Needless to say, I don’t think this is a valid argument, because the premise is unconvincing.

Then we pretty much agree, I think.

Why would it be expected that atheists would have morals if God existed?

If God were the source for a moral reality, disbelieving in God would have as much effect as disbelieving in gravity. Someone who flew in planes and disbelieved in gravity would be being inconsistent but gravity would still affect them just like everyone else.

That’s how I see it, anyway.

The second claim – that atheists are internally inconsistent in claiming to have morals is NOT refuted by atheists having morals, because it would be expected for atheists to have morals in a theistic reality.

I am not certain I follow your logic. Why would it be expected that atheists would have morals if God existed? I was trying to say that from a theists perspective (in which God is the source of all morality), to simultaneously hold that there is no God and to claim to be moral is inconsistent. Needless to say, I don’t think this is a valid argument, because the premise is unconvincing. Apologies for a poorly-constructed post.

@Kenneth:

Because all too often it is the theists position that we don’t have any morals, or that we are internally inconsistent in claiming to have morals. And the fact is, we aren’t more or less moral than theists. Which is why it is so “compelling”, and frustrating, to have to keep validating this point.

The first claim (atheists don’t have any morals) is successfully refuted by the counter-example (atheists are as moral as theists.) The second claim – that atheists are internally inconsistent in claiming to have morals is NOT refuted by atheists having morals, because it would be expected for atheists to have morals in a theistic reality.

As you regress about why some action is morally right or wrong, you are going to get to an end to the regress. It will end with something along the lines of ‘because I / God say so.’ Nothing changes – morals are equally consistent or inconsistent depending on what you mean by morals.

Basically, all theism ever does is shift the perceived problems with atheism to be God’s problems.

Everything got erased!

I’ve learned the hard way to copy everything to the clipboard before I click on anything after I write a long post.

If you use Firefox, it usually keeps everything you typed if you have to hit the ‘back’ button.

I just want to say from this discussion over the past week, I hope you have a clearer picture that rational people can hold to a view that God exists. While we agree to disagree, I do want to thank you all for being gracious hosts to me. But it’s time to move on. Others might not have allowed the plane to get off the ground. You guys allowed it to fly! I see the runway and it’s time to disembark for other things.

I went over some of what’s been said, and at this point, I just feel like we’re spinning wheels. The questions being asked are just reformulations of previous posts and I don’t feel there’s anything to add. The white light of the interrogation light singed my hair, but not my heart

But I think these are all important questions. And as thoughtful beings we ought to consider them all carefully, for, if there is a God, our eternity depends on it!

Trey

P.S. I did it again! But this message hung around. So maybe that was an otherworldly “queue” to end it here. ;P

I’d correct Kenneth’s blockquote, but I don’t want to send a cleartext password over the neighbour’s network.

OK, I went ahead and logged in. (My comment ended up in the spam queue.) As such, my password may have been grabbed by someone in the area. If something goes wacknut on my blog, let me know. I made a backup.

Trey, try to make fewer assumptions? Or try to understand the comments you are replying to? Eg why Ben says the verse you quoted sounds the same to him as “faith is wishful thinking”.

Apologies for that. This is what I was referring to:

Trey, quoting Hebrews: “1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”

Ben: “You take offense when I say faith is wishful thinking and / or bad reasoning and then you quote the Bible saying the exact same thing!”

Trey: “I quote the Bible? Where did I quote the Bible? Please be specific.”

Maybe this is a silly nitpick illustrating that this debate is beyond me, on a higher level than I can enter into right now, however, it illustrates what frustrates me about the conversation. “Where did I quote the Bible?” Well, right there, the very piece that Ben is responding to. You can’t miss that, can you?

He was not accusing you of circular reasoning, you didn’t quote the Bible to claim “biblical authority”, however, you did quote the Bible to say “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”. Do you understand how Ben sees this as nothing other than “wishful thinking”? Please acknowledge this.

E.g. “ok, I see that you think that is nothing other than wishful thinking, however, the difference is the following…”

The difference between faith and wishful thinking? I still draw on other examples of non-religious faith to explain how I understand it. But I’m not going to provide my two cents now, this is Trey’s debate, not mine.

In response to Kenneth, on “fearing God”, that is an interesting concept that, when not taken “at face value”, can become more nuanced. “Fear” can be translated differently (e.g. in some Afrikaans translations). My understanding of it is that it is more a case of “respect, know, believe”. Being in awe at “the creator’s power”, in which case you’d not have to fear anything else. The person “fearing” the awesome power of his God, should not fear anything else of less consequence on this earth, not the lightning, not the predators, not the winter. “Fear the Lord, so that you may realise you have nothing else to fear?”

