Originally Posted by
Akoue
This strikes me as an especially good way of getting at your initial question: Whether there is a god or not, why suppose that we can have any commerce with something so radically other?
Of course, there isn't likely to be any answer that will satisfy the skeptic. Justifying one's belief in God isn't like justifying one's belief that, say, tables and chairs exist, or that two plus two equals four. Justifying one's belief in God is a lot more like trying to justify loving the things you do. A person can, for instance, give you reasons for loving their spouse, listing attributes that they find especially attractive, etc., but none of these reasons is going to cause you to love their spouse as they do.
Now this isn't to say that loving someone or something isn't rational. It is rather to say that the sorts of justifications that are in play are of a very different epistemic character from the sorts of justifications we give for believing in the existence of tables and chairs. I don't see belief in God as something that is irrational or supra-rational. But I am convinced that there is no knock-down argument that can be adduced to compel the skeptic or atheist on rational grounds to accept belief in God's existence. Atheism is perfectly rational. And there are forms of theism--or ways of being a theist--that are, it seems to me, perfectly rational.
That said, I agree with you that it is irrational--and vaguely defeatist--for a theist to attempt to justify his or her belief in God's existence by appealing to the Bible. That's just a way of announcing to the world that one hasn't the vaguest idea what counts as a good, and what a bad, reason for believing in something. This is where the Christian notion of "witness" becomes important: A Christian cannot, as I see it, rationally compel you by means of logical demonstrations to believe in the existence of God. The most she can do is to share with you, to the best of her ability, what her experience of believing is like. In doing so, she may help you to encounter a reality to which you had hitherto been insensible. Or she may not. That's the best that can be done. And so those theists who attempt to argue on the strength of supposed evidence that disbelief is irrational are themselves deeply confused. Their supposed evidence only counts as evidence for God's existence once you already believe. This is to say that such evidence may fortify those who have already come to believe in God, but it has no rational or epistemic force by which to persuade the non-believer. It has been my experience that most of the people who have come to believe on the strength of such supposed evidence are themselves deeply confused and typically believe for very bad reasons. (But, again, this isn't to say that there aren't good reasons for believing. It's just to say that lots of people are very very sloppy thinkers. No surprise there. Just go to the political discussion forum and you'll be confronted by basic logical blunders that will make your hair stand on end.)
