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Been there, done that, got the faith to prove it.
You seem to assume that nobody else has ever doubted God's existence, and that you personally have discovered atheism.
How charmingly naive.
Poppycock. Also gibberish.
As I mentioned in post 62, I've already done so. I was raised by atheists, received the best secular education that money can buy, and by the end of it I chose to become a Christian.
This portion of the challenge needs to be better defined. You say "your reasons must also meet up to our standards", but you don't say what "our standards" are, or even who "us" is. If you mean that it must mean the standards of atheists then that's meaningless because atheists have no unified set of standards. If you mean that it must meet the standards of scientists, then that's already met, since scientists are just as likely as the general population to be religious. If you mean that all arguments must come from peer-reviewed sources, that will be easy since there are tens of thousands of peer-reviewed books and articles about theology, Bible study, and related topics. But the ball's in your court; you need to tell us what you mean.
I hereby turn the challenge back around on you. I would like you to theoretically become a Christian and then justify your own lack of belief in Jesus Christ to yourself and meet the burden of proof. Your reasons must also meet up to our orthodox Christian standards because what is science without peer review? But seriously, as reality is objective, for your beliefs to be more likely to be true you must be able to convince some people other than yourself without indoctrinating them. Remember that according to your own statement you are intellectually dishonest if you can't succeed at this challenge and cowardly if you don't try.
Really? So, for example, since seismologists can't predict when and where the next earthquake will be, they're not doing science? And since meteorologists can predict when and where the next hurricane will be, they're not doing science? And since psychologists can't predict what any human being will do tomorrow, they're not doing science? And since economists can't predict what the economy will do tomorrow, they're not doing science? Obviously there's a great deal of science, in fact the majority of it, that does not study predictable things.
I'm glad that none of my high school and college science classes were at all like yours.
Elementary, my dear Watson. The Bible is not a science textbook. It is a compilation of books of many sorts, including poetry, song, proverbs, legends, history, and so forth. The gospels which tell the life of Jesus Christ are historical biographies. They meet the standards of historical biographies written at the time. To complain that most of the events in the gospels are not documented by any source outside the gospels is absurd. If we followed that line of thinking, we'd have to reject all ancient historical writing for the same reason.
"the" burden of proof? Ah, here we go with "shifting the burden of proof fallacy".
We are talking about faith, not science. Be advised that atheism cannot meet your standards. But here is where you rig the game. What exactly are "our standards"? And you can declare anything we say as not meeting your standards simply by saying so. No thanks. If you want to know why we are theists, ask. Don't issue a phony challenge where you can rig the game so no one can meet the challenge.
Seriously, this is not a criteria for something to be objectively true. Also, looking at the record of theism, this burden has been met. Christianity did convince millions of people of other religions and did so without indoctrination.
Nah. You did it because you rigged the game so you can win. You are just hoping we don't notice the fix.
Nice false dichotomy here. How about we don't want to play a rigged game?
What happened to "objective reality"? Since when does society's "need" determine objective reality?
Congratulations! You too figured out one of the ways Bark rigged this game so he can't lose. Since atheists have already decided that any reasons or evidence presented by theists for their belief is "wrong", there is no way anything we might say would meet "our standards".
