Jesus Christ...

"I didn't address instrumentalism because it's irrelevant to the OP. Focus is important in discussions such as this. If you come into a steakhouse and attempt to order some lumber, you're going to receive a blank stare. "

Do you really say that instrumentalism isn't relevant to the OP as you make "objectivity" essential to your premise? Are you serious?

"There are two possibilities here:

1. You were attempting to offer correction and were actually wrong.

2. You were confused about the minimum words I used to explicate objectivity.

I really don't see any alternative possibilities here."

1. You have yet to explain how actually wrong I am. 2. It looks like you are confused about that yourself, otherwise you'd understand bringing objectivity in a discussion about faith is completely useless. 

"Hahahaha, can you see no other alternative to the purpose here? Is it not important to bring to light the lack of objectivity involved in a theistic position? The reliance on alleged witness testimony, on feelings in the heart, on wishful thinking. Honestly, you've totally missed the boat on this one I'm afraid."

Is it me that missed it? LOL.

No, it is not important at all. Metaphysics isn't subject to scrutiny or evidence. Being such a militant atheist, as you seem to be, should understand the implications of that for anything. You'd  way more humble about what you think is evidence or not evidence enough for your faith (because that's what it is) on scientific conventional knowledge. Until you can negatively prove, which you require based on your fixation with objectivity,  theists claims, specifically for their concepts of entity and argue Ontology itself, then you're on the same boat as them; Proofless Boat. And btw, philosophically, they one up you. The Ontological argument of the first engine hasn't been logically refuted (at least not conventionally, ofc) and for which only fault is only to not be able to be proved, as if that has ever stopped the flow of ideas. You so being into philosophy, it seems, you should've read the Quinque Viae by now.

"At no point have I closed the topic to the empirical, only the objective. That includes the entirety of philosophical argumentation. But, as you can plainly see, the believers tend not to bother with logic and apologetics."

Precisely that you close it to the objective is the problem. Since you like analogies: It is like trying to argue colors with math.

Logic is actually on their side. A negative can't ever be proved unless you control the system, so as long you can't observe what they say, what they say still falls in the realm of possibilities, regardless of how unlikely, according to what we can observe, they are, because for what we can't observe the posibilities are endless.

No the belief in a God cant be proven but it can be possible for them to exist.

God does not use Lucifer like that. The book of Job clearly shows that lucifer himself wants to persuade people away from God. I would encourage you to read this article. I didn't read the entire thing, but the stuff I did read was accurate and is too lengthy to copy/paste into this thread so here you go:

here 

And again, humans are the ones rejecting the hand of Christ. You can't say God is sending people to hell. Anyone who desires to be saved in Jesus Christ can be in this life. Those who don't wish to be saved by Jesus Christ are not forced to be. Regardless of what you believe now, there is no changing the eternal truth that God loves you and desires you.

What happened to Job was just a bet between God and Lucifer over Job's loyality to God. God sent the limits of what Lucifer could do to Job and Lucifer did everything he was allowed to do. God uses Lucifer to tempt people in general otherwise what's the point of letting Lucifer have any influence over humans in the living world? Lucifer is not the source of sin but he was the first one to sin. What Lucifer can and can't do is determined by god unless the power dynamics between them isn't true at all. 

Oh don't give me that god isn't sending people to hell. God is the one that defines the rules and what he considers sin or what's punishable behavior. All humans have to do is cross the line and they are sent there for all eternity. A person doesn't even have to sin or do any action to cross that line. Simply not believing in god and living your life peacefully will get ya a permnant room in hell.  It's not that different than some tyrant king who demands you to bow and accept him as your king or you can just be tortured in some dungeon for as long as you live. Forced huh?

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I'll quote this one to make sure it doesn't get lost. But yeah, the above gets to the heart of things way more succintly than I will...but I'll answer anyway:

If I were to rely purely on my own experience for my knowledge of the universe, I would be a woefully ignorant person. I am an agnostic Jew. Beyond some cursory knowledge of my own people's history, I know very little about any religion. I have never seriously studied a science. I have never seriously studied a math. So I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. Should I just accept that I know nothing about the world around me, save for my own experiences?

I TRUST (belief is not the right word, as science is not a religion) in science because I am surrounded by it. Everything I use is built on scientific principles I only have a basic understanding of. I trust in science because science is peer reviewed by thousands of people, each and every one of them with a reason to prove everyone else wrong with some data point or piece of evidence that all of their colleagues have missed.

Religion can have some vigorous philosophical discussions, but there is no discussion of data. There is no peer review. There is no evidence beyond some ancient (and not so ancient) books that tell fantastical, almost entirely unverifiable stories. So no, it is VERY different from a priest quoting a Bible. Certainly, a religious figure can provide some unique insight and ideas based on existing religious work. But you'll never have a rabbi try to prove Kabbalah by pointing to a newly discovered piece of data. But you can have a scientist sequence human DNA and discover that some of us have a bit of neanderthal in us from crossbreeding.

