Quote Originally Posted by Rhabbi View Post
Actually, I believe it is an accepted field of study. There are those who specialize in learning about authors and artists by studying their published works and personal papers and propounding theories about why they said things in a certain way, or why they used a certain technique in their art. Not my field of study, but in essence this is what theology is.
Staying on the art comparison; how do you know which is original work by the artist and which are fakes?

Quote Originally Posted by Rhabbi View Post
We both having witnessed this event still have to draw conclusions from it. I look it as an affirmation of my faith and proof of God's existence. You point out that there is no real evidence to support my conclusion.

How do we know he was dead? There are many stories from history that tell of people who were thought to be dead who later awoke. They used to sell coffins based on the fear that people were often mistakenly buried alive.

Even today there are occasional cases of people being so deep in a coma that trained professionals occasionally think they are dead when they are not. This might be unlikely, but it is not impossible.

I hope you can see now why I say it is impossible to make a logical argument to prove that God exists. There have been a few that have tried to do this, but I recognize the limitations of logic to make this argument, as does your Cambridge friend. the difference between him and I is that I do not take the limitations of logic to be proof against the existence of God. If he was being consistent in his beliefs he would also have to deny the existence of everything that logic cannot prove.

What you're basically saying is that the number of dots you need to connect between you witnessing anything supernatural and the following the morality as taught by the Bible is so staggering that there's no point to even bother? At every leap of faith the nodes that connect the reasoning have an almost infinite number of connections both to and from it? or what? How does that strengthen any case for the supernatural? You're basically saying that because we can't use logic we shouldn't, and just take the leap of faith anyway, right?

What I don't understand is why this seemingly compulsive need to connect the belief in an omnipotent god with the moral rules of the Bible. Why not treat them as two different entities? Why not judge the moral system as one unit on it's own merits and the supernatural claims as a separate unit? Are they in any way connected? Is the only reason to follow the commandments of the Bible really only the fear of punishment in the after-life?

edit: hmm....after some pondering I'll have another go. I think that the logical error you are doing is that you seem to assume that you have to have a faith. It's not like there's insulated areas of faithlessness between theories. There isn't. It's possible to use your approach if Christianity is a cohesive logical system that is connected, and if you remove parts of it the whole theoretical structure collapses. In instances like that finding enough evidence to support part of it can be used to support all of it. But there's nothing cohesive about Christianity. Each and every part is a separate statement only supported by itself. An example is the creation. The Bible said that god created the universe. Ok fine. This can be correct and the rest of the Bible wrong. Or the rest of the Bible can be correct and that could be wrong. Rejecting part of the Bible doesn't mean you have to reject all of it. In the same way. Just because you accept a part of the Bible doesn't mean you have to accept the rest of it. We all know that the Bible is quite a compilation and has been heavily edited through the ages. It's not like the Koran which origins we know.

Why not keep Christianity as one of your favourite theories? You where the one putting all that effort into agnosticism. As you so vigorously defended, picking one specific faith is not only a huge leap of faith but defies logic. Why not have a few favourites? Why not pick the parts that you think make the most sense to you and drop the parts that you find are ify?