@ghost-of-a-duke said
I was clear in what I posted. I'm afraid you are on your own in understanding it.

I get it you have decided that anything that may lead to an acknowledgement of God is on par with the tooth fairy right out of the box. No reasoning required!

@ghost-of-a-duke said
At first glance perhaps, but look a little closer and one is based on something out of one's control (as we can not force ourselves to believe something) while the other is based on choice.

Whereas I can choose to accept or reject something I perceive as real, I can not choose whether or not to believe in something I am fundamentally unconvinced by.

If you are talking about a choice to believe something you know is true, then it isn't a belief, no belief is required. If your understanding is faulty and what you accept by choice is about an error, then your choice to believe puts you in error.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Why bother responding to my posts if you are not going to make any effort to address what I have written? You are wasting both our time.

Well knowing our conversation topics are on par with the tooth fairy with you, I plan on being more selective.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Why bother responding to my posts if you are not going to make any effort to address what I have written? You are wasting both our time.

I responded maybe not to your liking.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
You simply haven't read my posts correctly. Not all atheists have rejected God out of hand. I know that suits your argument to say that, but it simply isn't true.

What of an atheist who has seriously explored religion (and not rejected out of hand) but still comes away not believing in God?

I have read your posts, and I am not talking about a religion when I speak about Christianity those that are, seeing only people in it, miss it completely. Anyone can be devout and do all the right things and be as far from God as anyone else including an Atheist. Religion without God is as void of God as any Atheist with respect to Christ, may as well be a country club.

From inside any dead religious faith (without Jesus Christ) speaking even good doctrine it is void of who is required, with out God it’s just talking and doing religious exercises in Jesus name.

So you comparing Christ to Santa may make sense if you have only seen dead people walking around doing things in Jesus name. The term being dead in our sins describes us in this life, not just after we die.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Have 'you' rejected Santa Claus? Have 'you' rejected the Tooth fairy?

If I accepted God existed, but rejected him, fair enough. But If I genuinely believed (as I do) that God did not exist, then there is nothing there to reject. - It could perhaps be argued that I have rejected the notion of God, but to reject God directly I would have to believe there was something there to reject. (Which I don't).

You are comparing Jesus Christ to Santa Claus and the Tooth fairy, you know the history of each of those and I ask you are you aware of anyone coming to believe in either of those with the historical information about them?

Difficult to take your judgment seriously in that comparison considering Jesus Christ is such an important figure we measure time BC AD due to Him. The world has changed due to His life and teachings, where His birth, life, death, and resurrection has millions turning their lives over to Him.

So comparing Christianity to Tooth fairy and Santa so you can reject Christ out of hand as if they were comparable is pathetic.

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Have 'you' rejected Santa Claus? Have 'you' rejected the Tooth fairy?

If I accepted God existed, but rejected him, fair enough. But If I genuinely believed (as I do) that God did not exist, then there is nothing there to reject. - It could perhaps be argued that I have rejected the notion of God, but to reject God directly I would have to believe there was something there to reject. (Which I don't).

Which is my point, your rejection is your reason to reject everything that could show you that you are wrong. No need to take anything seriously you have rejected out of hand!

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Is disbelief the same as rejection?

If I am, for example, unconvinced of the existence of the yeti, and despite genuine interest and study of the yeti still come away not believing he actually exists, can it be said I have rejected him?

Edit: I asked Joseph a variation of this question a few days ago and he said he had to give it some thought. (Not seen much of him since then).

If you are maintaining your disbelief by rejecting what may cause you to change your mind they are no different from one another, one simply represses/suppresses truth to maintain your stance.

You may look into everything yeti turning over every rock to find out what you need to know and still reject him, but if you have some questions that you ignore, belittle, or reject out of hand that is something else, that is rejecting with the propose to maintaining your disbelief, not examine each point completely.

@suzianne said
Even those who reject him?

Where's the sense in that?

The righteousness God gives is due to Jesus and it is exclusive to Jesus, not everyone believes in Him. I'm sure however some have made up their own personal Jesus that only does what they want Him to do, instead of doing what God wants, because God is God and we are not.

Romans 3:21-26

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

@suzianne said
Try again.

What I said was, "both can be right".

