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This is a fairly conservative evangelical who has at least learned not to confuse his beliefs with his sense of self. He can have discussions with unbelievers without taking their unbelief personally and feeding some sort of persecution and/or otherizing narrative.
He also has learned to admit that you can't convince people to believe with rational arguments. Which is a tacit admission that his only arguments are irrational.
Fundamentally he still believes he is correct and is untroubled by his beliefs being untethered from rational discourse and intellectual integrity. This may change someday; at least in the meantime he recognizes both the humanity of those who don't share his beliefs, and their right to their own personhood.
Mordant, you seem to think that the only choices are rational or irrational and that rational is always right. 'Tain't so. The third choice is non-rational and the result may be subject to analysis by rational examination whether arrived at by rational processes or not and they may be right or wrong, just as conclusions arrived at by rational processes can be wrong. Rationalization is also a lot of fun.
I respect the fact that he's at least willing to openly confront the arguments that atheists have against believing in God, even though he still chooses not to embrace reason. Most Christians just bury their heads in the sand and keep their fingers firmly plugged into their ears (figuratively, of course) when it comes to the question of why there are atheists. Many become visibly distressed at the mere mention of the word, or the suspicion that someone they know does not believe in God.
This is a fairly conservative evangelical who has at least learned not to confuse his beliefs with his sense of self. He can have discussions with unbelievers without taking their unbelief personally and feeding some sort of persecution and/or otherizing narrative.
He also has learned to admit that you can't convince people to believe with rational arguments. Which is a tacit admission that his only arguments are irrational.
Fundamentally he still believes he is correct and is untroubled by his beliefs being untethered from rational discourse and intellectual integrity. This may change someday; at least in the meantime he recognizes both the humanity of those who don't share his beliefs, and their right to their own personhood.
The problem I have is the Holy Spirit. Rational arguments screaming for testable evidences just don't work when dealing with spiritual matters. And it really doesn't help when anything that suggests the spiritual is summarily dismissed by skeptics.
Skeptics may as well argue that I can't prove that I love my wife for lack of testable evidence.
The problem I have is the Holy Spirit. Rational arguments screaming for testable evidences just don't work when dealing with spiritual matters. And it really doesn't help when anything that suggests the spiritual is summarily dismissed by skeptics.
Skeptics may as well argue that I can't prove that I love my wife for lack of testable evidence.
No. But would you expect us to believe that you love your wife if you couldn't provide any valid evidence that you actually had a wife?
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