When a Christian is talking about faith, he is talking evidence of things unseen. While I don't see God on a daily basis, I have evidence based on my experience that God is who He says He is, therefore I trust Him and have faith in His promises. Bill had evidence that he had quality guests due to the his experiences with them in the past, therefore he trusted them and had faith it would have a good show. Could he absolutely prove they would be good guests? No. But he had enough evidence to have faith that they would be. Was his faith unreasonable or unreasoned? No. It was sound reasoning, and it turned out to be a good show (if you like bill maher).

When atheists think of faith in God, they think of blind faith (because they don't see any evidence). Christians do see evidence based on their experience with God, just as Bill Maher saw evidence based on his experience with his guests. It doesn't matter if you can see one and not the other; it's the same essential concept. Christians see evidence of God regardless of whether atheists do or not; enough evidence, for me more than sufficient, to place our faith in God. You may believe you have enough evidence that the external world is real, but it isn't something you could absolutely prove. In the end, we are the judge over what is sufficient and what isn't. You can't empirically prove that there is an external reality yet I am sure you feel you have sufficient reason to believe that there is. So empiricism isn't the final word. Ultimately, it is our own standard of evidence which is the determining factor, and the arbitor of where we place our faith.

So I take this to mean that you are truly agnostic about all
non-Christian gods. You will refuse to state unequivocally that there
is a council of 5 supreme beings who created the universe.

No, I will state unequivocally that Jesus is God, and that anyone else claiming to be a god is a pretender to the throne.

You do have me on the trivializing part, because god and a teapot in
space mean about the same to me since there is the same amount of
evidence for both.

I'm looking at the same evidence you are. The difference is in the presuppositions of your worldview. If you took off those glasses then you might start to see what I am talking about. For instance, the Uniformity in nature, how do you explain it?

There is no appearance of design in biological
systems (we made great leaps in understanding biology in the last 100
years or so)

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.

Richard Dawkins
The Blind Watchmaker p.1

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but rather evolved.

Francis Crick Nobel Laureate
What Mad Pursuit p.138 1988

There certainty is the appearance of the design, and these systems were in fact designed, but you say it is simply chance that created these sophisticated and irreducibly complex systems. I say something irreducibly complex cannot have been evolved.

, and the "fine-tuning" of physical laws are easily
explained without a higher being, and so it is not necessary.

They are not easily explained away. It is virtually a mathematical impossibility for the laws to be tuned the way they are. Check this out:



(Any universe without those properties would make life impossible and so we
would never know it existed

If I stood in front of a firing squad of 100 highly trained marksmen and survived the execution without a scratch, I should not be shocked to find out they missed, since if they hadn't, I wouldn't be alive to know that they did. In the same manner, while we shouldn't be shocked we are alive in a life permitting Universe, it doesn't follow that we shouldn't be surprised the Universe in which we find ourselves is life permitting.

, we do not know how many universes exist,
have existed, or can exist, etc.

If there are multiple universes, it just makes the fine tuning problem worse. The fine tuning on the mechanism for the multiple Universe generator would be infinitely more improbable.

If you want to maintain a god of the
gaps you are welcome to, but the natural solutions to every mystery
ever make the future of such a worldview tenuous at best.)

It isn't the God of the gaps when God is the superior explantion for the evidence, such as the information in DNA.

The presence of a supernatural being is, by definition, unfalsifiable.
The concept of a supernatural being is literally meaningless, since
you can say anything about it and not be proven wrong (or right). It
cannot be measured

Is believing in the existence of the external world falsifiable? Is the idea that the Universe began 5 seconds ago and all of your memories are false falsifiable? Is the fact that you cannot falsify either of those ideas make your existence meaningless?

The non-existence of God certainly is falsifiable; He could show up, as in the second coming. God cannot be measured by emprical methodology because God is a Spirit. This doesn't prove He doesn't exist. I notice you didn't answer my question, which is basic..you say you have an open mind, so I ask, if Jesus is God, would you turn your life over to Him and follow Him?

>> ^botono9

The real grounding to analyze this film is the sequence at 14:26. The text comes up stating, "Remember: This is merely a cartoon. None of this is real. This is a purely fictional occurrence, in no way based on reality. This is not happening in this universe or any other. Neither are these words. Neither are you. There is only a silent emptiness spreading infinitely in all directions."

This is the sadness of the piano. All the while, the characters act like its not big deal that they are taking apart this human like being. What the film does is force you to feel empathy for what is going on, relate to this 3d images, which are not 'real'. However, the fact that you can relate to them is what is so disturbing, because the conclusion is that our reality, our 'external world' is itself another virtual 3d image program, merely the one that we are born into without consent.

>> ^dag:

I could use a prescription for Go Fuck Yourself.


That's the generic version of the prescription brand Fukitol.