Yes, that’s not “fear” at face value. Whether I’m correct or not, that does illustrate the problem with Biblical language: if it’s from a far-removed culture, it may need a lot more context in order to be understood correctly.

We discussed this in an earlier post, “On Doubt and Fear”. I asked a knowledgable friend to add his comments. I translated his Afrikaans comments to English as follows:

Rudolf Otto describes primitive man’s first realisation of God or the godly (or the divine, rather?) as an intuitive realisation that there is something huge behind everything, something that can flatten you any instance, a “mysterium fascinans et tremendum”. Seen this way, fear is the origin of religion, although one hopefully eventually outgrows it.

The 1933 Afrikaans translation of the Bible regularly referred to “fear of God”, but the younger translations (the more recent translations, rather) replaces it with “to know God” or “to believe in God”. The original Hebrew referred to “fear of God” though. The idea that God could be man’s buddy, is really quite a recent/modern idea, largely invented by the evangelicals.

That wasn’t quite the response I was hoping for. That pretty much argues I have a different understanding from the original Hebrew. Nevertheless, I try to look at the “value” I can find in “fear of God”. I still don’t know how the culture at the time understood the concept.

Meh. I’ll not bore you with more details of my understanding right now. Go read that discussion if you are interested, and know that “Russ” is me. (I was being funky in response to Tim Mills, nevermind the details. I’ll change it to “Russ (Hugo)” or something when I get the chance, the context is missing for newcomers – it was in my miniblog at the time.)

You don’t mind if I steal this? With attribution, of course.

Not at all. It started out in a simpler form as my signature at a different message board and I fleshed it out a little for this conversation.

“We are fundamentally in a state of ignorance, and all our learning leads to tentative conclusions only” is the simpler original.

http://uberchristians.org/vb/member.php?u=66

A Great Keno Machine, eternally creating independent space-time universes every five minutes in its meta-time, randomly assigning values to physical fundamental constants each time (hence the Keno Machine.) It fits all the data.

Are you dissing the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? A pox on you!

My basic approach is that humans are fundamentally ignorant about the universe that we inhabit and we have only been able to reduce this ignorance through hard, thoughtful work leading to tentative conclusions.

You don’t mind if I steal this? With attribution, of course. Its a lovely summation of my basic approach as well.

And I’ve challenged you severely on this point. And I don’t think you ever responded (or maybe you did over the weekend and I didn’t see it). You can’t “test” faith the same way you test the chemical composition of the universe. I think even you recognize this. You don’t mix it into a vat, add iodine solution, to see what comes out in the wash.

No, I’m afraid to say that you haven’t. You are taking it on faith that you can’t test faith.

No Kenneth, I’m answering a specific logical fallacy that was continually proported by Hugo, namely, that happiness is the goal of the religious life.

You address one specific aspect of his argument, but don’t address the other. Namely, his point was you don’t need a god to lead a happy or moral life. I can understand your argument that we are not meant to be happy in this life. I even accept this argumentation. But if I and atheists are on average no more or less moral than any religious group, then I see no support for the moral argument for God.

Makes good sense! You’re kidding right? Again, I’ve harped on this before. Why waste the only life you’ll ever have to abase yourself in outmoded Judeo-Christian values (the Commandments)? Why honor your mother and father if they are worthless? Why not murder or physically harm someone who challenges you to a fight? Why not fornicate with as many women as you can, or if you can get away with it rape someone? Good sense means absolutely nothing on the position of humanism. As a former atheist, at most it seemed like a coward’s response. As an atheist, I would have called anyone trying to argue for a legitmate morality a coward, and I think I would have been in good company with Nietzsche.

What makes you think that honouring your mother and father are exclusively Judeo-Christian? Who says I am deriving my morals from such a Judeo-Christian perspective? Most aspects of the Decalogue make perfect sense in light of more universal human morals. My father and mother deserve honour because they are not worthless, to me. I can decide not to fight someone who challenged me because I can empathise that someone (including me) might get hurt. It is sensible because I do not want to get hurt. I can decide not to rape a woman because I realise that the woman will get hurt, and I can empathise with that. I think you are assuming that these Ten (again, with the caveat of no. 1)would not make sense in most other cultures.

