Fantastic post, Dennis! Long time no see!

The problem with faith as an argument is that it is often invoked as an argument, and it is impossible to refute, which is why it's invoked. If someone says something is wrong because a book says that God says it is wrong, what's to argue? There is no way to logically refute arguments which are not based on logic but on such faith-based assertions.

My worry is that arguments which evade logic are the most powerful arguments of all -- yet this is absurd, because in logic they are the least powerful (and as you say, not arguments at all).

So how is it that illogical arguments which are not arguments at all can be the most powerful arguments of all? Because they are not logical, and not arguments?

Something about this strikes me as a little insane.

If I may, faith in the Christian application is not believing in something without logic or reason. Rather, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." - Hebrews 11:1

In Christian apologetics, we don't just lay back and condescend that the Bible's claims are automatically correct. If the Bible is true, then by golly, we can prove it!

For example, the Biblical narrative contains many references to events that can be meaningfully verified or disproven. The more historical references are proven, the more reliable the Bible is overall, and vice versa.

Take the famous story of Jericho's walls falling down. A fanciful tale, no doubt, until you take into account that archaeological digs have unearth an ancient wall at the site of one of the old Jericho cities. The wall not only fell - it fell outwards (a strange thing, because besieged walls fall inward), and fell so flat that the team could actually walk on its now horizontal surface. People could have run straight into the city, exactly as Joshua 6 says they did.

The list of historical events mentioned in the Bible that have been proven by archaeology is still very much incomplete. But subsequent research fills in the gaps as time goes by, eventually perhaps all of them. (After all, still not one undisputed set of fossils showing step-by-step transition, and evolution is already a scientific fact!)

Doubtless many claims of Christianity cannot be definitively proven. How do you detect or measure spirit, which is by definition not a physical phenomena? However, we can extrapolate the following: If the Bible is trustworthy when it relates provable history, then it should also be trustworthy when it relates unprovable claims about God and life.

But still... Even one of the most unintuitive, illogical and contrary to common sense doctrines of Christianity has parallels in real life. The Holy Trinity is defined as three being one; but not the same as three in one (instant coffee mix sachets) or just plain one. Totally illogical, it's so plain to see.

Yet the concept of 'many being one simultaneously' is the scientifically accepted explanation for chemical hybrid resonance. Take the carbonate ion CO3, for example. Three oxygens stuck onto one carbon. Based on the valency, the resultant molecule should have one double bond and two single bonds. Carbonate ions should therefore be in one of three interchangeable states, depending on which arm the double bond at. The double bond is stronger, so the arm it is on should be correspondingly shorter.

However, observations have concluded that all three of the carbonate ion's arms are always the same length. How is this accounted for? It is explained as each carbonate ion existing as ALL THREE STATES SIMULTANEOUSLY. One carbonate ion doesn't rapidly switch states, one carbonate ion is three at once. There's your impossible Trinity for you, building your cement walkways and housing your oysters.

http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2006/07/24/the-trinity-examples-in-real-life/

It is substance and evidence such as these which cause me to have 'faith' in the claims of Christianity. Rather than evading logic, as you put it, apologetics relies heavily on it. "Because God said so in the Bible" is the LAST thing an apologist wants to hear being used as a defense!

Dig deep enough, and you'll find that there are already explanations and reasoned replies to many of the allegations of irrationality you can throw at Christianity. The thinkers and tehologians haven't been doing nothing in 2000 years of criticisms, you know. Many of the defensive arguments actually make good sense. Honest.

I do not deny that all too often, religious believers act in an utterly irrational manner (and please, don't just lump all the various religions under one generic and undifferentiated umbrella). But neither are all modern believers uneducated, medieval career warriors who have never read an actual Bible yet bow to the political power of the Pope when he sends them off to conquer Jerusalem.

A religious person can have close his eyes and have 'faith' that his beliefs are true... But a mature, proper and responsible Christian faith includes the application of logic, reason, and evidence (as Jesus put it, loving God with all the mind as well as the heart).

That is the Christian application of faith. Think what you will, but IMHO, I am no sheep-ized moron. I pride myself in continuing the tough struggle to show that my belief in the unseen is - horror of horrors - reasonable.

To paraphrase a remark of G K Chesterton, if you say "I will believe Mr. Smith's fiance called him a periwinkle only if she repeats the endearment in the presence of a psychologist", you are certainly using the scientific method impeccably -- and you will never know what sort of things Mr. Smith's fiance likes to say to him.

The arguments ... well, not for God's existence, rather against the naturalistic monism of Dawkins, Wilson, Hitchens, et alii, are actually excellent examples of logic. They just don't happen to be subject to empirical tests; and Dawkins, Wilson, Hitchens, et alii refuse to recognize that logical arguments exist where empirical tests do not apply. It's just this refusal that makes The God Delusion a trivial book, and Wilson's study of cultural evolution beside the point.

