Prodigal Son

You just don’t get it.

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I’m one of the few on this site that does let the texts speak for themselves. I don’t superimpose a dogma to them.

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You insist you’re unbiased, that your position is pure evidence-based neutrality with zero faith commitments. That’s the part I keep challenging.
Both positions are worldviews. They aren’t just “belief in God” vs “no belief.” They are comprehensive frameworks that include metaphysics, epistemology and anthropology.

Your reality is matter/energy, blind processes, no purpose or Mind behind it (just the “illusion” of it :lol:) Consciousness, reason, and morality “emerge” from non-rational, inorganic matter. Miracles or divine revelation are impossible by definition. Everything must have a natural/physical/material explanation. This is the lens through which you filter information.

You can’t step outside your worldview to deliver some neutral, unbiased analysis of Christianity. The sheer implications of it being true (your life, ethics, eternity) guarantee some bias in both directions. That’s not an insult—it’s how human reasoning works. We all have presuppositions. The intellectually honest move is acknowledging them- instead of claiming ignorance. You’re not fooling anyone who doesn’t already want to be fooled.

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think you guys have your biases and presuppositions

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Of course. That has never been disputed. Being aware of my bias gives me a better chance at arriving at the truth of the matter. At no point in our discussion am I unaware that I could be subconsciously dismissing a well made point, or ignoring pertinent context, in order to protect my presuppositions. Of course I want to be right. I want to have confidence that my beliefs are true. We all do. The obvious difference is that I can afford to be wrong about Christianity. You can’t.

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can’t compute that someone else might not be biased and goes where the evidence points rather than attempting to fabricate evidence to support presuppositions. I think is a form of psychological projection.

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Were are the spider man meme. I think it’s hilarious. It’s even funnier that you can’t see it.

I don’t need to prove Christianity beyond all doubt to make this point. I just need to show that your atheism functions as a worldview with its own faith commitments (in the adequacy of naturalistic explanations for everything, the non-existence of the supernatural, etc.). Dismissing Christian evidence isn’t “just following the data”—it’s data interpreted inside your framework.

If I’m wrong, show me how your position avoids worldview priors entirely. How do you neutrally evaluate the historical minimal facts around the resurrection, or the fine-tuning arguments, or the grounding of logic/morality without smuggling in naturalism? Claiming “no bias” doesn’t make it so.

Ah. That’s a tough one. Is it a Catholic/protestant thing? Ours is. Wife was raised catholic but we go to a baptist church. I assume that your son went to your church, and she went to her parents’ church prior to marriage?

So, when do we riot? Oh wait, never mind.

Flamethrowers? Crossbows? Knives? No guns? Weird.

I’m sure it has nothing to do with money and it’s because hospital administrators genuinely care about all people.

Did you really complain to the mods to get that other thread taken down?

Also, why do you think that politics and religion can and should be separated?

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Who is the biggest threat to America?

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Ignorance and complacency.

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You’re against public funding for people you’ve been trained to resent

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I have a few questions.
1. Who are we trained to resent?
2. Who is “we”?
3. What is it about “them” that we’ve been trained to resent?
4. How are we being trained?
5. By whom?
6. To what end?
7. Why is this “training”!so effective?

I’m not here to insult you (but I can’t make any guarantees :lol: ). I just want to understand and evaluate your beliefs (and mine) against the backdrop of reality.

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There is no evidence that I've ever been shown that convinces me that he was a supernatural being.

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So now it’s about evidence again? is written testimony not enough for you? Do you see what you are doing? You have a double standard. On one hand, you accept things like oscillating universe theory, and the existence of aliens, on faith, without evidence. on the other, you reject Christianity; citing lack of evidence as the reasoning, giving the impression of plausible deniability rather than an independent choice to apply a different standard to Christianity. If you applied the same level of skepticism to everything else that you apply to Christianity, you would believe nothing.

So, we’ve established that evidence (or lack thereof) is not the primary concern in building your worldview. Why then, are aliens highly probable, but God is impossible?