[ryanatau]

Morality Games:

From all appearances you seem to be out of the analytic school of philosophy and thus should be familiar with logical positivism. You said there is a fundamental difference in the logic atheists and theist use but that is not necessarily the truth. If anything logical positivism has shown us that logic is only a method of finding what follows from certain propositions. The problem logical positivists faced is that if pure logic is to find truth it must start with certain axioms. Since axioms are hardly ever self-evident (even if they are it does not show they are true everyone at one time though the Euclidean axioms were self-evident) and logic cannot tell us which axioms we must somehow and somewhat arbitrarily choose axioms which cannot be rationally discussed because they are fundamental and are prior to reason (reason assumes certain axioms to be useful).

So the problem with the atheist/theist debate isn't that one side is close-minded or that they use a different sort of logic, but rather that the fundamental axioms chosen prior to reason are different. Thus the theist phrase "Credo ut intellegam [I believe in order to understand]."

Also, not all theists believe God exists because he is imaginable (some do Augustine, Anselm, etc.). Many philosophers have said God is empirically demonstratable (Aquinas, Hugh, etc.). I think you are looking at the atheist position incorrectly. I sometimes ask myself what would God have to do to convince me of His existence? I have realized that almost nothing would be convincing. And its not because I would ignore the evidence but rather because my mind is made up. I would immediately try to find a natural answer to the phenomenon I witnessed. If God touched me on the shoulder right now I would not conclude God exists but try to find a way to show "given this data how can it be possible God does not exist?" Most people view the human mind as something that simply interprets data. But really we problem solve. We say "This is the truth. How do I make the data fit the truth?" Thus the William James quote "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."