Atheism feels “compelled” to validate itself against the theistic charge that it’s morally bankrupt by showing that atheists can be just as moral.

I couldn’t agree more. Because all too often it is the theists position that we don’t have any morals, or that we are internally inconsistent in claiming to have morals. And the fact is, we aren’t more or less moral than theists. Which is why it is so “compelling”, and frustrating, to have to keep validating this point.

I think because God puts in each person a knowledge of the moral law.

This is what I keep challenging you on. You can think this as much as you want. This doesn’t make it true. There are extremely good, non-theistic reasons to show that a certain set of morals are needed in order for a society to function. These include things like not murdering. Like honouring those older, wiser and more experienced than you. Like not raping your neighbours wife.

Finally, you mention “moral implications of not keeping them.” I don’t know what this means. Do you mean the arbitrary punishments the human animal has aligned with such civil buffers to keep the peace?

Because if you don’t keep these strictures, you feel bad. Because if you don’t keep these strictures, other people feel bad. Are you saying that you see no moral implications in raping a woman? You wouldn’t feel guilt? You wouldn’t feel empathy at her pain? You wouldn’t prevent yourself from giving in to your urges because you have foresight of what this guilt and empathy might cost you and her?

I think, and with good reason, that morality, even if it can be shown that it is biological invested in the evolution of the species, cannot show moral duty or obligation. Two concepts which are tantamount to an appreciable understanding of morality.

Yes, it can. Have you ever heard of reciprocal altruism and game theory? These are concepts that address the outcomes of generating altruism from such a seemingly selfish (to our human eyes) process of evolution. If you cheat in such a situation, you will ultimately lose out in the evolutionary game. Thus any hereditary tendency to remain loyal to those who treat you well is selected for.

You act as if I’ve been dancing around the question. What have I been doing for the past week. Does God exist………………………………………………………………………………………………..yes.

No. You haven’t been dancing around the question of whether God exists or not. You’ve answered resoundingly in the affirmative. You just haven’t provided enough evidence to sway the jury, as it were.

Perhaps your psychological motivation for not believing in God is because you don’t like the terms of the theological stories of existence presented to you?

It isn’t a psychological motivation. Its an evidential one. There is no evidence for these theological stories, no matter what their moral implications.

He stands morally head and shoulders above the rest, and he gave tremendous creditability to his life: In rising from the dead he validated that he is in fact the most trustworthy spokesperson regarding man’s eternal purpose.

OK. Can you give evidence for his arising from the dead?

And again, there is ample evidence, I’ve demonstrated this in the vigor of the arguments presented, you just disagree where it points. I can’t emphasize this enough. What makes the “evidence” anymore your possession than theism’s possession. You are implying some kind of ownership right.

And again, I don’t think you have addressed the issues.

I am not trying to make you angry. I am not claiming I own the evidence. I am trying to find out what your evidence is. You claim that there is evidence for God in the world around us, such as quantum theory etc. etc. None of these concepts holds an iota of evidence for God.

I think you do a real disservice to my line of argument if you keep extracting points in isolation and don’t understand them in their total context. Pride is a theological determination.

How? Where is the evidence for this blanket claim? Have you tried understanding the evolutionary reasoning behind why an emotion such as pride can be useful?

Pride can be rationalized once we show that the evidence for Christianity is valid, which can be shown in the variety of ways I’ve demonstrated up above. If I think God is the best explanation for existence and if I believe that he has revealed himself to humanity. It follows that a theological rendering of our human condition is not an irrational encroachment of a religious worldview anymore than I can tell you Kenneth that your tears are all the evidence I need and there is no explanatory power behind them except a series of biological processes, when you know for a fact why you are crying.

From an evolutionary perspective, at first glance tears don’t seem to make much sense. But they are a signal of some great underlying emotion, such as pain, and as such are a fantastic form of communication. In other words, something is wrong, it might affect me and my kindred/friends, this is something that needs to be addressed. As a signal in a social species, it can drastically affect survival rates, and consequently the tendency to cry in high emotion/pain situations can be selected for.

In isolation it looks flawed and silly, and that’s how you’ve wished to propose it.

