Quote:
Originally Posted by Castout
If one is in doubt one should only admit he doesn't know. If one chooses to believe he should turn his belief into knowing and knowledge of its truthfulness.
|
But how does one "know" that which cannot be shown?
Quote:
|
It's better to be a hardcore skeptic than a doubtful believer. Because the skeptic has his reasons not to believe while the doubtful believer has none to believe what he claims to believe.
|
But a believer without doubts is a fanatic by nature. Nothing can ever be perfectly known, so doubts are imperative to any rational thinker. A agree with your summation, but not with the conclusion.
Quote:
|
That reason, that knowing, that revelation, however small MUST be there in every believer. The absence of which will turn them into a secular and an apostate or a radical/fanatic/extremist with time.
|
But "knowing" something that can't be fully known involves a denial of reason, not an embracing of it.
Quote:
Atheism is the belief of the lack of God. It's a religion without ritual. Its core values is the belief that there is no God.
It is a belief that cannot be substantiated.
|
True only in the sense that the existence of God cannot be disproved. If something can be neither proved nor disproved, is it wiser to believe or to disbelieve? I do neither, because I don't know. Unfortunately I don't see that the believer does either. I used to believe, but I came to realize that I could see no reason to.
Quote:
|
And will crumble to a man when the existence of God is known to that man on personal level.
|
And that will crumble to a man when he realizes that there is every chance that all of his "personal knowledge" has no empirical verification, and may be real or may be his imagination, and that there is no way to actually know.
Quote:
|
I do not believe there is God, I know there is God. I know some of God's characteristic from personal experience but aside from that I have little knowledge and understanding of God BUT I DO KNOW that God exists.
|
How? What exactly is your experience? That which is truly known can be proven. If it can't be proven then it's only belief, not knowledge. I'm not trying to dismiss your experience, because I don't know that you're not right. But I don't know that you are, either, and I would to have some observable reason to believe you. Testimony is nice, but so far you haven't really given any. Saying "I testify that God is real" is like standing up in court and saying "I testify that the defendant is guilty". You haven't really testified to witnessing a specific event, only that your belief is real and that the other guy's isn't.