I didn’t feel you were being disrespectful. You state what many believe or have been taught. Our culture has a big impact on us - for better or worse. Also, the stakes regarding truth are huge.
“I decline the temptation to claim knowledge that cannot be possessed. Some of the things you claim to know are - to me - in that realm of the unknowable.”
I’m sure you think that view is backed up by objective truth.
It’s exactly one of the arguments Jim deals with (along with several other truth claims) in his vid entitled The Case for Truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSHVAKrH7CM
He doesn’t deal in hopes and dreams. He deals with hard cold facts. Remember, he doesn’t use the Bible. He spends a lot of time in the above video discussing objective and subjective truth claims and moves to more difficult examples, and in different categories. He discusses how horribly our education system prepares students as well as the lies our culture tells us regarding truth - and clearly show the holes in their thinking. Moral truth claims are the most difficult and again people don’t want there to be any objective truth claims except the ones they chose, of course. Most are self refuting like the overused “There are no absolutes!” So there’s one absolute and it’s that ‘there are no moral absolutes,’ right?
If we can agree that there is one absolute, transcendent moral truth then we are stuck the objective, transcendent nature of moral claims - whether we like them or not. They are objective not subjective. Our opinion about them doesn’t change them.
I feel like what you are saying is, “I sort of agree but I don’t really want to reexamine them again because then, if I’m wrong, I would have to deal with it and that might be difficult, too challenging, etc. - so I want to remain in my comfort zone.”
If you think you are an honest person on a quest to really know truth, then to be consistent, you will be open to ideas that might challenge your current belief system. You know very well people lie to themselves everyday. All of us do it for lots of reasons. What I like about this guy is, he is a very good, smart detective and thinks in a way I don’t usually. He deals with liars every day. As a cold case detective and undercover agent, he only has indirect evidence in most of his cases. He thinks in ways most don’t - and he discusses cases he’s worked on and how he deals with them. Whether he changes your mind or not I think you would enjoy what he has to say. The only reason he is a Christian is he listened to his wife’s concerns about their children one day and went to church. Neither of them were Christians. He thought one of the things the preacher stated was ridiculous. The rest, as they say, is history. He has a website with all his resources
https://coldcasechristianity.com/resources but I would suggest you view the 2 videos I mentioned first.
“I feel like what you are saying is, “I sort of agree but I don’t really want to reexamine them again because then, if I’m wrong, I would have to deal with it and that might be difficult, too challenging, etc. - so I want to remain in my comfort zone.””
See, I think it’s the opposite: you are uncomfortable with not knowing, so you assign certainty where there is none - in order to get in your comfort zone.
I’m fine with not knowing what can’t be known.