atheists all seem to operate on just as many blind faiths lacking in evidence as the most staunch theists.  the blind faith that humanity knows all there is to know about what is and is not logically possible.  how can anyone claim to know the limits of logical possibility?  

READ THIS FIRST

I thought you guys would like to have an actual philosopher's argument to examine for once, even if he does take several pages out of Plantinga's book. His counter to the parsimony argument (near the end, after the second italicized section) is of particular interest. I need to point out three things first, or the essay won't make sense. (1) He paraphrases naturalists' arguments at two points, which I have italicized. These are NOT his ideas, they are the ideas that he is critiquing. (2) The acronym HADD refers to a "Hypersensitive Agent Detection Device". It is a cognitive faculty that tells you whether an entity has a mind, and as its name suggests, it errs on the side of caution, giving many more false positives than false negatives. (3) This argument is part of a larger paper, which I will a post a link to at the bottom. It is possible that the argument will appear to have more holes than it in fact does, since a couple of important points are covered earlier in the paper. Nevertheless, I think the except I quote here is intended -more or less- to stand on its own.

THE ESSAY

What is the evidence for God's existence?

Answer: "Self-awareness"

Self-awareness is consciousness aware of itself. And what this means is that to be self-aware is to be consciously aware that I am aware that I am aware that I am aware and so forth ad infinitum. There you have it. Self-awareness is consciousness that is simultaneously one mind and many (i.e. infinite). Of course, the conventional term we acribe to infinite mind is "God." This is the proof that infinite mind (God) exists and it is self-evident.

It is written that only "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." (Psalms 53:1) And now you know why. Because only a fool would deny something that is so obviously self-evident. Don't be foolish. Wake-up from your deep slumber and acknowledge your true Self.  

Somebody said my last post was too long and they didn't read it, so here's just an excerpt of my favorite part. It's an argument that I believe is pretty original, though I may be incorrect.

Here's the technical, psychobabble version, followed by a translation:

The principle of identity (that any given thing is itself and not something else entirely; this is fundamental to scientific inquiry) is optimally compatible with the religious mindset over the secular one. For if the secularist wishes to inquire into the nature of the identity principle, he must use it even in his inquiry and thus he loses all objectivity from the start. However the religious may presuppose the principle of identity before all rational inquiry without contradicting himself; for he is already sure that there is something -- a divine something -- who freely chose to create the cosmos according to the principle of identity. Thus for the religious the identity principle is an objective reality which's origins can be traced to the nature of God, whereas for the secularist it is a subjective presupposition which's truth can only be ascertained pragmatically. The identity principle therefore is optimally compatible with the religious mindset over the secular one.

--TRANSLATION--

RationalResponders: Try not to just skip to the three arguments. The rest of the article is interesting too, though perhaps a little wordy.

Alright then.. so.. just a list of words and phrases that I think would be helpful to get some definitions on.  Whether or not we all agree on the definitions, I feel as if the exercise might be enlightening. 

Try to keep it short and serious--heh, which means no "Theism (def) a belief system meant to scare pre-schoolers into abstaining from stealing candy."

And I realize this thread may die a quick death.. but I figured to try anyways.

(1) Theism

(2) Atheism

(3) Belief

(4) Faith

(5) Evidence

(6) Proof

(7) Prove

( Semantics

(9) "Properly Basic"

(10) Non-Contigent Belief

(11) Contigent Belief

(12) Fact

(13) Observable

(14) God

(15) Rational

(16) Irrational

....and, anything else you might think relevant to the discussion. 

Thanks to jcgadfly for thinking of this.  This thread is for anyone to comment on the debate between Eloise and Kevin.  Feel free to say anything you like about the debate in here.

I would like for there to be a gentle..um.. person's agreement between Kevin and Eloise that they either will or will not look at this thread.  It would be an unfair advantage for one to see comments and the other not.

After discussing with a theist their methodology for knowledge of god, they conclude:

"The reason that you think that this "method" is horrible and twisted is because you overgeneralize it's utilization.

It is ONLY to be used in ONE very specific field of study. It is NOT applicable to any other field, and only a VERY SELECTIVE set of intial "truths".

The fact is that this "method" IS in fact extremely dangerous to use on any set of truths (the axiomatic starting points) but those provided by the Church!

THAT is why you are PERFECTLY CORRECT (in all but one case) in considering ANY person who uses this "religious method" to be INSANE and PERVERSE! What you fail to consider is that there IS a single case where this "method" is perectly safe and amazingly enriching.

Since your religion, your set of beliefs, won't allow you to make the distinction between proper use and improper use of the "method", you see (rightly in your blindness) ANY use of the "method" to be utterly harmful, and would prefer that all people see the danger just as you (rightly in your blindness) do."

Can anybody say "special pleading" ?

This is from a thread called "An atheist logical fallacy" over here http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=246867&page=2

I only wish I had the crushing power of a Deludedgod, Todangst or Rook!

So… I’m an Ex-Christian… and what does the mainstream Christian think of this?

I’m sure the reactions are across the board, but here’s what it seems like to me.

They think that we made a ‘conscious’ choice to reject Christ… of course. Jesus said that he would never leave us nor forsake us, so it must have been our ‘fault’ that we abandoned the faith.

The recent 0+0 thread started me thinking about this: One poster in that thread had called Llama to account for the theistic belief that God had created the universe out of nothing. His question didn't get very far (it never has in my experience) and Llama really just shrugged it off. I then began to recollect that I had observed pretty much the same thing happen many times before, so I decided to create a thread dedicated to that specific question. At first I thought it would be a non-starter since all the theists would have to do is appeal to God's omnipotence as an easy out, but, the more I thought about it, the less it seemed to me that theists could get off so easily. The difficult part is that even most theists do not believe that omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically impossible, and I will argue the creation ex nihilo is a logical impossibility.

So, without further a due, my argument:

P1. God cannot do that which is logically impossible (e.g. make a square circle etc.).

P2. To create something out of nothing is logically impossible.