Faith is the issue

[Inevitable Droid]

Did he ever indicate what his view would be should all evidence in the universe also turn against the Bible actually being the Word of God?

Only vaguely, as far as I know, in that he says this in the same article: "It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution."

Or give any indication as to the evidence he would currently cite for believing it is?

He cites his personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

I sometimes wonder about a fanciful scenario.  As background, I'll cite this: "Jay G. Williams writes: "It is this emphasis [on one central shrine], in particular, which has led scholars to identify Deuteronomy as the scroll of the law found in the Temple during the reign of King Josiah in the seventh century. According to II Kings 22-23 this scroll led Josiah to initiate a reform of the religion of Judah which, in particular, involved the destruction of all places of sacrifice except the Temple in Jerusalem. Since only Deuteronomy, of all the books of the Torah, calls for such a reform and since it is inconceivable that such an important book of the law would have been lost after Josiah's time, it is likely that the identification of Deuteronomy as the discovered scroll is correct. The fact that Deuteronomy often reflects both the language and the thought of the eighth century prophets helps to confirm this identification." (Understanding the Old Testament, p. 137)"

Source: http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/deuteronomy.html

Now imagine that somehow it was demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the scroll of the Law described above was secretly deposited in the Temple by scheming Babylonians with the express intention of destabilizing Jewish society by inciting religious conflict.  Would Kurt Wise and others like him begin to doubt that Deuteronomy, at least, was the Word of God?

Probably not.

[metaed]

As an atheist, but a former theist, I think I can offer insight into Christian faith, and I would say it is not at all "indifferent to evidence".

Many people point to Hebrews 11 as the definition of Christian faith (believing in the unseen), but actually the definition comes in Hebrews 10: "Let us keep firm in the hope we profess, because the one who made the promise is trustworthy." Christian faith is simply the courage to put fear aside and persevere in trust of someone known to be trustworthy. This is the crucial bit. Belief depends on evidence of God's fidelity to his chosen people---the empty tomb, the Passover, and the like.

This was very much reflected in what my Christian friends taught me. They offered what they considered historical evidence. They offered historical defenses of the reliability of the Bible. They offered arguments such as: Jesus claimed to be God; if he isn't God, then he was either a liar or a nut; his sayings are not the works of a liar or a nut; therefore, Jesus is God. In short, they offered evidence and reason to believe. It is only AFTER conversion that faith comes into it, and even then it simply has to do with having the courage of your convictions.

And this was the downfall of the attempts to convert me. Ultimately I weighed the evidence and the reasons, and found them completely inadequate to support a belief that the Bible was reliable. It became clear that the evidence was strongly on the side of the Bible being a purely human construction.

Furthermore, I disagree that "atheists reject faith". We routinely rely on trustworthy sources. And that is all that faith is. And we don't do so blindly, any more than Christians do. We are concerned about the trustworthiness of our sources, and if we find them unreliable, we abandon them.

I think what distinguishes a person who relies on God from a person who relies on the scientific method is simply a lack of education. As Feynman pointed out, we are easily fooled and the easiest person to fool is yourself. A person who is educated about the ways in which we fool ourselves, and how we can guard against that, is probably not going to remain a Christian for very long. But rather than abandoning faith altogether, such a person will simply find more reliable sources of truth to put their faith in.

[Gawen]

Do human thoughts, and senses, accurately relate to reality?

Solipsism...*yawn*
Let me whack you with a baseball bat, then, you tell me that it wasn't real and that I didn't do that to you. Or,
Take the Yahzi patented Baseball Bat Test (TM):

Step 1. Obtain a baseball bat.

Step 2. Fix your mind firmly on the notion that reality is just an illusion.

Step 3. Strike yourself in the head with the bat until step 2 is no longer possible.

Trusting in the mind or the senses because there is no reason not to, may be no more reasonable than distrusting them because there is no reason to trust them.

Well, first, tell us a time when a 'normal' person shouldn't trust their senses because there is no reason to. Actually, the statement "There is no reason to trust your senses." is just idiotic.

Either trust, however, is faith, and one faith is the beginning while the other is the end.

The words "trust" and Faith" are not mutually inclusive. They are separate words with different meanings. Trying to shoehorn the two together is simply...wrong.

Knowledge accordingly is belief;

Belief is confidence of/in something not immediately susceptible to proof. Knowledge is an acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation gained by sight, experience, or report (senses); or sexual intercourse, depending on how archaic one is...*chucklin*. So...

