my entire point from the beginning is that it ALL requires faith. Your belief and mine.
This is where you're wong. No one
has to deny the evidence of reality or valid logic--only the faithful have to do this.
Once again the atheist comes to project a false premise as truth, and to take a stand on those shifting intellectual sands... As usual, your projection is that religion is not founded in evidence and valid logic, and despite your chronic attempt to establish that your position is superior, due to your demand that such rests or the bed rock of valid reasoning, such is demonstrably false.
To wit:
With regard to the Creator; you exist therefore you were created; you did not create yourself, thus there is a Creator which is not you; no one here on this earth created you, therefore the Creator is not of this earth.
Now you'll naturally take the path which you've taken previously and consistantly, that what I define as Creation is merely the biological happenstance; and you'll base this upon your means, or the means of human science, to understand and observe the biological mechanics which are present in the developement of all biologics; mechanics which have been tested and observed. And it is through this means to test thee natural processes that you conclude that such is occuring without the aid and without assistance of any design established by an outside force.
But you've no means to test for such a force, no means to know how to test for such a force, no means to comprehend what such a force would consist of and thus you conclude that the existence of such a force is impossible, due to your inability to observe such.
Nothing logical about that... its a raw demonstration of the appeal to ignorance, wherein you rest your argument upon the ignorance which exist within your inability to recognize such.
You'll now return to rename the outside force with a witticism... such as the great BigMac and large coke force...and demand that such could also exist... Which of course is false, as a Bigmac and Large coke are perfectly observable, and thus readily subject to a test which would easily determine the existance of such... yet where you would then return to assert that you were simply renaming the original force, with an innocuous term, to lesson the perceived authority of such, wherein you'd be right back where you started; as it doesn't matter what name is given to the Creator; the fact remains that science simply is not sufficiently heeled to understand what exist beyond what we, as a species are capable of observing; and it is wholly illogical to relegate as logical any conclusion which rests on such circumstances, asserting such as authoritative, thus providing for the means to render same as illegitimate.
As demonstrated above, faith is founded in facts; and theories exist which reasonably extrapolate from those known facts, projecting hypothesis to explain the unknown; just as is the case in science, which, FTR, historically stems from; and owes its existence to, the same curiosity and the ensuing quest for answers to that which is unknown.
Christianity in no way contests science; and as a church, we do not challenge objective science at ANY LEVEL... We do however vehemently contests the pseudo-sciences, such as Atheism, which exists for no other purpose than to reject our beliefs on the intellectually unsound and logically invalid arguments, such as those you chronically pose.
I will note again that throughout MOST of human history, GRAVITY was not even recognized as a force of any kind; it simply was... The best minds or the collective sum of the brightest minds of humanity could not even fathom that there existed an invisible force which drew their mass to the center of the mass on which they were standing... YET... Gravity existed, long before humanity came along and through to the present; where as a matter of fact, gravity REMAINS largely a mystery...
Only in the theoretical sciences can gravity be explained; and only there, in the theories which hypothesize a mulitverse, do the mathematical calculations which seek to understand it's origins, hold up. I do not pretend to understand, beyond an elementary level, the language of mathematics... but as I understand it; where science has sought to understand the origins of gravity and the elements of such, which differentiate the qualities of conceptually similar qualities of gravity from those of electro-magneticism for example, the mathematical reasoning breaks down very quickly, except where the theoretical hypothesis of the multiverse are applied, at which time they reasoning regains it plausibility. That gravity is a force which originates within a realm of sub-atomic reality, beyond out means of observation.
Now you're reasoning, to remain consistent, would thus be forced to reject gravity... except for the base Newtonian observation that what goes up must come down; as we simply do not understand, nor can we observe much more than the realization of this force, as it plays on our reality; being some form of attraction between bodies of matter.
As to the legitimacy of declaring unproven scientific as fact, you rest your entire argument, with regard to the Creator, on such which is subject to change without notice, and which is not FACT, but stands in every conceivable facet, no more fact than that which you come to declare as FICTION.
Again, those who hyptothesized that gravity is simply a function of atomic attraction, early in the 20th century, stood such as 'fact' for most of that time and through to the present in many, if not most cases; have found that the mathematical consistency does not hold up, except where outside forces that we neither understand, nor can observe are considered. Now many in the scientific community vehemently dispute this mathematical reasoning... and despite the reasoning being sustained well beyond any other theories, many in the scientific community simply have too much invested in other theories to consider such to be viable...
THUS: THE SCIENTIC COMMUNITY IS JUST AS PRONE TO DOGMATIC BELIEF, AS ARE THOSE YOU CONSISTANTLY COME TO LAMENT IN THE "RELIGIOUS" COMMUNITY... proving the point brought by the Gunny... that faith is inevitably a natural function of all... and frankly, this is a result of a distinct lack of options and while some consider it a pyshosis... others consider it a virtue...
I fall into the virtue camp; where as long as the faith is open to the possibilities, it does not bend to every potential alternative, until such can be established through reason. I believe in the Creator... and in the teachings of Christ and the goods news presented through his teachings; as such rests upon immutable reasoning; the principles of which are self sustaining and incontrovertible; representing rare perfection and where such perfection exist... reason requires that it originates from a source far beyond the severely limited means of humanity, who have yet to create a sustained perfection of any kind.
