A comment

Jeff Epler errancy@infidels.org
Thu, 10 Jun 1999 14:48:19 -0500 (00929062099, 19990610144819.58741@falcon.inetnebr.com) 

On Thu, Jun 10, 1999 at 02:19:54PM -0500, Jason wrote:

> Yeah? It's people like you that make me think that all

> "atheists"/"skeptics" are as spiteful as you. Of course you're entitled to

> your opinions, but know that they are that and NOTHING MORE.


Nonsense!  Unless I've missed something (quite possible since I
resubscribed during the middle of this little discussion) you're
claiming that
	The personal experiences of some people P prove belief B true
when you let P be "Christians" and B be "the truth of Christianity" but
now you're claiming that
	The personal experiences of some people P' does not prove belief
		B' true
when you let P' be "Muslims", "Atheists", "Wiccans", etc, and B' take on
the appropriate value.

So, you see that you cannot use this line of argument to prove from
ground zero the truth of Christianity, since the statement
	The personal experiences of some people P prove belief B true
is not one that can be treated as true regardless of choice of B (with
appropriate choice of P).  In other words, unless you (rather, the
person you're trying to convince) already think(s) that "the truth of
Christianity" is some sort of special belief, different from others,
the argument carries no force.

(The only support I've seen for your statement is the claim that God is
"a personal God" and thus he would have a personal relationship or
somesuch---but even "impersonal" things such as the weather have a
"personal" impact, so I don't see what force this line of argument
carries.

(At the risk of going tangential, does the fact that a construction like
"a personal God" allows for the term "an impersonal God" mean that there
are logically possible Gods with contradictory characteristics?  I guess
this is nothing more than the "gap in theological arguments", but it's
interesting that a slip of the theist's vocabulary would admit its
force)

Jeff
PS I'd say it's nice to be back, but it's too soon to tell
-- 
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