re the arrogance of christians in article apr athos rutgers edu aa freenet carleton ca mark baker writes very good and reasonable statements on authority deleted the atheist position seems to be that there are no authorities this is a reasonable assertion in itself but it leads to a practical difficulty if you reject all authority out of hand you reject all possibility of every receiving information thus the atheist position can never possibly change it is non falsifiable and therefore unscintific this is not true the athiest s position is that there is no proof of the existence of god as much as some people accept their church their priests or straight from their own scriptures as the proof this does not satisfy atheists atheists do believe in recognisable authorities if they were as dogmatic as you claim they are they would be trying to prove every time they got up what they dispute is that churches priests scriptures etc represent true authorities and know the truth to demand scintific or rational proof of god s existence is to deny god s existence since neither science nor reason can in their very nature prove anything are you asking us to believe blindly you are trying to deny that part of us that makes us ask the question does god exist i e self awareness and reason if we do not use our ability to reason we become as ignorant as the other animals on this earth does god want us to be like that you are right that science and reason cannot prove anything however if we do not use them we can only then believe on faith alone and since we can only use faith why is one picture of god e g hinduism any less valid than another e g christianity mark baker the task is not to cut down jungles but aa freenet carleton ca to irrigate deserts c s lewis don lowe department of physics monash university melbourne victoria australia
