XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: fwbrown@bellsouth.net   
      
   In alt.fan.tolkien Lewis  wrote:   
   > In message    
   >  Paul S  Person  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Another way to look at it: factual statements cannot be proven,   
   >> falsified, or believed. They are the statements that everybody accepts   
   >> and so nobody cares to debate. The pool of facts is subject to   
   >> fluctuation over time, although with the movement from handwritten   
   >> records to printed records to computers the longevity of a fact is   
   >> likely to improve.   
   >   
   > Utter crap. "God does not exist" is a factual statement that most people   
   > would not accept; it's still a fact.   
      
   Yet it still comes down to belief.  As far as I'm concerned the existence   
   of God (specifically, the Christian God) is a fact.  It will remain   
   a fact even if everyone on Earth (including me) stops accepting it.   
   There's no way to "prove" or "disprove" it because, by definition, God   
   is beyond the reach of science or human knowledge and can only be known   
   through what he chooses to reveal of himself.   
      
   There are lots of things that I accept as evidence of God's existence   
   (the apologetic works of C.S. Lewis are full of them) but presumably you   
   wouldn't accept them.  One of us is right and the other is wrong, but as   
   long as we're confined to this life and ths physical universe there's no   
   way to "prove" it to each other.  That's why faith is so important to the   
   Christian, because without it there are no grounds for accepting anything   
   as true, either through reasoned argument or by observation.  I have faith   
   that human login and reason come from God and are capable of discovering   
   real insights into reality, and I have faith that my human senses were   
   designed by God and (usually) give accurate observations of reality.   
   If God doesn't exist and everything came into existence "by itself"   
   through random processes, then I can't trust either my observations   
   or any logical arguments I might build on them, and I would have to be   
   content with the inability to ever really know anything about anything.   
      
   --   
   F. Wayne Brown    
      
   Þæs ofereode, ðisses swa mæg.  ("That passed away, this also can.")   
      from "Deor," in the Exeter Book (folios 100r-100v)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)