Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: Hank Kerchief; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; metmom; xzins; TXnMA
But, since the certainty of knowledge is not possible, your “knowledge” that there is God must be uncertain and you are therefore basing your source of comfort regarding uncertainty on something you cannot be certain exists, else...

My "'knowledge' that there is God" rests on faith, not on reason. What is received in faith is not "uncertain." Nor is it unreasonable. In fact, it turns out that reason itself ultimately rests on faith in God.

As René Descartes put it, the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself. (You can follow his reasoning in the Meditations.)

Which observation evidently inspired Voltaire's rather waggish remark of a generation later, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him."

Descartes argued that the idea of God is built into our very souls — it is the evidence of the imago Dei of our created nature. It's there, in-built as it were, whether we acknowledge God or not.

But denial of this can be costly, psychologically and arguably intellectually.

And now you're really gonna yell at me! :^) LOLOL!

792 posted on 06/15/2009 3:42:49 PM PDT by betty boop (Tyranny is always whimsical. — Mark Steyn)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 789 | View Replies ]


To: betty boop

Voltaire’s———————Do dat be Jean Marie Arouet ???—LOL..


793 posted on 06/15/2009 3:47:45 PM PDT by litehaus (A memory tooooo long)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 792 | View Replies ]

To: betty boop

“And now you’re really gonna yell at me!”

Well, I’m not sure that I should not be insulted, though it is very hard to do that. I don’t yell, ever. And I’m not trying to convince you of anything.

I do have one question. What is the basis of your faith. I mean, it did not simply pop into you head one day to believe in God. What ever suggested to you that there is a God?

I’ll be fair and tell you where this is going. Before you can have faith in anything, you must first have knowledge, and lots of it, such as how to read, and and how to understand a language, and what heaps of words mean. After all, if you have faith in God, you must know what you mean by the word, and you had to know that before you could believe in Him, wouldn’t you?

Did you know the words knowledge and understanding appear in the Bible more the three times more often than faith and believe, in all their Greek and Hebrew forms?

(If I had time, I’d show you that what you call faith, just simply believing without evidence, is actually condemned in the Bible, which teaches that one should be faithful in believing what they know through the God-given ability to “understand” the truth by the God-given ability to “reason.”)

See, I did not yell at you.

Hank


795 posted on 06/15/2009 4:40:27 PM PDT by Hank Kerchief
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 792 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson