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And that would make sense if you were talking to someone who hadn't already asked a whopping ton of questions and found any and all answers entirely lacking, and then entirely repetitive as time marches on and the same questions are put to different people, who then have the same, or same types of answers. It gets to a point where you sort of just decide to reject all propositions of gods out-of-hand until someone can come forward with something truly compelling or undeniable.
The "you have free will" part is just a cop-out. A simple thought-experiment scenario exposes it as such.
To say nothing of non-Christians.
Incidentally, AIM isn’t even a healthcare provider. They offer pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, and a Bible Study. No medical professionals work there. Their stated goal is to offer “the gospel of Jesus Christ in both word and deed to men and women dealing with pregnancy.”
"One of the best things about Christians breaking the law and promoting their religion in public schools is that they can’t stop publicly bragging about it, making it easier to stop.
A couple of weeks ago, the Pulaski County Schools in Kentucky invited Michelle Cooper of the AIM Pregnancy Support Center to speak with 8th grade health classes at Northern and Southern middle schools all about “sex, STDs and abortion.”
The problem is that AIM is a Christian organization. And even though Cooper is listed on the group’s website as a “Medical Team Supervisor,” she has no medical training. And she freely boasted about how she “was FREE to talk about how amazing God is! Minds were changed today concerning abortion!!!!”
Now the Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling for more details about why this partnership occurred and demanding the District put a stop to it. No students should be taught about health education from an unlicensed ministry leader with no qualifications and a very clear right-wing agenda.
“Inviting a self-described Christian ministry to hijack public school health classes in furtherance of its evangelistic agenda is not only a grave injury to your students’ education, but a plain violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,” [FFRF Legal Fellow Colin] McNamara wrote to Superintendent Patrick Richardson.
FFRF also pointed out the troubling history of crisis pregnancy centers commandeering public schools to proselytize to students and the constitutional concerns with such tactics.
“Public schools exist to educate; CPCs like AIM exist to indoctrinate — by AIM’s own admission, they did not come to the district’s middle schools to teach sex education, but so that ‘minds would be changed concerning abortion,’” McNamara added. “The district can play no part in helping a private religious organization gain access to other people’s children to further their evangelism.”
Finally, FFRF addresses the danger that results from denying students comprehensive, science-based sex education in favor of widely discredited religious rhetoric.
“It is wildly irresponsible for these public schools to allow members of a faith-based anti-abortion ministry access to impressionable students,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “This infiltration of church dogma into Kentucky classrooms senselessly endangers the health of students and must stop.”
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Q. Is it really Christian to misrepresent oneself and dupe others so as to illegally push an agenda?
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And I will continue to be of the opinion that you are the one counting 5 things and calling them 6. And I base this on the evidence that is available, which does not include signs of your god - though you seem to think of Him as entirely necessary and obvious.
Subjectively, I only have my own experiences to react to. This is true of everyone. As you hint at in the rest of your reply, I can understand and empathize with others as regards their experiences, but in the end, I am left with my own alone, and having to vet anything anyone else tells me by trying to experience or verify their words for myself, or take stock of the validity of their point of view as pertains to evidence or comport with reality.
Good for you, I guess?
Have never "encountered God" (whatever that would mean), and highly doubt this will ever happen. And because "encountering God" is not really well defined or described, I wouldn't necessarily even know it had happened, would I? What do I compare the experience against in order to understand what had happened?
I would be interested to know what evidence outside The Bible you feel wholly "verifies" The Bible. Every time I have heard this claim (and I have heard it plenty of times), I am entirely disappointed by the caliber of the "evidence" presented.
None of that "evidence" is sufficient. None of it would hold up in court for a second. Nor can it be shown that ANY of that "evidence" is intrinsically tied to "The Bible" nor to "God." You can't demonstrate any actual linkage. You simply can't. All you have are thought-experiments or philosophical exercises. None of which is empirical.
Not only eye-witness testimony, and this is key - I can see and experience the process of a human being's conception and birth myself - which is a huge piece of evidence that indicates that all the people around me aren't just lying through their teeth when they tell tales of my conception and birth. You don't have anything like this to offer to anyone, regarding evidence for God's existence.
As stated above, it is not of the caliber of my birth story and being able to witness the process myself - after that initial, ancient eye-witness testimony we get NOTHING. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
The part in red above in your quote doesn't matter one bit. I don't care what is "internally evident" to you. I don't. If you come running by me on the street and say quickly that aliens are invading, but everyone else around us appears to be behaving normally, I'm going to look into the situation a bit more before I throw my hands into the air and run with you screaming about the end of the world.
Again, nothing you would point to as evidence is intrinsically tied to "God." There is no demonstration in the wings for you that can show that God is indeed the cause of the "evidence" you would point to. To claim otherwise is to lie.
Another mistake on your part. Science does not work to "disprove supernatural events." The practitioners of "science" observe events and then look for the best possible explanation and model that fits the evidence, observations and can be reliably reproduced or consistently measured. The fact that no one has verifiably found "the supernatural" in all this time isn't the fault of "science." It is far more likely the fault of there not being such a thing as "supernatural." If scientists were to observe events that were verifiably caused by beings from another realm, do you think that all "scientists" would work together to keep this a big secret? Honestly? You do realize that ANYONE can be a "scientist," right? How on Earth could you possibly expect that every person of every different type of disposition who wants to practice under the "scientific method" could all be in on a grand conspiracy? Do you think all prospective "scientists" take some kind of oath to not announce anything that "Science" wants to keep super-secret? Give me a break. You can't just say "Just because science can't prove it, doesn't make it fake." Because I can just as easily state "Just because science can't disprove it, doesn't make it real." Just because no one has disproved your wild guesses about something doesn't mean that your belief in that something is warranted. Once there's proper evidence and ability to demonstrate something, that's the time to believe, and even claim to know.
If you're getting at "eye-witness" testimony, then there are certain rigors that must be applied to such to make it strong versus weak evidence. None of these rigors work in Christianity's favor, by way. For the evidence to be strong/compelling, eye-witness testimony...
Of course you would think this way. Of course. Ridiculous, and not even in the ballpark of "true." And this is why so many theists have a reputation for being dishonest, and emotionally driven, with nary a care for logic or soundness of argument.
"Tenure?" Why do I get the feeling you're going to hit me with even more hardcore "conspiracy against the spiritual realm" talk?