And your reason for belief in a god is that humans haven’t scoured every cubic inch of existence to disprove the existence of some such being? That’s the best you can do? I guess you don’t really understand what “burden of proof” means. By your logic, then unicorns, fairies, and leprachauns are as likely to exist as your god. After all, they seem to share precisely the same attributes, and have similar lists of accomplishment. Way to paint yourself into a corner.

And the false analogies. Where do I start? Comparing undiscovered gods to undiscovered species? That’s the best you can come up with? Here’s a newsflash: species of animals actually exist. Assuming there are not-yet-classified species of beatles or bacteria is understandable given what we know about beatles and bacteria. But the opposite is true about gods. We have heard about hundreds – thousands – of gods, and the only thing they share is that none has turned out to be anything more than an exercise in human imagination. Nice failed analogy which actually refutes the point you are trying to make.

Anyway, enough said.

I believe that, in the end, it is really up to the person to choose whether or not to believe.
IMO, Atheism and Theism always meet at a 50% mark, effectively tieing.

As for the lost books, to quote from Carm’s http://www.carm.org/lost/intro_noncanonical.htm

The “lost books” were never lost. They were known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were never considered scripture. They weren’t lost nor were they removed. They were never in the Bible in the first place.

Canoziation of book were inevitable. If not, I could claim that this blog is the word of God as well! We need to separate the diamonds from the dirt.

Yes, what you mention is true. There is no empirical method of proving Jesus, especially not through the experiences of others, since like what I said “His bite of the Apple does not make your tongue tingle with sweetness.” Hence this is where faith comes in. God can never be proven completely, but he left enough hints for us to be able to make that leap of faith.

I wasn’t defending Jesus, I was defending the placing of my faith in Him

By the way, most of your questions about if Jesus was the Son of God and Bible books can be answered in Lee Strobel’s “Case for Christ”. That is of course only if you first choose to read it. He, Ravi Zacharias and Josh McDowell have significant amount of books for us to tap on. We need to have considerable amount of knowledge of a subject before coming to a conclusion, if not the conclusion will flawed or incomplete; a conclusion that is filled with countless “what ifs”.

I see that you have corrected my ‘definition of God’ in your first point, by changing it from ‘beyong all human logic’ to ‘mostly beyond human logic’.

Yes, I can see your point here, that our minds can only comprehend a small portion of God, which has become who we know as “Jesus”. However, this will lead us to another question – How do we know that the Bible speaks of the truth?
How can we tell that the Scripture is truly a God-inspired piece of work?
http://www.carm.org/lostbooks.htm
There are more scriptures out there than simply those within the Bible. The Bible was canonzied and separated from the rest of these books by ‘Holy Men of God’ who were seen as holy enough to distinguish ‘true’ scripture from ‘false’. But this doesn’t tell us how true the Bible is. Infact, many other variations of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam include or omit other books in their ‘Holy Scriptures’. Catholics include the book of Canon in theirs, Mormons include the Book of Mormon, Gnostics have the Gospel of Judas, and many various sects have different books. Relative to them, their books are the “True Word”. How then, can we verify that Jesus was really Son of God?

As for your Second point, I will not deny that there are indeed quite a number of people who have claimed to have experienced God, and that they may or may not have been delusioned. However, we cannot verify that they TRULY have experienced God just because they carried their ‘faith’ all the way till death.
We must keep in mind that there are also many other people with beliefs and experiences which are not of God, that have also carried their faith til death. In Islam, suicide bombers die and take lives with them in the name of Alah.

Even some bhuddists have held their faith with them all the way to the deathbed. And to speak of examples that are closer to home, many heartlanders carry their belief in the Old Chinese Gods all the way to their funerals. Do all these examples show that there is an Alah, Bhudda, or Jade Emperor? Likewise, it applies the same way when we talk about how millions of American citizens carry their faith all the way till death.

And, then again, maybe they could have experienced something. But we can never know if they did experience God, Alah, Bhudda, or any other divine thing. It’s a matter of choice to believe.

“Then again, what you are suggesting is that the United States is not a country, but an asylum, since they are a christian country.” – Let’s just put it in a less crude manner. The belief in a Superior Being that is responsible for everything that occurs in the Universe(who is said to love and protect and forgive) provides a lot of emotional support to people. People are comforted by such a belief, because nobody wants to feel helpless in a crazy and messed up world like our own.

Thanks for your very long and interesting article. I just had to point out some slight flaws that may sabotage your arguement unconsciously.