All alleged knowledge of matters of fact is faith only,

only counts for a theist. The error or deception here is to imply that everything (knowledge) is a matter of faith. This would include a scientific statement; one supported by evidence marshaled forth the way scientists do in support of their scientific claims, is a matter of faith. To use 'faith' in such a broad way is to strip it of any theological significance the term might otherwise have. It is bad form...
Such a conception of faith treats belief in all non-empirical statements as acts of faith. Therefore, belief in the external world, belief in the law of causality, or even fundamental principles of logic such as the principle of contradiction or the law of the excluded middle, would be acts of faith from your point of view. A view that I do not share. It is profoundly deceptive and misleading about lumping together as acts of faith such things as belief in the Virgin birth and belief in the existence of an external world or in the principle of contradiction and trivializes religious faith by putting superstitions, fairy tales, and delusions of all varieties, and all empirical and non-empirical claims in the same category as religious faith.

Christianity is not a belief, it is a faith. It requires no proof (proof implies doubt, doubt is a sin, faith is a virtue) it needs no evidence to support it.

I'm not going to bother with the rest of your post. I've had enough with the first paragraph.

[tunghaichuan]

Relevant to what this thread is about, I quote here Kurt Wise, who has a PhD in geology and is a well known creationist: "As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turned against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate."

Source: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/isd/wise.asp

IOW: "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's already made up."

[metaed]

imagine that somehow it was demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the scroll of the Law described above was secretly deposited in the Temple by scheming Babylonians with the express intention of destabilizing Jewish society by inciting religious conflict.  Would Kurt Wise and others like him begin to doubt that Deuteronomy, at least, was the Word of God?

Or imagine archaeologists finding a genuine letter to the faithful that casts doubt upon the accepted Gospel.

[Inevitable Droid]

They offered arguments such as: Jesus claimed to be God; if he isn't God, then he was either a liar or a nut; his sayings are not the works of a liar or a nut; therefore, Jesus is God.

OK, I guess that's evidence, after a fashion, but it's flimsy.  The only evidence we have that Jesus existed is the same book being defended on the basis that he existed.  The only evidence we have that he said reasonable things is the same book being defended by the fact that he said reasonable things.  It's circular.

Comparing scriptural authority to scientific authority, moreover, is an insult to science.  Anything a scientist says can be double-checked by running the same experiment, performing the same calculations, going out to the same stretch of wilderness and observing the same beasts.  Scientific claims can be falsified.  Scriptural claims cannot.

I think what distinguishes a person who relies on God from a person who relies on the scientific method is simply a lack of education.

I wish that were the case, since education would then provide the antidote.  But there are Christians with doctorates, even doctorates in science.

The difference between theists and atheists resides in what they revere.  Theists revere what they imagine.  Atheists revere logic and falsifiability.  Come to think of it, imagination probably resides in the opposite brain hemisphere from logic and empiricism.  The difference may have to do with which hemisphere is dominant in the particular individual.

[metaed]

Theists revere what they imagine.  Atheists revere logic and falsifiability.

I think we agree on this point, but we may not agree on which comes first. I think you've described how theists become atheists. At least I hear this story over and over again from people who left religion. They "get" why they believe weird things---they realize how gullible they are, and learn how to arm themselves against it, and then as a consequence they fall out of religion. You're right that there are some PhD scientists who are Christian, but the real story is that they're a minority. Scientists are much less religious than other people, and I think that's an effect of their education. And yes, a person's self concept can be so tied up in their beliefs that they persist in cognitive dissonance rather than fall out of them. Education is not going to reach some people.

[Inevitable Droid]

Theists revere what they imagine.  Atheists revere logic and falsifiability.

I think we agree on this point, but we may not agree on which comes first.

Are you saying that being atheist precedes coming to revere logic and falsifiability, rather than the latter preceding the former?  That wouldn't describe me.  But I guess someone could be atheist because they don't revere what they imagine, or, perhaps, because they don't imagine.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My own deconversion came first by thinking that the idea of god is bullshit, and only later by understanding the reasoning behind that point.  My intuition was certainly ahead of my logic at that point.

It was only five or so years later that I understood that rationality ought to be pre-eminent above atheism, and applied generally through my life, rather than restricted to my religious views.

