Straggler writes:
Bertot's claim in the "Friggin Confident" thread that theistic conclusions and scientific conclusions are both based on exactly the same forms of evidence would seem to have been largely refuted by most of the comments by theists in this thread so far.
It became painfully evident in the Friggin' Confident thread that Bertot and John 10:10 share both this viewpoint and its opposite, and I honestly believe they just don't see the contradiction. It's often been called cognitive dissonance, but whatever the cause, it feels to me like they put issues like this into a "don't think about these" fog of ambiguity. This fog consists of a bunch of mutually contradictory axioms that must never be examined closely because they are irresolvable. The two major axioms in this drama are, as you've already described:
- The evidence for God is clear and obvious.
- You must believe in God before you can see the evidence.
They probably consider the contradictory nature of these axioms to be one of God's mysteries, but since one of the axioms is that the evidence is clear and obvious they're forced to insist that their evidence is as good as any scientific evidence, thereby putting the irrationality and illogic of their position on display for all to see.
--Percy
™ Version 4.2
