[belluchan]

How do you "experiment" with atheism? Just saying to yourself "I'm now an atheist" and seeing how that feels? It doesn't sound like you ever had solid rational and empirical reasons for choosing atheism, and indeed that is the only kind of atheist that I've ever heard of turning to the supernatural.

Atheists like me are atheists not because the quality of life it provides, but because there's no empirical evidence that there's any truth to any of the supernatural claims ever made. We understand that faith is a choice of last resort when no other evidence is available, and that faith is a really bad way to come to conclusions. Atheists like me understand our inherent biases, we seek to ask questions in a way that there can be a negative answer. There is no such negating answer to "what would convince me there is no god" and that alone, in the absence of any kind of empirical evidence for the existence of a supernatural entity, should be enough to not be a believer.

The truth is whatever the truth is, and I want to believe reality no matter how it makes me feel. If it feels good to believe in magical things that care about us but those magical things aren't real then I don't want to believe in them.

The litany of Tarski is useful:

If the box contains a diamond,

I desire to believe that the box contains a diamond;

If the box does not contain a diamond,

I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond;

Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

[sdegutis]

By "experiment" I mean I started questioning whether or not it was true, debating with my peers about it (either for or against).

I ultimately settled on agnosticism because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If there was a God who chose to never reveal (or even hint at) his existence to humanity, it would be incorrect for a person to be an atheist. Since that's a legitimate possibility, it makes more sense to be agnostic than atheist.

[belluchan]

So what evidence did you eventually find to turn to God if it's not a feelings/faith based thing?

[belluchan]

I can't reply to you directly. Why is your faith not blind or unreasoning? Can you give me just one specific example of empirical evidence for God's existence? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I'm guessing you're going to give me some unverifiable testimony from people who died long ago and expect that to have a person question heaps of contrary empirical evidence. I don't think that works.

And you are resorting to faith because the evidence isn't good enough. The evidence that explain the things that I believe in, like the existence of this computer in front of me, don't require any faith at all.

[sdegutis]

I've found that you can reply directly by clicking the [link] link, which gives you a reply box.

"The evidence that explain the things that I believe in, like the existence of this computer in front of me, don't require any faith at all."

Not so. You have faith in what your parents told you about the circumstances of your birth. You have no memory of the first year of your life, so it could very well have been made up. But you believe it by faith mixed with reason.

[belluchan]

In this case that's not me using faith, that's using a heuristic. A heuristic is a decent substitute for empirical research, but it is not foolproof. We use heuristics to save time. If we had to do empirical research for everything in our lives we would never have time to do anything.

A heuristic is a way to ascertain information quickly. In the case of my birth, there's all kind of evidence to back up my parent's stories including photos, the investment and time spent in raising me. None of this is foolproof evidence, but it's enough to pass my heuristic for this situation. And there are measures I can take to get physical empirical evidence, like a DNA test.

The question of who my parents have can be phrased in this way and have an answer "the people who claim to be my parents are not actually my parents if a DNA test disputes their claims."

Please I encourage you to phrase a question as I have for your belief in God. Something like "I would not believe in God if X were true." Fill in the X.

[sdegutis]

Following your formula and your DNA example, "I would not believe in God if the New Testament were not true."

[sdegutis]

> I'm guessing you're going to give me some unverifiable testimony from people who died long ago and expect that to have a person question heaps of contrary empirical evidence.

Read the related chapter in The Handbook of Christian Apologetics[1] for reasons why the Gospel stories are reliable eyewitness accounts.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Christian-Apologetics-Peter-K...

[belluchan]

When it comes to claims that attempt to discount an insurmountable mountain of physical evidence you yourself can verify, there is no such thing as reliable eyewitness accounts, especially not from people who died eons ago. It's obvious you are not applying sound reasoning. Would you say it's sound reasoning to convict a man cleared by DNA tests for murder when there are witness accounts from living people? Think about this maybe. You're applying a wholly uneven standard of importance to one kind of evidence because of faith. And you resort to faith because the evidence is not good enough. You resort to faith because you want to. Given all that we know about the universe, you are clearly making the wrong choice.

I may not convince you, but again, you are exactly what I thought you were, a person who relies on faith to believe in God. Faith is a bad way to come to believe in things. For example Muslims believe Muhammad was the last prophet, Mormons believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. Both rely on faith, but clearly both can not be right. You would not use faith to answer questions in everyday life, because you would not do well.

[sdegutis]

The book I mentioned refutes this argument you're making. Why don't you read it?

[sdegutis]

Here's a good short article on the Resurrection of Jesus[1].

[1]: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12789a.htm

[belluchan]

These are all witness accounts from superstitious people who died long ago. Nothing listed is verifiable. This is not good evidence. Witness accounts from dead people should not be enough to discount the mountains of empirical evidence that imply that resurrection after having been dead for three days is not possible.

[sdegutis]

I disagree. The following document explains my reasoning:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04503a.htm

[sdegutis]

If it could be explained in a HN comment, I think there would be many more Christians in the world. That's why there are whole books written on the subject. The only one I still own is The Handbook of Christian Apologetics[1][2] so that's the only one I can recommend.

But it does require some faith, just not blind or unreasoning faith, as most people seem to think.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Christian-Apologetics-Peter-K...

[nbouscal]

There's no other kind of faith. Faith literally means "belief without evidence."

[sdegutis]

That's not my definition of faith. But let's not get hung up on semantics and disagreements about definitions.

The point I was making is that there is a good deal of evidence, but it also requires a little belief in something that you can't absolutely prove.

[nbouscal]

I don't want to debate with you; I've done more than my share of religious debates in my life and no longer find any joy in them. I also completely agree that debating definitions is rarely useful. I will point out, though, that nobody claims to have faith that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or that the sky is blue. "Faith" connotes a leap; I understand that as a leap from the evidence to the conclusion, covering a gap that cannot be covered by logical reasoning. It's that leap that I take issue with, regardless of which word you choose to label it with.

You've repeatedly recommended a book of apologetics throughout the thread. If I could make a recommendation in turn: Critique of Religion and Philosophy, by Walter Kaufmann. I think it can give you much to think about, and from a reasonably friendly perspective.

[sdegutis]

I should also point out that, after my initial conversion to Christianity, "how I feel about it" is basically not a factor in what I believe.

There are many times when I felt miserable and strongly wished I wasn't a Christian anymore. But I couldn't just choose to disbelieve in something that my research had convinced me was objectively true.