From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Faith is illogical
Date: 14 Oct 92 04:10:18 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

jay@oclc.org (Jeff Young) writes:

>DEF: Faith as I interpret it is either belief without supporting 
>evidence, or belief that the evidence points to God's existance 
>in spite of naturalistic explainations for the evidence.

That's not have I as a Christian would define faith.  I believe there
should be some basis for it.  It's true that we sometimes maintain
faith in spite of some contrary evidence.  But not forever and not
against overwhelming evidence.  There needs to be some hysteresis, or
we'll be changing beliefs all the time, due to momentary
discouragement, etc.  But it's possible to carry this too far.  And
there should be some basis in the first place.  As far as I know, all
Christians think they have evidence.  You may not think it's
compelling, of course.

>1) Faith, by this definition, is the acceptance of the logical 
>fallacy of Special Pleading.  Why should we accept a supernatural 
>explaination over a natural one?

indeed.  I don't feel any need to defend faith by that definition.

>2) God, as defined by Christians, will prevent atheists from entering
>Heaven due to their lack of faith.  This is required because to 
>admit atheists to Heaven reduces Christianity to a mere crutch 
>for life.  (I don't know of many Christians who will willingly admit 
>the crutch purpose.)

Maybe.  I for one think that truth is worth something for its own
sake.  Your use of "crutch" seems like loaded terminology.  If knowing
something about God helps us live better, what's wrong with that?  Is
the only thing that matters whether you end up in heaven or hell?
That sounds like an odd position for an atheist to take.  Further, I'm
not sure we know how God will judge people.  While I believe salvation
is only through Christ, I think it's possible he works through people
without their realizing it's Christ.  This is explicitly a Catholic
doctrine -- the term is "anonymous Christian".  Many Protestants
accept that it's possible in some circumstances.  I would say however
that most people would say that an "anonymous Christian" would
normally be someone who hadn't had an opportunity to hear the
Christian message, and that they would tend to be sceptical about this
applying to atheists in the U.S.  (Given the level of discussion in
many of these groups however, I think it is quite possible that
someone in the U.S. may have heard such a botched version of the
Gospel that they *ought* to reject it.)

I would not want to suggest here that Christianity doesn't matter.
However I don't think we know that God is going to damn all atheists.

>3) God, as defined by Christians, is just.

>4) Requiring atheists to accept a logical fallacy is unjust.

>Note: I did not equivocate on the word 'just' in 3 and 4.  For 
>Christians to claim God's justice is different than our own is 
>to commit the fallacies of Special Pleading and/or Argument from
>Authority, etc.

However Christians explicitly say that God's justice may not be the
same as ours, or at least that we not be able to understand how
certain things are just until we are in a position to see things as he
sees them.  If you insist that "just" be defined as meaning that you
must, in your current life, be able to see that he is just, then I
think many Christians would deny that God is in that sense always
"just".

I would have to say however that in this particular case I agree with
you.  I don't think God requires us to believe in logical fallacies.
I would guess that most Christians would agree.