So you are a Skeptic?
Many people think that they are skeptics, when in
reality they have merely quite thinking
too soon. Typically I hear that people reject
Christianity because the "Bible is false," and
when asked they have never actually read the
Bible. I sincerely hope that you are here because
you are truly looking and have honest questions.
There is a test that I have borrowed from Dr. Norman
Geisler. There are many categories of skeptic
varying from different levels of unbelief.
The first group is the hardest and they are the Atheists.
They say that there is no God. My question is how
do you know that there is no God? Most say that we
have never seen him, or heard him, or otherwise empirically
verified his existence. This is an argument from
silence. To say that all crows are black, one must
find every black crow and verify down to the last one
that they all are black. To say that some crows
are white one must only find one crow to prove it.
The first crow hunt is the hunt of the atheists.
In order to prove that there is no God, they must verify
that in every inch of the cosmos that there is no
God. Without having done so, it is rather arrogant
to insinuate that there can be no God whatsoever.
Thus, not many people are true atheists. Some
atheists, however object to God on logical
grounds. They really are objecting to the idea or
notion of a god. For the Christians to prove that
there is a god, we must only show one instance of his
existence. If you object to god logically, or want
some evidence go
here.
[Remember, if you are one of the people that say that
you can't prove God by the Bible, then you must
personally be the one to do the empirical verification
that he does not exist; if you were to read someone
else's account of finding no god, then that would be
making the error of believing something based on a
book.]
If you have found that you are not a true atheist,
then you might be and Agnostic. An agnostic
is someone who is not sure if there is a god or
not. There are two types of agnostics.
The first is the Hard Type. This type
believes that you cannot know if God
exists. That is to say, it is impossible for a
human to be capable of knowing if there is or isn't a
god. The only question I have for these folks is
how do you know that you can't know? You have
contradicted yourself because you at least know one
thing about God, and that is that you can't know
him. So, if you can know one thing, then is it
possible to know two things? The problem is that
to say that you can't have knowledge of God, or to say
that you can't say anything about God, is to make a
claim and a statement about what you are saying you
can't do. This is sort of like the legends about
Captain Jack Sparrow [Pirates of the Caribbean].
It was said that he left no survivors. If he left
no survivors, then where did the legends come from?
The second type of agnostic is the Soft Type.
This type believe not that they cannot know if
God exists, but that they do not know if God
exists. Rather than making the statement that it
is impossible to know, they merely make a statement of
personal confusion and uncertainty. If this is
you, then you should only need some evidence.
There are some arguments
for the existence of God. However, there are
many good books that discuss this in greater
detail.
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith.
Josh McDowell More Than a Carpenter and Evidence
that Demands a Verdict.
Norman Geisler Christian Apologetics.
Peter Kreeft Handbook of Christian Apologetics
and Socrates Meets Jesus.
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