Number One:
God is fundamentally beyond human logic, but he is not totally beyond it. Just like how a mathematics teacher is superior to us in knowledge, and yet choose to explain to us in simpler terms, just like how they did when they taught us in primary school; God is so much more complex then we can understand, but yet he reveal himself to us in a simplified form, namely Jesus. One that is bonded by the physical laws so that we limited beings can experience Him.

A teacher that teaches primary school mathematics in simplified terms does not indicate the lack of higher education, but instead shows the very thing you thought is being disproven, the evidence of higher education. There is clearly no contradiction here.

Number Two:
Yes, the arguement of colourblindness will not hold water if we are all colourblind from the start.. But presently, there are people who insist there are colours; people who insisted they have experienced God, and seen God. And this is not a fragment of their imagination. Countless number of them went to grave with that conviction. Unless u believe that these martyrs all hopelessily deluded till their death, or perhaps what they insisted is true – they saw the colours. Then again, what you are suggesting is that the United States is not a country, but an asylum, since they are a christian country.

Firstly, I would like to state that I take the stand of an agnostic.

Secondly, I would like to point out that your entry does not disprove atheism, although it does show that atheism is not a truth, but a possibility.

With regards to the 1st and 2nd paragraph, I would like to mention that the human mind is weak.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2ryYYCe8qg4
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg
These videos are some extremely good examples that show how easily the human mind can be fooled. These are psychological tricks done by Derren Brown. I advise you to find out more about him if you are interested. Of course, I do not deny the possibility that some of these tricks could be hoaxes. This introduces the possibility that such experiences of God are probably just the result of an easily influenced mind.

Some Christians stress that God exists particularly because they have experienced Him and believe in His existence because of that. Like I have stated earlier, these experiences could be the result of a mind that is susceptible to influencing, etc. Therefore, there is a possibility that these experiences do not prove the existence of God as much as they can since they could be mere delusions.

It is very hard to to deduce whether God exists, simply by observing the way people live their lives, or what kind of experiences of God they re-tell. Christians preach that one should be ’salt and light’ by living a decent life and worshipping God so that others may see that God has changed their lives, and lead others to believe; but there are so many other people with different religions that have had their lives changed greatly and who have lived descent lives after that.
There are also(as I mentioned previously) people who claim that God can only be experienced, and that this experience must be a spiritual one; but, I can simply ask,” What would you define as spiritual?”. Infact, how can we tell spiritual apart from emotional, or any other kind of experience?

I believe personally, that you can never know whether God exists or not. You can only choose to believe whether he does. The basis of belief can only be faith, and faith is that which exceeds the boundaries of logic as well as emotion.

A Christian that tries to support his faith by believing in God logically will ultimately fail, since it is alleged that God is a being that is beyond human understanding and logical explanations. Therefore, science as well as philosophy will ultimately fail to prove His existence.

A Christian that tries to support his faith by believing in God emotionally, will not last. As soon as he gets tired of church, gets jaded of the usual service, gets bored with the Bible and no longer feels the ‘Spirit of God’ in him, he will just stop believing.

There is simply no way to prove God’s existence; we can merely believe and hope that he exists.

“How can a human with finite intellect confidently presume information that might be beyond their logic?”, I found this very interesting(as well as the rest of the paragraph follwed after it). Firstly, I would like to point out that this is not the only question being asked. The other question is “How do we know that there is any other kind of information existing outside of our finite human logic.”

Let me eleaborate upon this:
“It is like a man who is colourblind declaring that the world consist on of the colours black, grey and white.” From this point that you have stated, we can see that the colourblind man does not see colours as non-colourblind people do. We can definitely say that he is obviously wrong(relative to the non-colourblind person) in his declaration that the world exists only in shades(black,grey, white) because there already exist people in the world who can verify the existence of colours (since they are not colourblind). It is purely up to a colourblind person to believe the non-colourblind that colours exist.

However, lets say that NOBODY in the world can see colours. Everyone is colourblind. Therefore, nobody will ever understand of such a concept of colours, and the only thing that can be said is that the world is seen in shades. No one will even be able to fathom such a thing as colours. This shows that colours cannot be imagined by such people because none of them experienced it, and likewise, a God cannot be imagined by us because none of us have experienced him.

Whatever we define as God right now, is clearly a paradox because:

1)We state that God is beyond human logic and understanding.

2)If God is beyond human logic and understanding, we wouldn’t even be able imagine Him in the first place. (Colours are beyond a colour-blind person’s perception, therefore, he wouldn’t even be able to imagine or define colours in the first place)

And there we can clearly see a self-contradiction.