Thanks for stopping by, taking the time to read my article and post a substantive comment. Despite the differences between us, you are welcome here anytime and will be treated with respect.

You have clearly understood the essence of my point, and I’m not surprised that you found it offensive. My claim is rather outrageous, and there is no unanimity among Christians either on the nature of faith.

I strongly agree with you that, in much of our lives, we come to know and understand the world around us by processing experiential and sensory evidence. Refusing to do so and holding on to opinions that are completely contrary to evidence and logic is a kind of insanity and denial of our human-ness that many of us have been guilty of at one time or another.

I too am glad that FightingAtheist was explicit about the kinds of evidence he wants in order to believe. When I heard him, I did not feel defensive and I did not back down. At earlier points in my life, when I was less secure in my own beliefs, I might have backed down. Or I might have argued with him on his own terms and tried to present him with the kind of evidence that he is demanding. But today I do not accept his terms, because I think he is misunderstanding the nature of (specifically the Christian) faith.

Faith, as I understand it, does arise in part from a rational weighing of experiential evidence gathered by one’s self and others. But there is much, much more to it than that. You have to factor in character, culture, hope and desires, because in large part people (all of us) believe what society tells us to believe and what we want to believe. But there is still more. Beyond that, there is a mysterious quality to faith that makes it like a sixth sense; it comes to us as an unmerited gift. I think that God wants to give everyone that gift, but he presents it to people in different ways at different times in their lives, and he does not force it upon anyone; the gift must be received.

This is what I would say to FightingAtheist: Suppose for a moment that there is a an unmerited supernatural gift that would greatly help you to gather and process knowledge of the supernatural. Would you want to have that gift?

If at any time you would like to write a piece for publication on Seed, send to psuseed@gmail.com and we will be happy to post it.

You can test this hypothesis. In fact, whenever a claim about the way the universe works is made, the first thing we do is test that claim. If I were to make the claim that I had the telepathic ability to read your mind, you would be under no logical obligation to believe my claim on faith — rather, you would immediately propose some sort of challenge to test my ability. (If you would NOT demand evidence of this ability before believing it, by all means speak up.)

You (believers) have made a claim about the way the universe works in the form of one omnipotent deity. Neither I, nor FightingAtheist, nor anybody else with a functional mind is under any sort of logical obligation to believe this claim on faith alone. In fact, doing so is no less insane than believing in my alleged telepathic ability.

FightingAtheist was considerate enough to operationally define the terms of evidence he would personally accept to believe in your deity, and yet rather than meet those terms and actually support your claim, you back down. Surprise, surprise. It’s rather like me telling you “well my psychic abilities can’t be tested, but if you don’t have faith that they exist, then you must be dysfunctional… or DEAD, rather…” It’s rather like when the Willard Preacher says ‘Oh, I can jump over Willard Building, but I can only do it faster than the speed of light, so you won’t be able to see me.’

I’d just like to express my own disgust not only at the blatant cop-out that is this post, but at the outright slander which the poster attempted to use to divert attention from his own deficient argument. I find it morally repugnant that rather than address a valid argument, jls would resort to petty name-calling (”Certainly there are many nonbelievers who are ignorant, misinformed, rebellious, foolish, abused, unloved, desiring to sin, etc. “)

It’s fitting that this blanket attack on a group of people is as unfounded and unsupported by evidence as jls’ deity. Are we to just “have faith” that all atheists are ignorant rebels as well?