of which there are many, given that it is so problematic - to someone who, say, considers that something they feel cannot possibly be any other way to be quite certainly a fact?

Does it? Perhaps instead it implies a different way of coming by truth claims, or which there are already many?

And so on. I suppose some people will choose to read this post as dismissive or arrogant in itself, but it seems to me that in order to get the most out of any discussion we need to be as clear as we can be about what both sides are intending and saying.