Actually, I cringed (edit: though not a fundamentalist Christian) at the post based on the fact that Carded seems to have a hugely distorted view of what the Bible is, even if it is indeed the divine revelation of God.

Even in that case, it's still a Jewish text, written with the needs of the Jewish people in mind (in the OT) and how people can understand and relate to the Creator God (both OT and NT helps with this).

The Bible is absolutely not "[all the] collected evidence they have of a God." In a huge facepalm, even The Bible itself refutes this, as Romans 1 (specifically verse 1:20, although as always, context is good) claims that the evidence for the existence of God is so pervasive in the natural world, since the very beginning of creation, that all men are without excuse.

Also, it's a solid facepalm to claim that "The compilation of all the evidence from many different sources" is true in the context of the post. Yes, there are many sources in the Bible, but believing that it is an exhaustive compilation of knowledge, rather than understanding the cultural context in which the book (or the books, if you prefer) was written, is just ignorant.

david - seriously, what do you think when you read posts like this?

do they crack you up or do you just ignore them now?

Errr, actually the expert reports would not be admissible unless the experts themselves took the stand to testify. That's kinda the point -- or at least one of them.

peace, love, happiness, goodness, etc.

I think you're comparing all Christians with Christians that are serious students of science. With a strong knowledge of science you could find something in the natural world to suggest God.

Or if you had an overwhelming sense of spirit or intuition harnessed to the right degree of intellect, perception and analytical ability you might be able to sense a personal God.

But these are outliers doing some very extended analysis. Because today even the more scientific Christians tend to check nature against the bible.

what? maybe im misunderstanding, but are you saying that when scientific christians sees something in nature that is contradictory to the bible that it is nature that must be incorrect or inconsistent? this makes no sense to me...

No I'm not saying that.

Some Christian scientists tend to be like the Dalai Lama and say where science is strong religion must give way but then there are some that think God got it right and we haven't fully understood all his scientific principles yet. There's a whole spectrum of opinion here and its apt to vary by individual, amount of training and scientific area of study.

Saying "I don't know" isn't the same thing as what you're making it. You're trying to attach a creator to atheism -the Universe Generating Mechanism - and it makes you sound stupid.

Stop trying to bring us down to your level please.

Can't completely explain the world without the Flying Spaghetti Monster so that is my argument for the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Seriously, why is it so hard for theists to just say they don't know?

And the question of how the universe came about will probably be incomplete for a long, long time - and maybe will never be answered to humans walking the Earth. That doesn't justify saying 'goddidit'.

I think people have to understand that outside of the Bible there is no truth. All truth is rooted in the Bible. There is no proving God without the Bible because God is the word. When God created the universe he spoke it into existence. Nature is a reflection of the character of God; likewise the word. Science, math, physics etc. are all reflections of the character of God.

If an incomplete worldview means you can't completely explain the world, then yes the atheistic worldview will always be incomplete. I don't see why you insist on using weird definitions such as that one though.

What good is a complete worldview (by your definition) if it's based on guesses?

iyo ldo

Personally, I do require the use of the Bible as the critical reference point. There is a great amount of circumstantial evidence which points to the truth of the Bible.

The atheist can never be convinced, though. I think of atheists in much the same way as I thought of the people on this board who were convinced that online poker was 100% secure.

They were so overly convinced of the validity of the shuffling algorithms and the SSL protection that they missed the forest for the trees.

That never stopped me from playing, mind you, but it made me all the more careful.

Except that the people on this board who felt online poker was 100% secure were the ones running tests and collecting stats to try and prove that it wasn't, while the others were doing nothing but spewing "ONLINE POKER IS RIGGED!" posts throughout the zoo.

Neither the idiots nor the ones 100% sure were correct.

Idiots do not affirm or nullify a hypothesis...idiots just exist.

fyp