Wyz_sub10

Of course, just so our readers are clear, all men did not descend from "a common post-flood source".

They did, however, share an ancestor, so that much is correct.

HRG

And we again see the same logical error being committed: assuming that revelation (i.e. a claim by a superior being) can be self-attesting. This is a logical impossibility since both a lying and a truthful god would tell you "I never lie".

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In this case, it is possible for a person to be "deconverted" if he is presented with sufficient counter evidence. The true believer (Christian) cannot be deconverted because he understands that the revelation is the necessary foundation not only for "spiritual" truth but for all knowledge.

Given a suitable presuppositionalist redefinition of "knowledge", of course.

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Without it, knowledge is impossible, and therefore, it cannot be disproven by "evidence" becuase no evidence is possible.

Please tell me how I need the existence of any supernatural being to know that there are infinitely many primes.

BTW, it is the theist who has problems with evidence and knowledge, since he can never exclude that he is being deceived by a superior being, whose deceptions he could never pierce.

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All atheistic claims to truth/proof are meaningless.

Having redefined "knowledge", Theophilus now proceeds to redefining "proof" and "truth". Interesting to watch, isn't it ?

regards,
HRG.

haverbob

Okay, i'll except that (perhaps), but that was not the way the question was worded. There were many philosphers before J/C that pondered the existence of God. and they did so with no concept of the Bible in mind, just the concept of a greater being that is the creator. From that angle, you may be able to see what i was saying.

It sounds like your question really is "is there any way to convince theists that the descriptions of God in the Bible, Koran... are wrong". Yes, I proved that the other day to a Muslim (or at least convinced him of it) that the account of shooting stars being a misslie to throw at the Jinn who evesdrop on Heaven, has to be false and therefore the Koran is false because the Koran was not written by the memory of witnesses as the bible was, it was the direct word of god spoken through Muhammed. Therefore if one thing is proven wrong, the whole thing goes out the window.

metacristi

Diana

I do not think this it is possible,at least now.But I think there are ways to make 'God hypothesis' (defined merely as the creator of the universe) less probable 'objectively' (to the best of our knowledge),therefore making belief non rational.

What do I consider enough for that?

1.A 'theory of everything'.This in itself does not give me a sufficient reason because there is no reason to suppose that this theory is unique and infallible (it represents merely a fallible objective truth-there is no good reason to think otherwise) and moreover does not make 'God hypothesis' less probable but corroborated with:

2.The computational approach of consciousness (using boolean algebra) is proved beyond all reasonable doubt as being correct.
Here by arguments beyond all reasonable doubt I mean a detailed,'working',description of the dynamics of the brain,a 'holistic' view (even if we had the proof that all mental states correlate with physical states-anyway far from being achieved now-this would,simply,be not enough).Another chance is to emulate a human mind using technology,

3.'Confirming' repeatedly abiogenesis in labs.[edit to add]Eh I request too much,forget about 'labs',anyway the argument (implying indirect proof derived from more distinct experiments) 'confirming' it must be persuasive (way more persuasive than today's mere hypotheses-simple speculations in fact) and intersubjective also.

4.A multiverse hypothesis,fully compatible with all observed phenomena,whose predictions at scales where we can make measurements are consistently 'confirmed'.For example the discovery that the so called 'false vacuum' (the main theoretical 'entity' posited as existing ontologically by Guth's multiverse hypothesis) is a reality (indirect proof is accepted) would be enough.

This does not imply certitudes (God could still exist in spite of that evidence) but this would entitle naturalism to 'graduate' from the status of simple conjecture to that of 'fallible scientific truth'.Anyway what counts is that till then the naturalist approach is only a conjecture.There is no good reason to think otherwise.