I think that i was once in camp 4, but then it seemed to me that, continuing your analogy, other camp ‘grounds’ – where the tents of those who do not believe in God interact with each other as the Christians in this campground do – were not so far away. Maybe even just the next campground over. And the people here in their tents looked equally divided in their passions and opinions. And at this point, I tell myself that I have found the fullest view of all the campgrounds, from where I can say, “Ah, so this is human activity and striving!” Sort of like the person in the story of the blind men and the elephants who can actually see the whole elephant to give us the moral of the story.

But of course, even at that point, at what I think would be be a unique and privileged vantage point, I find yet again that the place is crowded with people pitching different tents.

It’s really interesting how some of these issues matter for some people and not for others, as you point out. For all of the people who think evolution is irrelevant to the things that REALLY matter, there are just as many who think that the question of an Personal God or an afterlife are just as irrelevant to what really matters for them.

Maybe at the heart of the matter is the question of how we resolve things that seem to have real stakes in our lives but at the same time remain so endlessly debatable, so seemingly NOT grounded on anything universally verifiable, and which we consequently cannot seem to really say anything that is indisputable or uniquely true. Like how it seems that the sayings “Distance makes the heart grow fonder” and “Out of sight, out of mind” are equally true – opposed to each other, but equally real.

In a somewhat similar way, I am compelled to different degrees by both sides of the debate over whether the precise natural laws of the universe and the phenomenon that life perpetuates itself could not exist without a Cause. On one hand, I can see how it seems too specific, too improbable, to be random, but on the other hand, I can see how it could be equally justified as being something more like the example of walking past a row of license plate numbers in a packed parking garage and wondering how we stumbled upon these numbers, exactly and in this order, among the virtually infinite possibilities of numbers that could have been encountered.

But even beyond this, a whole array of such unanswerable questions arise. When I consider the question of evolution, I have to consider the question of a Creator, but then in the question of the Creator, there is the question of whether or not he is a Personal Creator… At every step of the way, a whole new door (or campground) of uncertainty opens up. And if i were locked in a bathroom like you, or similarly on some freezing mountain path and i had to choose between a forking path, i would probably choose macroevolution and lean away from divine agency, not even to mention a Personal God – but I could not disallow the other views with some kind of dismissive absolute certainty.

But how do we still arrive at such different conclusions? i don’t know. i feel like i have inklings, from books, from certain authorities i have come to carry in my mind and life, from my own experiences and reasoning… and to me, like i’m sure to everyone else, it FEELS certain that i know at least a LITTLE more about what reality is… but I don’t know.

Somewhere along the line, contending groups seem to make either stance a stake of TRUE membership, while others (like myself) would argue that maybe they are all questions that we can be comfortably agnostic about for now… like the Higgs Boson or string theory, even when a deeper level of knowledge about these things would provide important clues of our very existence. At some point, one community would attach severe life-and-death, or at least, just social, stakes attached to other contending communities divided by the questions of baptism, communion, predestination, etc. – though these matter less today.

In the end I guess I can only continue to argue the case that makes sense to me so far, acknowledging only that we be civil, and that there seems to be this kind of upper limit of certainties on what we can know about these things, at least for now.

Sorry for the length of this.

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?