The real issue is, whether it's possible to give a complete account of the cosmos as we know it to be, without at some point appealing to something outside the cosmos, and thus not scientifically falsifiable. If that is possible, Dawkins, Wilson, Hitchens, et alii are vindicated. But I am convinced that it is not.

What do happen to be the current accepted causative agent and originating substance of the universe, beyond 'The universe was formed from nothing because of nothing'?

It hurts my brain to try and visualise the concept of whatever existed/did not exist before the universe was formed from the Big Bang. Similar to when I tried to grapple with the question, how did God come about if He created everything?

The insanity I mentioned is, I admit, compounded by my own belief in God, which includes my personal belief that it is not possible for any man or men to accurately speak for, translate, or quote God. Especially over time, serious credibility issues arise.

A human need (for spirituality) tends to become confused with another human need (for authority). I don't believe they are the same, nor do I see any reason to make them so.

You haven't read Hitchens, you don't know the Bible as well as you think, and you justify faith by worldly means. I'll repeat that I don't care where the universe came from, and that evolution doesn't refute gods. And I'll repeat again that religions are stupid, primitive things compounded of illogic, fear, ritual, and wishful thinking. None of that amounts to an argument.

If there were any gods, why would they allow children to be brutalized, raped, and murdered, but let my father find his wallet by praying to St. Anthony? Why would they reveal themselves in weeping statues and devastating storms? So that you could prove to be better than me by accepting that which is unseen?

This is madness.

If your god needs advocates like G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis then I pity him his weakness. But if there were some god out there (whatever a god is supposed to be) it can not care to be known, or it can not be worth knowing.

Unless faith is confused with knowledge, I don't see how there can be any real "knowing" of God.

Felicia,Skye counselor discernment.themes Sunbelt!flats.... Thanks!!!

Felicia,Skye counselor discernment.themes Sunbelt!flats.... Thanks!!!

"Why would [gods] allow children to be [etc.]" is, itself, a weak existential argument leaning on sheer incredulity, rather than warranted belief of some kind.

Incredulity regarding a number of physical facts in this remarkable world is no less readily come by in a world where warranted beliefs are lacking.

As for religion's need for apoogists, it's not Christianity that needs Chestertons. It's everything but Christianity that does.

;-)

Eric: "A human need (for spirituality) tends to become confused with another human need (for authority). I don't believe they are the same, nor do I see any reason to make them so."

Hm. Tell me, then: what are the objects to which these two desires, for the numinous and the moral, are properly directed? And if, in some situation, they are not only different but incompatible, which takes priority over the other, and why?

Michael, a question like that is too vast and openended to answer in a comment, or even a blog post. What I am saying is that not all of us have spiritual yearnings, and not all of us have a need for external authority. I speak only for myself when I say that I see spirituality as a personal search to explain the unknown, and I see morality as an internal (not external) process. The problem comes when people try to project their own needs onto others, and I try not to do that. I recognize that many people want an external authority with specific rules and laws, but I just don't see it as relating to spirituality or God. Morality is for me a matter of personal conscience.

Don't most social contracts assume that some needs are universal, and hence properly projected universally by everyone? This could be the fallacy of the beard; "is this one such need?" -- with people disagreeing on whether it is. But it's not proper to say that the problem exists just where people thus project, because the problem only appears where people disagree on whether a particular thing should be projected. In cases of universal assent, I'd think these same folk would be damn glad of universal projection, instead of saying that's just where the problem lies.

Something like that. ;-)

Eric, some people are blind, and others are deaf. Should we conclude from this that light and sound are only internal processes, and that if two people experience different lights and sounds, they cannot have seen and heard the same external object?

You guys should go to graduate school somewhere in the humanities or social sciences. You could have a ball saying nothing all day long.

Perceptions vary.

Which is why (regardless of anyone's opinion on deities) I think it is inherently unreasonable to maintain that some people are charged with knowing (and speaking for or quoting) God, while others aren't.

OK, you can hand me my Ph.D. now, Dennis.

If you don't, how 'bout if I just say you did? Or that someone said someone else did!

"I think it is inherently unreasonable to maintain that some people are charged with knowing (and speaking for or quoting) God, while others aren't."

I'm not sure how perceptions varying leads to the unreasonableness of it. Intelligence varying, or epistemologies varying, or hearing ability varying, or language skills varying -- all of these would seem to be little different in their logical bearing on the question. Which either means that the notion is insanely improbable, or that there's something wrong with the litany of candidate objections.

Perhaps that perceptions vary is an objection to any conclusions one might draw from that perceptions vary. ;-