Please explain how it is valid to hold beliefs that depend solely on that unsubstantiated claim? Why should Christianity be treated with any deference or respect when its basis is nothing but an unsubstantiated claim?
Sorry, but I dont understand what you are trying to say here. Forget about the analogy. Just define this God of yours then tell me whether its existence has been substantiated. Is your God matter, energy, a force or something else that is capable of affecting the natural world by performing miracles and answering prayers? Please explain how your God can affect the natural world in these ways. If you can explain the process by which your God could perform miracles and answer prayers then perhaps we could determine what constitutes your God. This would help us determine whether it is possible for it to exist and allow us to search for evidence of its existence. Again though, if its existence hasnt been confirmed (which appears to be the case at the moment) then please explain how it is valid to hold beliefs that depend solely on something that hasnt been confirmed?
God, or truth or law or reality or existence is the only thing that can be relied upon as true. Everything else is based on its existence. The French existentialists struggled with concept and nearly got it a hundred years ago or so.
How do we know ANYTHING is real? Because if nothing is real (and that is a possibility) then nothing makes sense, or everything makes sense. (Because then, sense doesn't exist)
So what MUST be true, what must be real is that there is something that exists outside of our ability to fully perceive, or understand.
I don't for one second believe that that something (I just wrote "that that") is a person, a being (in the common usage of that term), or a supernatural personal Deity. So, of course there is no "answer" to prayer (other than the revelatory insights we gain from it). Of course there is no "intervention" in our affairs by a conscious intentional being.
However, at the same time, there is an order, a structure to all reality that is "knowable" and the seeking of that order is the search for God. That order can change the course of lives, our society and our history. Just as our discovery of fire led to new societies, and the discovery of electricity and telecommunications changed the world, so this order as "intervened" to alter our history and course.
In this way science and religion are inextricably intertwined, with the advances of science opening new doors and windows for more questions and more discoveries in what it means to be a human being in a social world.
Without religion as a basis for formulating a world view, as a starting point to answer the burning questions we hold, science would never have taken the steps it has.
So is God real? Does God exist? Absolutely. Can we discover God? NEVER. Every step closer we take, puts that many more steps behind the discovering of the answer. The seeking of knowledge is not a finite journey.
The unsubstantiated claim is full of substance. It is however, severely lacking in perspective.
Robert Lindsey Nassif wrote:
None of us is born the same, we don't why, it's the way we came.
Every heart beats a little differently, each soul is free to find its way as a river winds its way to the sea.
For life is a journey, and there are many roads beneath the sky,
And there are many good people who don't see eye to eye.
You and I are different from our brother.
This is why we need each other as we go along.
Every man is partly right and every man is partly wrong.
Not every man can sing your tune,
From where he stands, there's another view.
With every turn we're learning more,
And perhaps will find that the walls we build are only in our minds.
There are many roads to go
And they go by many ways
They don't all go the same way
But they get there all the same.
I have a feeling that we'll meet someday
Where the roads come together up the way.
