One Theist's Agenda
Hi, everyone.
Over the next several days or so, I should begin posting a variety of arguments for the existence of God. The purpose of this thread is to give context to those arguments so that people have a bird's eye view of them when they are presented and evaluated.
I don't care if you become a Christian or not, nor do I care if you end up becoming any other kind of theist. Rather, my goal on this forum is to persuade you of the following proposition.
"It is not unreasonable to be a Christian theist."
Obviously, this core proposition should be distinguished from the proposition that Christian theism is unreasonable - i.e., crazy, stupid, insane, dishonest, and so on.
My core proposition should also be distinguished from the proposition that Christian theism is true, because something can be false yet reasonable for people to believe. This seems to happen a lot in science. For example, for a long time there could be reasonable disagreement between cosmologists regarding whether the Big Bang theory or the Steady State theory was true. I think atheism and theism are like that: There are a lot of arguments that go both ways, and someone can arrive at either conclusion without broaching rationality (of course, it is also possible to arrive at either conclusion irrationally).
Having said all of that, I'd like to ask whether anyone will agree to my core proposition without argument. I know that some atheists believe that Christianity can be reasonable, so the question is just how many such atheists post on this site.
Regards,
Occam
P.S. If you're interested, you can learn more about my past here, and you can see a sketch of the arguments I'll be using here.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Cara Coleen on -
I don't read that as a threat of banishment. I read that as "what's the point of your participation here at all?" It sounds like genuine curiosity to me.
Just so we're all clear, William is in no danger of being banned (official moderator statement). We welcome theists as long as they're not preaching. He does seem interested in a real discussion, even if both sides are sort of talking past each other. I'm pleased that it's all remained fairly civil.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
Bottom line - I was responding to HIS statement that he feared banishment - all explanatory posts came in AFTER my post defending his right to speak. Until then, I had only his word as evidence that a moderator had in fact threatened him with banishment - not that he was lying, he was simply mistaken.
I hope that finally, everyone is clear on the chain of events.
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on -
In the whole vast universe with billions upon billions of galaxies and trillions of stars, The Bible tells us that God chose one obscure planet in the outer edge of The Milky Way galaxy to put his llife on.
But what about life on some other world. Don't they get their Jesus analog, too? So that if there's a pond scum life form on some other world there's also a pond scum savior for them as well.
Haven't you noticed this: that people tend to have the religion that predominates wherever and whenever they are? If you lived a few centuries before Jesus in Iran, you'd be Zoroastrian and you'd be worshipping Ahura Mazda.
I'd just like to know how such a silly idea can be though more reasonable than the idea that God does not exist.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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Will - RE: "Maybe I should ask for specific reasons why people find Christian theism unreasonable"
No, see, that's not the way it works - you came on this board as a theist, which implies that in your mind, there IS a god, and before anyone here needs to tell you why they believe theism to be unreasonable, the burden is upon you to ascertain to everyone's satisfaction, that the god your theism demands, exists.
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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If God were to exist, he would deserve more than the lukewarm "maybe he exists, maybe not" approach of Occam.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on -
You could say that, but on the other hand, we have to remember that the nature of reality is ultimately unfathomable. Not just this universe, but whatever else there is "outside" it, outside of our space and time.
I always think that the phenomenon of life is a miracle, it is magical and "divine". I think it's not such a stretch to connect "life" with "God".
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Permalink Reply by James Cox on -
Dear Folks:
I figure that if Christianity starts sounding 'reasonable', then I have fallen asleep, 'again'..;p(.
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Permalink Reply by Wesley on -
Big Bang or Steady State... volcano god or natural occurance.... I see where you are going with this... I can't distinguish the christian god from volcano god..... and see the realm once attributed excluslvely to him shrinking as we learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
Once we learned more about volcano's it became less and less reasonable to belive that there was a god behind the rumblings to appease. The same thing applies to the christian god or any other for that matter.
This doesn't mean that there might not be 'something' behind the existence of this universe,,,but it does strongly imply that our current religious and theistic conjectures about what that 'something' are have extremely little weight to back them up.....and that the MUCH more reasonable position to hold is one of lets wait and see what and where the evidence points before making conjectures about it.
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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He's going to have to be selling The God Of The Leftovers. The God leftover when all of that theological crap we KNOW to a dead certainty is factually false is trimmed off onto the floor.
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Permalink Reply by Simon Paynton on
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I think it's reasonable. When it's done properly, Christians are some of the best people in the world. Equally, when it's done badly, I have no time for those people.
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Permalink Reply by Meg Fields on -
They can act nice towards you and still think you're going to hell. The only proper christian is one that doesn't actually believe that imo
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