that is to say - i require evidence for my opinions and conclusion and i will readily reverse them.

What would it take for you to say convert to hinduism? or to simply drop belief in any supernatural nonsense?

To re-rail this thread, yes I would vote for someone regardless of religious creed, faith or lack thereof as long as I felt they were the best.

Most information and facts that I have are second hand. I have never been to Afghanistan but I have a nephew who fought there and I accept his attestation that there is such a place. I find the Rand McNally Road Atlas to be a highly reliable authority; when I use it to get from where I am to somewhere else, the somewhere else turns out to be a real place. I believe that there was a President named Franklin Delanor Roosevelt who did all sorts of things that liberals like but ran for office saying that Republicans were expanding the national debt too much. I believe that there is a God because I accept the testimony of those who have written that they have met him. So it is for most things that I "know". The Bible says that the city of Tyre would never be rebuilt but Rand McNally attests that there is a modern city of Tyre, though I haven't gone there myself to check.

The Bible has been a best seller. I cannot attest to its inerrancy (I'm not even sure the Bible attests to its inerracy) but what it says should be given considerable weight.

And I accept the historically accepted conception of the bible: specifically the first Council of Nicaea wherein the Roman Emperor Constantine (a state head) and a few state-appointed bishops had the final say in what canonical books were put into the bible (although this wasn't finalized until the third Council of Carthage which was also presided over by the Roman Emperor).

How you can even lend any credence to the bible after knowing where it came from is beyond me but I assume the you'd believe the typical Catholic/Orthodox explanation which submits that the holy spirit guided those at the Councils of Nicaea and Carthage into putting the correct books in the bible (then again maybe the holy spirit didn't because the bible is full of contradictions). If you accept the bible has holding any water at all then I assume you accept some explanation for its divinity (the above being the most prevalent). If you accept the above explanation then I would ask you for some proof of the holy spirit - any evidence at all that super natural being exists. An extraordinary claim like that, in my opinion, requires extraordinary proof - and if there is a holy spirit why is it so hard to find any proof at all?


So I ask again, please don't compare your faith-based fact-lacking beliefs to conclusions someone draws from empirical evidence.

I thoroughly enjoyed the last two posts. Valid points by both with valid reasons as what each believe and why.

To play devil's advocate any believer, when asked to prove the existence of God, should ask the non-believer to prove that there is no God. I'm an atheist, so I side with Veta on this discussion, but I can't prove there isn't a God any more than the Pope can prove there is a God. (which is why religion sucks so bad)

Any believer who asks a non-believer to prove that God doesn't exist; is simply using faulty logic.

It is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist. One can only prove that something does exist. Proof is based on reason and reason is based on perception.

All facts found by using reason have a root in the perceivable. Therefore; it is absolutely impossible; to use reason in order to prove the non-existence of something.

So asking one to do so is a fools errand and a tactic of stalling; not of logic.

DC, I've held this in for awhile because I didn't want to sound like a dick, but it's starting to bug me since I read most of your posts. You need to review your use of the semicolon.

Yeah I already know. :p When typing stream of thought; I use semi-colons. Oh well.

Probably a habit picked up from muscle memory. Many programming languages use the semicolon to end each line.

Anyway; respond to the content; as I'm interested in your opinion on the topic.