Why do many Americans believe in God?

[spidergoat]

Can we do experiment to Test whether a person is a True Christian?
Setting up the experimental procedure, analytical method, expected outcome.
If you fulfill the criteria, then you are a Christian.

I may have been mistaken. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe a certain minimum of things; you have to believe in God, that Jesus was His son, who died on the cross and rose again to absolve everyone of sin, and that the Bible is His word. Anything else?

 

[James R]

Jan Ardena:

An atheist cannot know what is a Christian, because, they are atheist, in the same way a man cannot know what it is like to be a woman, because he is a man. Yet they make knowledge claims about things they cannot possible know. In this regard they are liars.

Nonsense.

By the same argument, nobody can know what it is like to be anybody other than themselves, because nobody ever gets to step into somebody else's shoes.

But you see, we have this thing called communication. For example, people can talk to each other and tell them what is like to be a woman, a champion cyclist, a poet, a destitute beggar, or a Christian. When it comes to Christians, in particular, many of them are quite keen to tell others all about what it is like and what it means to be a Christian.

Apart from verbal communication, people can also write things down. There are lots of books telling us what it is like to be Christian. Then there are other sources. You can even read about it on the interwebs!

And finally, when it comes to your specific point about atheists, atheists who used to be Christians have direct experience of what it is like to be Christian. So, when they tell you what it means or what it is like, they speak from personal experience and not from any kind of second-hand knowledge.

And Jan, please don't bring up the "no true Scotsman" fallacy again. It's tiresome. I know you think you, personally, are the only real, true believer in God, and that no atheist could ever have believed like you do, but that's a fallacy. You're not better than any other believer. You don't have special access to knowledge that other people don't have.

You cannot be a follower of a person, or system of rules and regulations, by simply saying that you are.

It is not up to you to set the bar for what it means to be Christian, or a theist, or whatever. If people identify as Christian (and plenty do), that is their prerogative. It is not for you to say they are not real Christians. How presumptuous of you.


Spellbound:

Faith is a test of oneself within in the absence of knowledge. Langan says we can dispense with it though, now that he's proven God. But even he still needs faith in certain things in the absence of knowledge.

Nobody has proven God.

Why do you worship Langan?