It is sound logic and sound reason, however it is blind to any outside or contradicting logic. That’s why the Christian science museum or whatever has displays of men riding dinosaurs. I mean, the Earth is only 6,000 years old, right? So, if we have dinosaurs and humans, well obviously god’s creations would own them as pets. I wouldn’t call that rationality, I believe it’s called in the symbolic logic circles “stroking ones self”.

In any case, thank you for the well thought out post.

The problem with skepticism is that it makes the claim that you cannot be certain that you are right, while forgetting that it implies that you cannot be certain you are wrong. After all, discovering something to be false is itself a discovery of knowledge. Skepticism is inherently nonsensical in this way, because it obliterates the validity of knowledge while itself posing as knowledge. When a rational person reaches a conclusion, he does so by using all the relevant evidence available to him. He has reasons for believing as he does. However, when the skeptic declares that he cannot justify his certainty, he uses the generalization that people make mistakes all the time, rather than point out any specific flaws in his arguement. Just as a person, to be taken seriously, should give specific reasons to justify his belief, so also should a skeptic give specific reasons, relevant to the topic, about why that person’s beliefs are wrong. You cannot take a shortcut and simply declare someone is unjustified in believing as he does simply because humans are fallable.

So, to get back to the original topic, does this mean that we should give Christians specific reasons why their beliefs are unjustified? No. Remember, the above relates to people who practice reason. When faith is involved, it is a whole different ballgame. Faith is the rejection of using the facts of reality to justify one’s belief. Basically, they believe god exists “just because,” through feeling and whim, rather than through rational inquiry. The problem is that they simply assert their religious beliefs are true, without proving why. They should be taken no more seriously than the skeptic who asserts you cannot be certain of your conclusion without telling you the reasons why your conclusion is wrong.

If you are interested in the philosophy of Atheism, the book “Atheism: The Case Against God” is an excellent choice. It was written by George H. Smith and makes a lot of interesting points. (Frankly I find it far more valuable than much of the literature being circulated by the new Atheists.) Most interesting to me was his observation that religionists and skeptics are intellectually in the same boat. Both deny the efficacy of reason to find the answers to our most important questions, the only difference is that skeptics offer nothing as the alternative, but religionists offer faith as a substitute.