The two sides are not "in direct conflict". One happened. We have the proof. What is not provable is that "Goddidit". But it is still true. God left no proof (except for personal accounts) so that people can still choose to not believe in Him. Therefore, the only way to achieve this is if the provable facts ...[text shortened]... t, but "facts is facts". And by the same token, ruling out God is one of the bigger follies of man.

If they are in conflict no, they cannot be both right, if they are not in conflict of course they can both be right.

@moonbus said
Let's start with the age of the universe, shall we? The preponderance of evidence indicates it is billions of years old, not merely thousands, and that contradicts a whole lot of what you believe. Let's look at the phenomena of life, shall we? The preponderance of evidence indicates that primitive life forms appeared first, and that complex ones appeared later, millions of ye ...[text shortened]... er science is wrong, or the literal interpretation of the Bible is wrong, they cannot both be right.

I question your preponderance of evidence, you have NO IDEA how old it is, and even if it's thousands or billions of years old that isn't a debatable point, we simply do not know and that isn't even the main question. It can be billions of years old and God did it or thousands of years old and God did it, it can be either one so no matter how old it is that doesn't rule out God.

The phenomena of life, again, you have no idea how old the earth is, it doesn't matter, claiming billions of years old, I can grant you that, and it does not help your case one wit. Some of the processes in life are time-sensitive something requires the correct action after a reaction to occur, adding billions of years doesn't help an issue that has hours to get right or start over.

Suggesting we see simpler life in what we call older (cannot prove) time periods in life doesn't mean anything we see simpler life in the here and now. If you want to base all of your reasons to believe on our ability to say how old something is, you are doing so on faith, evolution did it. None of that addresses all of the complex work in life that we see taking place with the timing, nothing about the evolutionary theory suggests foreknowledge or understanding to come up with necessary mutations to handle changes in the environment in a life-friendly manner, again faith.

You have no mechanism that can explain how the instructions in life got there, and if you want to play word games on how we describe all of the processes in life that follow distinct patterns of act, and reactions, give me your terminaologies of choice.

@suzianne said
And even yet, both can be right.

Edit: I'm convinced that people who pick just one of the two and insist that's the way it was, just want to fight. Just acknowledging that both can be true goes a long way towards reducing the aggravation.

With two answers that are in direct conflict with each other, you are correct they both cannot be right; however, they both can be wrong. So without bias, we need to look at the most reasonable non-contradictory answer to find what best fits. Reducing aggravation doesn't come into play, that is just accepting a point of view to get along it is not seeking the truth in any manner. Consensus is not a measure of truth, only how many are going along to get along, accepting because they don't want to think about it, fear, greed, etc. Human feelings don't play a part, we don't feel our way into truth, not suggesting you are saying that.

@moonbus said
Your fixation on origins is noted. We don’t have to know who the first person was who invented chess (chaturanga) in order to know how to play chess now, or to fathom the deepest principles of strategy. We don’t have to know how or where the first salt crystal formed in order to know how salt crystals form now or what the properties of salt are. We can study the laws of natur ...[text shortened]... life”, including life which is conscious of itself, must occur with 100% certainty. No God required.

If you don’t know how it begins then you can only look at the current processes and see what they do. This creates an huge gap in understanding about the whole system, leaving great holes in our ability to reason out cause and effect! To borrow another’s analogy having a mechanic with perfect knowledge of a Ford engine does not dismiss the need for Henry Ford.

@moonbus said
“For every question there is an answer which simple, neat, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

EDIT But if simplicity is what twiddles your diddle, the SIMPLEST answer is: no origin and no God, the universe existed forever.

To your edit, no, the simple answer to the universe's existence is it exists because God created it, simple is not an eternal uncaused one that has in it rules about entropy where everything is winding down and degrading. Neither did it create itself out of nothing, your simple answer is much more complex than God did it.

@moonbus said
Yes, quite. and the quality of right and true answers depends on the evidence for them, not on whether anyone happens to believe them.

The trouble with this assessment is, that if we rang a bell for every right answer we identified, we would only be ringing it due to confirmation bias. If someone says something we think is true we would ring it. Truth, and correctness, wouldn't matter only consensus. This is why logic is so important, we cannot have 'truth' that contradicts other things we know are truthful, if that occurs we have issues with something we believe to be true when it is not.