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.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lewal on June 1, 2012 at 7:32pm
Take the word "theist" off the end of that proposition and we can talk. Otherwise how can you expect anyone to see you as any more credible than the Bronze Age tribals with whom you would share your beliefs?
Permalink Reply by Lewal on June 1, 2012 at 10:15pm
Of course most would say Christianity entails theism. I don't think it has to. For example, I'd say Jefferson was a reasonable Christian, but I'd be more hesitant to say he was a theist.
archaeopteryxPermalink Reply by archaeopteryx on June 2, 2012 at 1:03am

Actually, C., Tom created his own Bible by cutting everything out of the KJV that smacked of anything miraculous, so if in your mind, the "god" of the Bible had any capability of accomplishing miracles, then Tom was not a theist, or even a Deist.

Permalink Reply by Lewal on June 2, 2012 at 2:01pm
Precisely, these in my mind would b the only reasonable Christians-- those that follow the teachings of Christ omitting any mythological aspects (divine lineage, supernatural feats etc). "Jeffersonian Christians" if you will.
Permalink Reply by Ed on June 2, 2012 at 9:33am

Perhaps your approach should first come from the deistic perspective. As we are no respecter of a particular specific god(s) then it would make more sense to offer argument for the existence of a generic god. That is a huge hurdle in and of itself. If successful you could then offer further argument as to the specifics of your particular god - Yaweh, Jehovah, etc. You will need to be creative though as most of us are weary of the common theistic arguments that remain grounded in logical fallacies.

Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 2, 2012 at 11:08am

I think once a lot of us tell him "Been there, done that" he will be forced to be creative.

Permalink Reply by Meg Fields on June 2, 2012 at 4:32pm

My mind is jumbled on this post. OP is christian or what? Either way, I come here to talk about why theistic belief in God is silly, not to hear reasons why he might exist. The rest of the world can give me those reasons as they've been doing since I was little and I'll keep ignoring them, as I've been doing since I was little. There is no such thing as reasonable Christianity in my mind- they believe a dude came down from the sky, said some things, got killed and turned into a zombie (short version). That's just not reasonable to me. Btw when I say zombie I mean in the living-dead sense, not the eat-your-brains sense.

Permalink Reply by William Occam on June 2, 2012 at 4:43pm

OP is christian or what?

I'm a liberal Christian.

I come here to talk about why theistic belief in God is silly, not to hear reasons why he might exist.

Is that a common sentiment here? I certainly don't want to present arguments if people aren't interested in discussing them.

Permalink Reply by Nathan Hevenstone on June 3, 2012 at 12:22am

Atheist Nexus and Atheist Universe are more for those kinds of discussions (theists aren't even allowed at either, as far as I know). Think Atheist is open to theists wanting to debate. It's not, however, open to trolls (from either side).

Permalink Reply by Luis Contreras on June 3, 2012 at 5:28am

if it were a common sentiment, you would have gotten a whiff of it in your earlier exchanges in this thread and the other that you made.

Permalink Reply by Meg Fields on June 3, 2012 at 9:46am

Not sure if it's common but it's definitely the way I feel. What got me thinking is, if you don't care if we believe, why bother presenting the argument anyways?

Permalink Reply by Unseen on June 3, 2012 at 2:29pm

You have a sisyphian task ahead of you. Hardly anyone here is going to take the old, tired proofs for God's existence terribly seriously. You cannot really expect atheists to agree that it's reasonable to believe in a magical sorcerer god.

At least don't bore us. Show us some new thinking.

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