[Inevitable Droid]

My own deconversion came first by thinking that the idea of god is bullshit, and only later by understanding the reasoning behind that point.  My intuition was certainly ahead of my logic at that point.

This topic of intuition interests me.  My own intuition gets triggered now and then, and tells me things that stop me in my tracks.  But I have always taken what it told me as a hypothesis to be tested, empirically if feasible, but at least logically.  Treating intuition's message as knowledge in itself never occurred to me.  Doing so would be to treat my brain as a mysterious revelation machine; I.e., as something like God.  Nevertheless, when my intuition has told me things about real people and what they might be doing, thinking, or feeling, and I have tested the hypothesis, it has proven accurate consistently.  I still do the test, however.  To not do it would be intellectual treason.

It was only five or so years later that I understood that rationality ought to be pre-eminent above atheism, and applied generally through my life, rather than restricted to my religious views.

Interesting.  I was scientarian first, and only as a result, atheist.  Between adopting scientarianism and adopting atheism, a long phase of study and thought intervened.  I eventually concluded that scientarianism in itself precluded supernaturalism of any stripe.  Supernaturalism, for a scientarian, is (to use the term a second time) intellectual treason.  On principle I restricted my logic to naturalistic systems of thought.

During my intervening phase of study and thought, I actually considered worshipping Crom!    (I interpret Robert E. Howard's Crom, the God of Conan, as symbolizing natural selection.)

[Inevitable Droid]

It's become increasingly clear to me that the crucial difference between most theists and most atheists is epistemological.  Here's my epistemology: "Empiricism and logic, with intuition as a powerful source of hypotheses, are the sole path to knowledge."  Few theists would agree with that.  Few atheists would disagree.

If two people agree on epistemology, they can debate most any topic fruitfully.  If they disagree on epistemology, they will never get anywhere with any debate unless and until they debate epistemology itself, and reach some resolution or compromise that both can buy into.

[Achronos]

I think reason together with faith can discover truth.

[Inevitable Droid]

I think reason together with faith can discover truth.

You and I uphold different epistemologies and will never agree on anything philosophical unless we first agree on a compromise epistemology we can both buy into.  Incidentally, that was the original point of this whole thread, and it is even clearer to me now than when I brought this thread into being.  Unfortunately, I have no hope of us ever agreeing on a compromise epistemology that we can both buy into.  You would have to convince me that faith has some sort of utility on the path to knowledge, or I would have to convince you that it has none.  Neither is going to happen.

[Davin]

I think reason together with faith can discover truth.

I agree with you, faith and reason can discover the truth, but the scientific method will discover the truth. Instead of "can", "will" is more powerful, because once one does discover the truth with the scientific method, only those that don't understand the theory and/or deny the evidence will not accept it (or even worse, reject it).

The problem isn't whether truth can be reached through a process, it's whether you can trust that the process will only lead to truth. Faith ensures that one cannot be sure that the conclusion they come to is the truth, while the facts, logic and testing require a conclusion to be the truth (or at least as close to the truth as is humanly possible).

When someone asks me how I know something, I can explain it, teach it, test it, demonstrate it and verify test results with others. Faith only allows one to guess and find other people kind of guessing the same thing for verification. But faith is still just a guess based on nothing factual, demonstrable or independently verifiable.

[Achronos]

Science is not truth; rather, it is our best observation to date. Humans are not, nor will they ever be, omniscient. In every theory there is room for error. Any good scientist is open to the idea that there may be another later who contradicts his theory. Any scientist who doesn't is simply arrogant. Theory is the very goal of the scientific method! Contrary to what you may believe about science, it is not about proclaiming facts except as these facts are necessary for the articulation of theories to explain these facts.

When new scientific discoveries are made, for example new interpretations of Genesis must be allowed. St. Basil, although he believed in a flat earth, did not think the idea was important for theology. I think we can reconcile the fathers (priests) in this manner, by understanding that they did not have available what we have today. Thus, we have to be more sympathetic towards the Fathers and towards today's scientific discoveries. The more we take the Fathers' and the Bible's words literally, the more we (as Christians) ridicule ourselves and the Faith.

“Some hold the same opinion regarding men that they hold regarding the world itself, that they have always been...And when they are asked, how…the reply that most, if not all lands, were so desolated at intervals by fire and flood, that men were greatly reduced in numbers, and...thus there was at intervals a new beginning made…But they say what they think, not what they know.  They are deceived…by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed.”  Augustine, The City of God, 12.10.