
believeing blindly or not. I'm not sure how blindness comes into it. I do > not
deny reason, indeed I insist upon it, but reason only draws conclusions > from
evidence. If you decide in advance that your reason will act only on > the
evidence of the five physical senses, then you cut reason off from any >
possibility of reaching a conclusion outside the physical sphere (beyond the >
rather provocative, if inconclusive, conclusion that the physical sphere > is
not self explanatory). 

So your are saying to rely on our feelings and experiences (since
this is the only other source of information left to us).
How can you then convince somebody that your "feelings and experiences"
are the correct ones then if you can't show somebody visible and
measurable effects?  If my experiences say that "there exists no god"
and yours says there does, where does that leave us?  Since we are only
going on experiences, then both of us are correct within our own personal
realities.

Furthermore, the trouble with "feelings and experiences" is that they
can lead you astray, as the tragic outcome of Waco illustrates.  I
am sure that many of Koresh's followers really believed in him but
I think that you and I will agree that they were being misled.

Finally, how on earth do you come to the conclusion that the physical
sphere is not self-explanatory when you only rely on the five senses?


You must be using a definition of "evidence" that I am not familiar with.
To me, evidence is something you can show others -unambiguously- that
what you are saying is true.

However, I agree with you that belief in a diety is a matter of faith.
It is not something you can share around - others must experience it
independantly.  Unfortunately, as I have explained above, this puts
belief down to a matter of experience.  My impression is that Christians
do not have the monopoly on reason, evidence and faith as far as any of
these things can go.


At the risk of repeating my argument : As I have explained previously, 
the trouble is that Moslems, Buddhists, Jews, etc will ALL say that THEY
claim, with good reason, to be a valid system, possessed of the best
evidence, for explaining Gods revelations to man (for Buddhists it
should read "for explaining the non-existence of God").  So not only
must you "prove" your own case, you have to "disprove" theirs.

(alt.messianic is a good place to see people strong in the belief
of their own faiths ... and with their own good reasons)


I know that ALL people can use reason ... I never claimed that they don't.
I just wish to make sure that their arguments are well-founded.  It goes
without saying that if I make a blunder that I expect people to correct
me.  Once we have all gone through this process of removing the 
non-essential and contradictory bits, we should (hopefully) have made
some progress towards the truth.

