“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, it’s the evidence of what we do not yet see.” Hebrews 11:1
I’ve said many times that agnostics are the ones who could call themselves the most scientifically minded. Agnostics are the ones who only go as far as the evidence will take them. Christians and atheists, on the other hand, use inductive reasoning to take them part way, and then bring about a deductive conclusion based upon that evidence in combination with their pre-set world-view.
In that sense Christian faith can be described as “Choosing to believe the conclusion that the Bible and God Himself through the person of Jesus the Christ has presented regarding the evidence that we have before us.”
Faith is not, as those who fear the idea of a Creator say, believing something even in the absence of evidence. At bare minimum we have a whole universe proclaiming the existence of Creator God. When pressed, honest atheists acquiesce that a Deistic God may well exist, “But that doesn’t prove a Theistic God.” Well, no it doesn’t. For that we have the life, death and resurrection of Jesus who said, “If you have seen Me you have seen Creator God.” Proof of His resurrection comes in the form of:
. The empty tomb
. The dramatic change in character of the disciples
. The rise of the Christian Church
. The conversion of the sceptic and Christian killer Paul
. The conversion of the sceptic and brother of Jesus James
all of these confirming the theistic God as seen in Jesus.
The fact is, faith requires evidence. Both atheists and Christians have before them the same amount of evidence, and both atheists and Christians believe what they believe by faith.
“By faith we (Christians) understand (choose to believe the Bible’s claim) that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” Hebrews 11:3
“By an even greater amount of faith (everything came from nothing by nothing) atheists understand (choose to believe the implication of atheism) that the universe came into being by natural means even though nothing natural / material existed UNTIL the universe came into being.”
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A Deistic God is a god that is, by definition, impossible to prove/disprove. Atheists and agnostics both disbelief in such god for that reason. They both atlso DISbelief that this type of god does NOT exit.
ReplyDeleteAn example:
"According to Richard Dawkins, a distinction between agnosticism and atheism is unwieldy and depends on how close to zero we are willing to rate the existence of any given god-like entity. Since in practice it is not worth contrasting a zero probability with a probability that is nearly indistinguishable from zero, he prefers to categorize himself as a "de facto atheist". He specifies his position by means of a scale of 1 to 7. On this scale, 1 indicates "100 per cent probability of God." A person ranking at 7 on the scale would be a person who says "I know there is no God..." Dawkins places himself at 6 on the scale, which he characterizes as "I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there", but leaning toward 7. About himself, Dawkins continues that "I am agnostic only to the extent that I am agnostic about fairies at the bottom of the garden." "
... but you already know that, and prefer to keep lying. Why?