Flawed and silly, to me at least, have nothing to do with it. Every single scientific theory is flawed, in that it is incomplete. It is not a universal descriptor of reality. Many scientific theories appear silly. Certainly the theories of continental drift and quantum theory look fundamentally silly at first glance. The point here is, the reason why we still hold to these seemingly flawed and silly theories is that there is evidence to support them. No matter how stupid-seeming, no matter how utterly nonsensical or counter-intuitive, a theory is considered correct if it is a better descriptor of reality than any other on the basis of evidence. So no matter how intuitively comforting, how seemingly logical the God hypothesis is, it holds no evidence. It is not better a descriptor of the universe in which we find ourselves than any other iteration of religion. Consequently I have abandoned it as a viable explanation.

They think their evidence obtains to a higher standard of excellence.

Yes it does, because every other means of knowledge acquisition have been shown to not be as accurate or precise. You have to fall back on the evidence because no other more successful means exists to get at truth. You can pray as much as you want to for answers, but those prayers aren’t as likely to give you the correct answer as testing your hypotheses of potential answers within the context of the scientific method.

Trey, I’m afraid you make incorrect assumptions. I never said religion is about being happy or living a good life. The question where I feature that was not a rhetorical question. I mentioned that to get it out of the way.

Can you please stop trying to convince atheists that they must be immoral? Just because you were unable to be a moral atheist does not mean others are also unable. I suspect you don’t know what a humanist is. Good atheists believe that what they do matters. They live by the golden rule, they live by compassion. Why does that upset you so much? It sounds like you’re saying “God must exist because I have no other reason to be moral.” Argument from consequences is a logical fallacy.

If you consider a belief that what you do matters as the same as a belief in God, then many atheists believe in God. And our understanding of God changes over centuries. However, the atheist’s God and your God is understood in such a different way, that they leave the “God” label to the theists.

How about “Yo”? Guys, take a look at yoism (yoism.org or maybe .com), who here can describe themselves as a yoist? (That the right word?)

Cellphone keypad == pain. I might not comment again for a few days. Trey, try to make fewer assumptions? Or try to understand the comments you are replying to? Eg why Ben says the verse you quoted sounds the same to him as “faith is wishful thinking”. I am impressed at Ben’s patience with you. (Hat tip to Ben.)

Prediction: At some point we’re going to drop this silly arguing, and agree to disagree. Then we can start working together on making this world a better place. That includes working together on the problems of the worst of religion and the worst of atheism, without attacking theism and atheism as a whole. I hope my prediction is good. Ok, my thumbs are tired. Good night.

I never said humans are fundamentally ignorant.

I wasn’t being clear, I guess. That long sentence was an outline of my basic attitude – not my understanding of yours.

Where did I quote the Bible?

You quoted Hebrews 11:1-12 as an early part of your explanation of what you meant by faith.

And I would challenge you to show me how you, as an atheist can be absolutely, positively certain that the scientific data you interpret is evidence of the world you live in?

I can’t be absolutely, positively certain of anything, including the truth of this statement.

But ultimately it is up to you to string them together to make a conclusion. What I’m saying is, whether you are a theist or atheist, once the interpretation is made there’s a kind of faith you must produce to hold it in place!

? I don’t see how.

Trey: For someone who is an intellectual such as yourself, self surrender might simply mean surrendering views antithetical to the God hypothesis so that you are freed up to experience a relationship with him.

Me: What are the criteria you are using to identify which hypotheses should be privileged like this? How do you pick?

Trey: Criteria in regard to obstacles to acceptance?

You are taking a specific hypothesis – the God hypothesis – and asking me to ‘surrender views antithetical’ to it. Why should I treat this hypothesis different than any other? On what basis should I select hypotheses to be ‘privileged’ like this and why?

Personally, if I were going to do such a thing, I already have such a hypothesis in mind. A Great Keno Machine, eternally creating independent space-time universes every five minutes in its meta-time, randomly assigning values to physical fundamental constants each time (hence the Keno Machine.) It fits all the data.

Then, atheism and theism come in and say beyond those parameters I can make an interpretation about life, namely: “from this evidence we can could that God does/does not existence.”

I disagree. From my point of view, my epistemology, there is no reason to even propose the God hypothesis. None of the methods that we have found to reduce our fundamental ignorance – scientific, historical, mathematical, etc. lead to it.

