Forget about the analogy. Tell me what you believe and why.

There are several ways to approach this. First is that the universe coming into existence seems to require some type of outside influence. The existence of objective moral values and the Moral Law as C.S. Lewis also make some type of higher power necessary.

But these are nowhere near as convincing to me personally as the personal experiences throughout my life which have validated God's existence to me. While this does not give objective proof, it does serve as evidence to the objective idea that each person can have God revealed to him or her individually, thus validating God's existence to that person.

I sort of agree, however there is no evidence whatsoever that that "outside influence" was a god, let alone your god. In fact, most of what we see around us are the result of cumulative natural processes.

Again, all you've done is assert that there are objective morals. I want to know why exactly you believe there are objective morals, and why objective morals would make your god's existence necessary.

Tell me a couple that you feel are the most convincing. You can PM these if you want.

However, the cosmological argument doesn't need to prove the Christian God. However, it claims that there is some outside force involved in the origin of the universe. This is enough to give the atheistic view difficulties.


http://www.btinternet.com/~a.ghinn/lawof.htm

This is what I would say, but said much better than I can ever say it.

It's not even a single event. It's more the development of my own ideas and my understanding of myself and the world around me. There is never really an "Ah Ha!" moment except for the times when I reflect on what I thought before and see how much more I've come to learn. The closest thing to an "Ah Ha!" moment is just the sheer sense of awe looking at the world and the stars and such.

Everyone from the Pope to Osama bin Laden lays claim to such personal experiences. The fact that they can't all be right is proof that such experiences are extremely fallible and untrustworthy sources of evidence.

It poses no difficulty to atheists who believe that the universe has always existed, or who believe that the force in question has nothing to do with God. It poses the exact same questions to theists since they have to explain who created their God. It does nothing to advance the discussion in either direction.

You're missing the point. Just because everyone can experience God does not mean that everyone will interpret it in the same way. The same is true for other personally relative things such as fear, grief, happiness, etc.

But to believe that the universe always existed comes to a point where you just stop asking questions and accept something. Without a Creator, every Big Bang theory has some huge logical gaps that are overlooked because they cannot be explained. And including an outside force but not relating it to God is just changing some names so that it does not support a theist position. Also, asking what created God is not possible in the same way that we can not explain why 1+1=2 aside from it being all that we know and all that we are exposed to.

Lewis' "law of fair play" is pretty weak as some sort of evidence of god. First of all, can you really say that it is "natural" in all of us? I, for one, am in the process of nailing that particularly little concept of gutfelt morality into my 3.5 and 2 year olds. We are constantly teaching our children about sharing, and fairness, etc. So how "natural" it is I don't know.

I also know that even if I didn't nail it into them, they might also just figure it out: it is a basic part of the social contract: necessary for beings to get along without violence. Cooperation, working together. This doesn't need to be "god given", we don't just need to feel it in our gut. We can derive this principle just from thinking about how a society should be.

The cosmological argument does not carry much weight with atheists who view it as flawed.

If God speaks to you and says that Christianity is the one true religion and everyone else goes to hell, there is no room for interpretation. Likewise when God tells a Muslim to kill infidels. Either you accept the personal experience as legitimate, or you recognize that the source of these thoughts is contained entirely within one's own head. The fact that both personal experiences cannot be correct is proof that such experiences must be delusions in most, if not all cases.

Introducing God does nothing to alleviate this difficulty.

Again, not knowing the answers to everything in existence is not evidence for God.

In that case, "God" has nothing to do with a conscious being, nor one that is capable of intervening with the universe, nor one who even knows that it exists.

You could have just made the same statement about the universe itself, and it would leave you with far less to explain.

if there wasnt a leprechaun in the box, why would there be a box. you think it would just be there empty? there has to be a purpose to the box. pretty obv theres a leprechaun in it imo

I know there is a leprechaun inside a box, because I feel it deep inside. I just feel it and know it, and can't explain it to you.

Also, side note, my grandmother was hit by a train, tossed 100 yards, and landed upside down on a barbed wire fence, where she was stranded for 2 days. When doctors found her, she was declared clinically/legally dead, all the blood had drained out of her body through a cut in her head, and her brain was exposed and a cat had started nibbling on it. But we did a prayer circle, and she was healed. L-E-P-R-E-C-H-A-U-N in a B-O-X , my friend... leprechaun in a box.