That is, if they thought with their head for a while, and then immediately stopped to found a sect (see the quote in my signature).
Those who become Christian rather do so on much deeper reflections.
I am sure you mean that it is likely that it is unlikely to be true.
But Christianity does not base itself on "random" beliefs; far from it. Rather, it bases itself on beliefs which can be traced back to a tradition that goes back many thousands of years, in which numerous historical events are involved, and a long historical process of clearly exacting our beliefs in exposition and discussion in the many ecumenical councils and so on. It is certainly not "random".
If you simply want pure evidence and reason, in that sense, you should look into the many contemporary evidentialist Christian philosophers, like William Lane Craig who argues from the premise that Christianity makes historical claims, which is also relevant to the probability of the truth of the claims of Christianity, in the historical sense, for which you could look to Richard Swinburnes
The Resurrection of God Incarnate, (reviewed
here) in which he calculates the probability of Jesus ressurrection to a Bayesian probability of 97% (in the background of his previous theistic work). As to whether there is such evidence to establish Gods existence, you can certainly find many. A modalised version of the third way of Aquinas can be found
here, a cosmological
proof based on a weak causal principle, or the many other cosmological arguments, like Swinburnes
C-inductive argument, not to mention the deductive Thomistic cosmological argument from contingency, or the Leibnizian one from reduction to the minimal amount of necessary causal regressions or the Kalam version, (both sketched shortly
here) or Swinburnes teleological
proof from order and in its similar axiomatic incarnation (briefly discussed
here and exposited more deeply along with others
here), or Kurt Gödels ontological
proof, or Heartshones modal
argument, or Peter Kreefts short and simple list of 20 proofs (
here). There is also the Kantian
transcendental proof, which exists in several forms, but is certainly the most radical one.
For certain, it is notable that under a Christian theistic epistemic structure, it is much easier to understand the fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing. That this question is accounted for, even if the account is not itself taken to be absolutely certain or proven, is something which renders the interpretation of the world more rationally accesible.
But in fact, you should know that your statements and deamnds of evidence already presuppose that evidentialism; and that such is not mandated a priori as some kind of necessity for epistemic justification. Looking to establish religious epistemology on other forms of justification
compatible with what would be to be expected given that Christianity is true, is in fact, a necessity to evaluate it's rationality and truth. Therefore, I deflect the evidentialism and refer to the work in Reformed Epistemology, especially here, Alvin Plantingas work on properly basic beliefs, which though, still involve the criteria of epistemic possibility, which is certainly complemented by the work of Christian metaphysicians and even evidentialists. You can find a short introduction to his work on epistemic justification
here.
All this, of course, is part of a rationalist paradigm of thinking which needs not be accepted. It might be closer to the truth to accept a kind of wider epistemological effect of Gödels incompleteness theorem and Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, and resort to the Christian phenomenologists like Xavier Zubiri and their excellent work and it's implication for how we know the world and the truth and God (short introduction
here, and longer expositions
here,
here,
here and
here). It is also worth looking at, in the end, ultimately a Kierkegaardian approach which is far from impressed by rationalism.
But whichever view one chooses, it's without doubt that your accusations remain irrelevant, show no knowledge of Christian philosophers and thinking, no insight, and bring nothing new to the table of the discussion which has been ongoing for the last thousands of years.
Or maybe existence is simply not a predicate, per Kant. Or maybe you or I can bring another thing up. Whichever you choose, cowboy.
You have not shown that a Christian worldview does not have sufficient epistemic justification, or that it is a case of "something we have absolutely no evidence exists", or that it is even a case of having to prove any such things rather than being a case of instrumentalist and experiental epistemology and goals which has no occupation with evidence, or even of a Kierkegaardian one and it's implications for what the truth of the thing is to be determined after. Indeed, all you have done is bring a worthless and incoherent accusation full of nonsensical presuppositions that I have no more nerve to dissect.
There are varying degrees of connection, and certainly of ontological and epistemic types, even if they aren't "denominationally" equivalent. But even if there are such ontological and epistemic equivlances between theistic and deistic claims, there isn't far from the belief in such a transcendent, rational being that has created all things in existence, which implicitly implies the potentiality of an interaction with humans (from omnipotence) to the actuality of that interaction between one rational and powerful being (the transcendent creator) and the rational and powerful beings it has freely brought about (humans), and that obviously not by compulsion if it is indeed omnipotent as both deists and theists agree. These beliefs, though diverse, share mostly the fundamental similarities, one example of which is your more or less universal nominator of "absolute existence" which is a good basic statement of the fact of God, whichever way we come to realize it.
There are many physicists and biologists and others who maintain their belief in God as the Lawgiver, something that Darwin maintained until his old age, and there are many analogies in the natural world that leads to such a belief.
That too in modern science, in the words of the Anglican particle physicist who helped discover the quark, John Polkinghorne, that "the nearest analogy in the physical world [to God] would be ... the Quantum Vacuum.".
Does God Exist?
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Originally Posted by Loki
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