My basic approach is that humans are fundamentally ignorant about the universe that we inhabit and we have only been able to reduce this ignorance through hard, thoughtful work leading to tentative conclusions. I don’t see a privileged hypothesis in God, any more than I see one in the GKM. Hell, when my wife and I got married, I don’t think we had ever brought up religion other than we weren’t getting married in a church. Theism / atheism or Christian / non-Christian never came up. It wasn’t until after we had been married for several years that she learned I was an atheist.

snipped – arguments about morality

If someone convinced me a God existed, I would not adopt his moral opinions. It doesn’t matter either way. If God appeared to every being in the universe five seconds from now and says ‘I created the universe and humans. You should love each other as you love yourselves’ I would ignore him and do what I thought was right. If God appeared to every being in the universe five seconds from now and says ‘I created the universe and the Oompas. You should all slaughter each other to make room for the Oompas, as you have no value. The Oompas are the only rightful inhabitants here’ I would ignore him and do what I thought was right.

I wonder if these atheists are aware of Alvin Platinga’s argument on “evolution as an epistemic defeater on naturalism”? It’s a powerful argument

I’ve read at least the gist of it. It is NOT a powerful argument.

I think this is typical of many atheists who have never been immersed in the religions they believe have no truth. But I have! And I know the deep psychological underpinnings of the fear and the embitterment and everything else that comes with going in and out of the religious life. So if you ask, who is most qualified to give a dutiful appraisal of the religious life and atheistic project, I would say I’m certainly more qualified than an atheist who makes a statement of oversimplification like that. To me it clearly shows he has no idea what the religious life is about and doesn’t take it seriously as a region of human experience. Someone like Farrell Till, a former pastor turned atheist, might be more capable to give more insight (although I’ve talked with Till and read his work and find him unconvincing).

There’s definitely some truth here. I was raised in the Catholic tradition, going to church and after-school religious instruction once a week, but I thought they were full of it from about the time I was introduced to it. Whatever the genetic predispositions are toward supernaturalism / naturalism, I’m definitely strongly predisposed to the latter.

No doubt. I’m in complete agreement if we understand by conclusion I understand you to mean hard, empirical, objectively unanimous evidence that is undefeatable. However, biases don’t eliminate truth. One of us could STILL be right! And that’s why, as rational people we argue our points.

However, I think verificationists, like Ken and Ben, don’t believe it’s merely interpretation. They think their evidence obtains to a higher standard of excellence. Verificationism is a type of empiricism that makes no room for other means of knowledge acquisition.

No atheist could reasonably say scientific data is inclusive proof of the world we live in, because scientific interpretations change as our knowledge grows. Science can adapt to new knowledge, can god? it think this is especially a answer Hugo would like to answer.

I wonder if these atheists are aware of Alvin Platinga’s argument on “evolution as an epistemic defeater on naturalism”? It’s a powerful argument that calls into question the atheists claim that truth claims are the same thing as survival mechanisms built into us by biological evolution.

And I’ve challenged you severely on this point. And I don’t think you ever responded (or maybe you did over the weekend and I didn’t see it). You can’t “test” faith the same way you test the chemical composition of the universe. I think even you recognize this. You don’t mix it into a vat, add iodine solution, to see what comes out in the wash.

Trey, I notice in your replies that you constantly focus on only one aspect that the question is asking, namely happiness, which you then dismiss. What about the “good” aspect of the above question? In both Hugo’s question and in my comments above, you have consistently not addressed the “moral”/”fulfilling”/”good” aspects. I ask again, why need God if you can lead a good or fulfilling or morally satisfying life without recourse to such a theological concept?

I generally keep the commandments, with the obvious exception of honouring a deity. Because most of them make good sense, and I can understand the moral implications of not keeping them.

Makes good sense! You’re kidding right? Again, I’ve harped on this before. Why waste the only life you’ll ever have to abase yourself in outmoded Judeo-Christian values (the Commandments)? Why honor your mother and father if they are worthless? Why not murder or physically harm someone who challenges you to a fight? Why not fornicate with as many women as you can, or if you can get away with it rape someone? Good sense means absolutely nothing on the position of humanism. As a former atheist, at most it seemed like a coward’s response. As an atheist, I would have called anyone trying to argue for a legitmate morality a coward, and I think I would have been in good company with Nietzsche.

Furthermore, why should you feel compelled to be an upstanding citizen or advance society. I find it amazing that most humanists in the world are industrialized nations in places where they can enjoy the bounty of education. So it would make sense for them to see the value in culture and society and peace and social justice, etc.

Atheism feels “compelled” to validate itself against the theistic charge that it’s morally bankrupt by showing that atheists can be just as moral. But so what? Why should atheists feel obliged to live that way? They don’t agree that the charge theists posit that they are unbelievers are on a route to damnation anyway, so why not live immorally? I think because God puts in each person a knowledge of the moral law.

