First off, sorry for the multiple post. I swear to you the damn thing told me it couldn’t get a response from the server.
Secondly, I don’t either side is going to convince the other. After sitting back and thinking, what I’m debating isn’t the same as what you’re asking Jab. I in know what believe that there is anyone that can perform the feats that you’ve talked about (i.e. fireballs and such). However, a few points I want to make since religion has gotten lumped in here also.
Monty–
The point of my post about the oath taken as a witness wasn’t that it actually caused anything to happen. The debate since that point in the conversation has changed. At that point, I was giving an example of a ritual that is used daily. Not that it proved that someone chanting something can make a physical alteration in the world, just that something that can be considered ritualistic is used all the time.
Also, I brought up the whole 5 + 5 thing a page ago, and you’ve lost point of my original intention with that example. What I said was that the answer 5 + 5 = 10 is not the only answer to the question: “What two numbers can be added together to arrive at an answer of 10”? While Libertarian had done a great job in showing that the framework that we base our logic on does indeed have a basis in a common agreement that is basically arbitrary, that was much more complex a debate than what I was talking about.
Crunchy Frog and Amedeus –
You’ve both used the example of the car starting every day, not being an example of faith. Ok, let me relate a few things that have happened in my life.
In my early 20’s, I had been a tad irresponsible with finances. I had gotten to the point that I was writing checks, and depositing the cash in my account, to cover other checks that would have bounced. I was getting farther and farther behind every payday. Just about when it got to the point that I actually couldn’t cover what I had written with my entire paycheck, I got a phone call. It was a bank that I had set up an account with 3 years earlier. I had forgotten all about it, but about $20 a paycheck had been going in that account for about 2 years. I’m not sure how they got my phone number, since I was on the other side of the country from where I had opened the account, but they informed me that I had several hundred dollars in the account, and what would I like to do with it? It was almost the exact amount that I was behind in my current bank. Now I suppose you could call that a coincidence, that they literally called the day that I needed it, I don’t.
Just a few years ago, I decided that I needed to move from Ohio to Virginia to help my mother with some of the burden of taking care of my grandmother. My fiancée at the time and I packed everything up, and drove down on June 20th. No jobs, no set place we would be living, hadn’t even sent out any resumes. Within a day of arriving, we found a great apartment that we both loved, however, putting the 3 month deposit on it (because we weren’t employed) took most of the savings we had. We were left with about 2 months worth of cash to tide us by. Within a week of getting to Virginia, my grandmother took sick, and had to be rushed to a hospital. I was able to spend almost every day with her talking, and just being there with her. I sent out a total of 3 resumes while in the area. I went for one interview, and 2 days after my grandmother passed, I was hired at a good salary. My fiancée got a job before I did, but since she’s a teacher, she was able to stay with me the whole time.
Now again, I suppose that you could look at that series of events and say it’s all due to random chance that it worked out that way, that those examples, as well as a ton more that have happened to me in my life are just “luck”. I take it as a sign that my faith is not misplaced. How can I believe in a deity that I can’t see or understand? Because it works for me…every day of my life, just like your car does for you.