Knowledge, belief & agnosticism (Agnosticism)

by Mark , Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 12:15 (5965 days ago) @ Carl

Let me offer a little on this thread, at the risk of being considered almost insane by George! - Carl says, "If God would simply appear before a panel of esteemed scientists and perform miracles on request, he could prove his existence". - The Christian God could not do this. He could perhaps appear before the panel in some form and perform miracles, I suppose. But there would always be room for doubt from a logical point of view. In my opinion there are two mistakes here.
 
One is to consider God as merely another object whom, if he exists, we could objectively study. If he exists, then he is the ground of all our studying. The idea that we could have a vantage point from which to assess him is like saying that we can pull ourselves up by our own shoe laces. - The second follows on. If God cannot be reached purely by scientific study or logic, then if he exists and if it is possible to know him then there must be another way to know. As it happens, there is another way to "know" which we use all the time, which provides a close analogy. If you can stomach a recent sermon, you read about it here - apologies for the length, but it does save me time to provide a link.