Finally, you mention “moral implications of not keeping them.” I don’t know what this means. Do you mean the arbitrary punishments the human animal has aligned with such civil buffers to keep the peace? I think, and with good reason, that morality, even if it can be shown that it is biological invested in the evolution of the species, cannot show moral duty or obligation. Two concepts which are tantamount to an appreciable understanding of morality.

I find the thought that I should fear the potential creator of the universe repulsive.

Strictly speaking, one could argue that because I don’t put any other god before God, I even uphold the 1st commandment .

Perhaps your psychological motivation for not believing in God is because you don’t like the terms of the theological stories of existence presented to you? That’s why I can say confidently in myself, that I have been thoroughly entrenched on both sides of the fence, and I can say that even though there are things in my faith I don’t gleefully celebrate, I recognize that ultimately (if I am to believe God is cause of existence) that I am merely a “player” in the story of existence, and as a player, I have to abid in knowledge that even if I think I could imagine a better world, there is purpose in this one enough.

An interesting point! If you are shit-scared of the thunder and the mammoths and beasties that go bump in the night, then recourse to hope in some saviour Who Is Going To Make Things All Better, however untrue, would make a great deal of sense.

Have any of you atheists actually read any Sartre? He was one of my favorites. Sartre said the project of man is to become god. Far from an evolutionary social dictate, Sartre believed it was inherent to the individual. Nietzsche called it “the will to power.” I don’t see this swirling around in the out-boundaries of society. It’s very much for atheists a part of the individual.

You need to answer the simple question: does God exist?

You act as if I’ve been dancing around the question. What have I been doing for the past week. Does God exist………………………………………………………………………………………………..yes.

Absolutely true! What would you say if, on the Day of Judgement, you find out it was Brahma who created the universe? Thor? Zeus? The poor bastard who cut off his genitalia to make the world? How can you possible choose between the various options?

What’s true? Stenger’s casually dismissal of the religious life? I think this is typical of many atheists who have never been immersed in the religions they believe have no truth. But I have! And I know the deep psychological underpinnings of the fear and the embitterment and everything else that comes with going in and out of the religious life. So if you ask, who is most qualified to give a dutiful appraisal of the religious life and atheistic project, I would say I’m certainly more qualified than an atheist who makes a statement of oversimplification like that. To me it clearly shows he has no idea what the religious life is about and doesn’t take it seriously as a region of human experience. Someone like Farrell Till, a former pastor turned atheist, might be more capable to give more insight (although I’ve talked with Till and read his work and find him unconvincing).

And I would say, on the grounds of the evidence, I think we can take comfort in the unique character and life of Jesus as an historically embedded figure who was the revelation of God to the world. He stands morally head and shoulders above the rest, and he gave tremendous creditability to his life: In rising from the dead he validated that he is in fact the most trustworthy spokesperson regarding man’s eternal purpose.

I am sure the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and in my hope that he will touch me with his noodly appendage. Nothing you do can dissuade me from my position. I am certain, even though I cannot see him.

You see how ludicrous this argument is? Faith without evidence tells us nothing.

Yes. It’s called solipsism. And it’s not a good variant for an historical embedded religion like Christianity. Further, you guys keep saying “faith without evidence, faith without evidence.” And again, there is ample evidence, I’ve demonstrated this in the vigor of the arguments presented, you just disagree where it points. I can’t emphasize this enough. What makes the “evidence” anymore your possession than theism’s possession. You are implying some kind of ownership right.

Here I must disagree. You don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Does that make you prideful because you don’t?

I think you do a real disservice to my line of argument if you keep extracting points in isolation and don’t understand them in their total context. Pride is a theological determination. Pride can be rationalized once we show that the evidence for Christianity is valid, which can be shown in the variety of ways I’ve demonstrated up above. If I think God is the best explanation for existence and if I believe that he has revealed himself to humanity. It follows that a theological rendering of our human condition is not an irrational encroachment of a religious worldview anymore than I can tell you Kenneth that your tears are all the evidence I need and there is no explanatory power behind them except a series of biological processes, when you know for a fact why you are crying.

Truth is therefore found primarily in the individual.

Which means that truth, so defined, is highly individual. Which means that no persons truth is the same. How can truth be so arbitrary and subjective if it is truth?

This is the end of a long explanation for a theological interpretation of the world. In isolation it looks flawed and silly, and that’s how you’ve wished to propose it. I’d invite you to recapitulate my review of Craig’s comments and then we’ll talk about it. My hands are hurting.