James R,
Comparing one witness to thousands is fairly obvious. One witness can easily be mistaken; with thousands that is less likely.
"Less likely" still doesn't make it true, which means we are back to square one again, so I conclude "a miracle of some sort" could not be counted as evidence of God, lest it be true, which means it doesn't matter how many people witness it.
When it comes to particular "scripture", things are on very shaky ground indeed. For example, all the Christian gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus. That alone leaves them very open to questioning. They are hardly eyewitness accounts.
Evidence of Gods existence is not dependant on when the scriptures were written, plus the bible is not the only scripture.
The same way I would deduce that sharks exist if I saw a shark.
So when you say "some sort of miracle", you really mean God must show himself?
No, because you haven't shown that God told you there was an afterlife, and that the idea wasn't just made up by human beings.
I'm not sure what you mean by "...you haven't shown that God told you... ".
What reasons would human beings have for making up an idea such as afterlife?
Because belief in God rests of faith rather than evidence?
Not necessarily. One can believe in God without faith, it all depends on how you define "believe in".
What song and dance? Atheists freely admit they don't believe God exists. That's the definition of "atheist".
And theist don't believe God doesn't exist.
What it boils down to, is that we believe either God exists, or doesn't exist. :bugeye:
Of course, if you truly believe suicide will get you eternal bliss, you'll do it, won't you?
Whatever you truly believe, you will adhere to, but we're talking about muslims, and Islam.
There are many different gods. Atheism involves not believing in any of them: Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Shiva, etc. etc.
Why put Zeus and Shiva in the same category as Yahweh and Allah?
God and gods, are two categories.
There are also polytheistic religions, pantheistic religions and so on. Supernatural beings keeps things general.
But that's not what "theist" means, it means belief in God. You have taken it upon yourself to lump everything together, as if it doesn't matter.
Everything is derived from "God" the Supreme Being, from whom everything emanatesm, even atheism.
For non-belief in just the Christian God, for example, we can call a person "non-Christian".
That is a modern teminology. A christian is a follower of Christ, period. Christ believed in the same Supreme Being that I mentioned earlier.
Obviously, a person can be non-Christian and yet not atheist. But they can't be atheist and believe in any god.
Why not? It would depend on the "god" they believed in. Some atheists regard themselves as "naturalists", meaning they believe in nature, and nature is regarded as a personality in some religions.
My understanding of wiccans/witches is that they believe in nature, not God.
They profess that their magic is not of a supernatural nature, but nature itself. They are, imo, atheist.
Satanists also fall into the category of atheism, or at least some types of satanists. Buddha talked about Lord Indra, the king of the demi-gods, and his abode, and his followers are classed as atheist.
Jan.
