Only if you consider conversions in other religions to be evidence of the claims of those religions. There are people who convert to Islam and whose lives have improved, or converted to Buddhism and whose lives have improved; conversely there are people who have become Christians and there is no observable "improvement" to be seen.
I don't believe Christianity is about improving one's life; neither do I believe conversion to a religion and seeing an improvement in one's life to be evidence of the truthfulness of the particular faith claims.
Of course those conversions to other religions are observable evidence of the claims of those religions, which turns out to be a point against
certainty using evidentialist methodology as THE exclusive method for coming to a knowledge of the truth. I seem to have missed the part where I suggested that conversion to Christianity amounts to mere "observable improvement". I think the word I used is "evidence". The new birth is nothing less than a miracle, and the external evidence is the result of the internal monergistic miracle of regeneration.
I would be concerned about a conversion to Christianity that does not bear fruit.
2 Peter 1:10 "Therefore, brothers,
be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall."
Of course not. They are evidence for the antiquity and general reliability of the transmission of the texts, they are not evidence for the particular claims made by the texts. Would you consider manuscripts of the Vedas or Bhagavid Gita to be evidence for the claims made in them?
So you agree that we should make a distinction between evidence and truth claims, between observable facts and the truth. Maybe you're not the evidentialist I thought at first. So I will encourage fideism with this question, how do we [autonomously] sort out the claims when the claims between say the Bible and the Quaran conflict with one another?
Yes, there is an objective world that can be reliably comprehended and perceived through empirical study and observation--I can know that water is wet by touching it. The demonstration of our faith through our living is not an empirical observation of Christianity's faith claims--it can't be because it's not empirical. It is not empirically demonstrable that by living in accordance with the tenets of our religion that the God we worship does exist, it is a demonstration of our faith, not a demonstration of the existence of God.
You seem to miss the previous point concerning the interpretation involved in an objective world and the dependencies involved. If we do not first presuppose the existence of God, a Creator of the observable material world with exhaustive knowledge of every created fact, and that He created us in His image instilling the capacity to reason and be interpreters of His creation, if we deny this theonomous relationship between Creator and creature, essentially we are forever stuck in the relativism of autonomy without any justification to support fact claims acquired through empirical study and observation. All of our knowledge, the truthfulness, the accuracy of it, is dependent on Christ. In this manner, we are thinking God's thoughts after Him so far as truth is concerned.
Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge"
John 14:6 "Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
Colossians 2:3 [Christ] "in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
There are two options: either we can know objective reality through experience of it (empiricism) or else we can know nothing of it (solipism). Solipsism is not an acceptable position, as far as I'm concerned, from a Christian perspective; and it amounts to nothing more than claiming that all external reality is illusion or ignorance, and at that point we might as well be Gnostics or Manicheans, as an orthodox, confessing Christian that is simply not an option. The world is not illusion, the world is real; and the external and observable world can be comprehended through experience and the senses. That doesn't mean that human beings are capable of knowing everything, there may be things we can't know because we do not (at least at present) know that we don't know them; but to suggest that the empirical model of understanding external reality is false means, fundamentally, that for all I know you don't exist, Christian Forums doesn't exist, the Bible doesn't exist. Indeed, everything I experience happens only in my own mind, and everything is merely an illusion dreamed up by my mind, and my mind is all that is. In which case, since you are merely a figment of my imagination, I am merely talking to myself here.
Actually there are other options (which you did not list) historically: rationalism, fideism, experientialism, pragmatism (very popular in America), and others including integrating elements from each. But I propose the only way to successfully integrate them is through the method of Christian presuppositionalism which historically is found more dominantly in Reformed epistemology, and is a Revelational epistemology, acknowledging the dependency of knowledge and the Lordship of Christ over knowledge.
The concept of the world as an illusion is found in the Hindu religion the concept or doctrine of maya. If we assume man is autonmous to attempt to deconstruct the notion of the world as an illusion, how could we deconstruct their worldview on the principal of autonomy?
The Fall doesn't mean that I can't look at a tree and recognize there's a tree there. The Fall means that we are desperately sick sinners, as the Scriptures you posted expressly say, and that is why we do not turn toward God or seek after God, but must rely on the external agency of God's grace to save us. This is a soteriological matter, not an epistemological one.
Do I take it you do not see a link between the effects of the fall on knowledge, and by extension the will? Here I'll quote the Augsburg Confession:
"
1] Of Free Will they teach that man's will has some liberty to choose civil righteousness, and to work
2] things subject to reason. But it has no power, without the Holy Ghost, to work the righteousness of God, that is, spiritual righteousness; since the natural man
3] receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,
1 Cor. 2:14; but this righteousness is wrought in the heart when the Holy Ghost is received
4] through the Word. These things are said in as many words by Augustine in his Hypognosticon, Book III: We grant that all men have a free will, free, inasmuch as it has the judgment of reason; not that it is thereby capable, without God, either to begin, or, at least, to complete aught in things pertaining to God, but only in works of this life, whether good
5] or evil. "Good" I call those works which spring from the good in nature, such as, willing to labor in the field, to eat and drink, to have a friend, to clothe oneself, to build a house, to marry a wife, to raise cattle, to learn diverse useful arts, or whatsoever good
6]pertains to this life. For
all of these things are not without dependence on the providence of God; yea, of Him and through Him they are and have their being. "Evil"
7] I call such works as willing to worship an idol, to commit murder, etc.
8] They condemn the Pelagians and others, who teach that without the Holy Ghost, by the power of nature alone, we are able to love God above all things; also to do the commandments of God as touching "the substance of the act." For, although nature is able in a manner to do the outward work,
9] (for it is able to keep the hands from theft and murder,) yet
it cannot produce the inward motions, such as the fear of God, trust in God, chastity, patience, etc"
SOURCE
What does proverbs teach about the fear of the Lord again?
Which would be evidence of people not wanting to believe objective, actual reality; my question is (in part) why would a Christian want to deny objective, actual reality? Unless you think those who beheld the works of Christ with their own eyes were right in rejecting them? But I can't imagine that's the case.
It's not the case, rather I would argue the related objective empirical facts are evidences supporting the truth claims of the Christian religion. Hence my interest in Biblical Archaeology and other specialized fields where empirical facts are concerned.