Yeah, I agree with you on the Big Bang. Certainly, we may never know what happened before the big bang, or what caused it. We can hypothesize a "big bounce" or just stick God in there. But my point was that we have constantly been expanding our knowledge beyond what we thought was possible through our own narrow world views, that we naturally have as tiny organisms on a tiny world. Who knows what technology may nor may not reveal to us in the next 10,000 years.

I won't presume to talk about Newton's humility, nor will I presume to talk about the arrogance of modern day scientists. Newton may have been wrong about a lot, but he helped set the foundation for our understanding of the modern world.

As I noted earlier, I'm an agnostic jew. The "jew" part refers to my ethnicity and heritage, while the "agnostic" part refers to my faith, or lackthereof. I think there is a possibility of the existence of "A" God. I will not say with certainty that a creator(s) does not exist. I doubt the existence of a human-created Gods, largely due to my understanding of man's theological past. I don't see any particular God that is worshipped today as anything special or wholly different from the myriad of extinct theologies that our current Gods replaced. It seems ridiculous to me that any modern is any more likely to be real than any dead God, and that man can really know a higher being that would seem to exist beyond our plane of existence. But this has nothing to do with my trust in science. This is just my own, personal philosophy.

And...well, yeah, science has no interest in "how". "How" isn't for science, it is for philosophy.

Man sins in his/her own flesh as well as from the devil, it isn't always caused by the devil/demons and it certainly isn't their responsibility (Eve could have said no to the devil's temptation to disobey God, just as Adam could have said no to Eve's temptation, just like we could say no to our temptations).

God isn't taking bets (this isn't Constantine the movie). The Old Testament is filled, constantly, with examples of people turning their backs on God, yet God being merciful and giving them ways and time to return to HIM. The New Testament is filled with instructions and commandments to love people, reflecting God's ultimate love for us through Jesus Christ. Jesus gets rebuked, beaten, mocked, chased, and crucified and HE never once attacked people in return or killed anyone. HE had to deal with (both physically and the weight of all our sins) more than you, me, and all the other billions of Christians could ever collectively deal with and yet HE still loved us enough to die for us, to do for me, and to die for you.

We are born into sin and God gives you a choice of being reborn into righteousness through Jesus Christ. Nothing you say or think of will change the fact that God loves you and desires you to be saved. Bowing to a "tyrant" king is uncomfortable, at best, and is more than likely a terrible experience, if he is truly a tyrant. You will don't realize (hopefully you will one day) how wonderful it feels (spiritually, physically, emotionally, etc.) to be saved. People don't get saved to feel good, but with salvation comes a love for God and a love for HIS creation (us) and also with it comes an increasing peace that passes anything I could or ever did imagine as a non-believer before I knew Christ.

good post... one thing i always find amusing about such debates is that atheists often expose just how similar they are to religious people with regards to so called irrational thinking

in truth if you ask me i don't think that the thinking process of religious people and atheists is really that different 

its just two groups of people supporting beliefs that have been handed down to them 

for one its the concept that the holy books handed down to them are absolute truth... which honestly when you think about it is ludicrous

where did these books come from? nobody got their bible or koran or whatever directly from god... which means it was edited and printed by men and as we all know men lie and fabricate things to push agendas

beyond that i've seen very little original thought from religious people outside of what their pastors or other religious authorities tells them

on the other hand now we have the "rational" atheists, but to be blunt i see pretty much the same thing here

very little original though outside of what the main figures tell them, whether it be richard dawkins or hitchens or whoever

a lot of what they believe is imo quite irrational... like we can't measure 95% of what is around us but yet we can claim that supernatural influences do not exist... that's ludicrous, our inability to perceieve something does not mean it does not exist

You miss the point about my first bullet. It's not about science and scientists, it's about you, and other people. It's about people that have a biased and very superficial understanding of science, and that, I think, is very similar in a bad way to faith. You could check the data, but you will not. You could discuss with people that knows (and even if I doubt you could understand proves), but you don't. You could learn how to interpret, but you will not. You have no idea how a a peer review works, how long it takes, the problem there is with peer review (lack of time, complaisance), but you don't doubt. You don't question the thing. Science is a lot (but not only), at last in physic, about finding a model that works to describe reality, and confront it with reality, that why everyone is searching for black hole and dark matter. The goal is to understand how things work, not why or who. I will quote a guy I kind of made fun about but I deeply respect, Newton. And please don't ignore that, think about it : "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done." Another guy, Einstein, said that regarding God he prefered "an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being".

About my third bullet, again you miss the point. If science is adjusting models, you have to accept it's kind of wrong at any step. So, no arrogance, science is not Truth, it's a process for understanding, and we are at the very beginning of this process. And you compare science to God/religion in a way that shows you feel there is some form of competition. Science is not a religion, it should not be.

I believe I replied to most of it in the other post, you both have a similar opinion. About how and why (or who), please refers to Newton.

If God really existed and loved man so much, then he wouldn't have created a system that can have them go to hell. If he does exist, he's tyranical. And if that's the case, the only thing separating him from Kim Jong Un is he actually is a god.

Also, props to you for quoting the Bible in a thread that already called the Bible out.