[no_fixd_address]

(Originally Posted by no_fixd_address) http://www.carl-olson.com/articles/atheism_envoy.html

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This article is full of fallacies: ad hominem fallacy, appeal to faith:

“ad hominum”, according to the dictionary term , is not a fallacy. You appeal to faith every day in ordinary every day living. You refuse to define faith according to your personal opinion, so I cannot have a discussion with you until we have an agreement as to what faith is. It’s not my fault you refuse to dialogue, and come up with such a redundant non-response as this. I would be happy to explain what Catholic faith is, and what it is not. I am certain you haven’t a clue because your atheist cult leader Richard Carrier doesn’t have a clue.
Can you copy and paste any paragraph that indicates where Carl Olson’s ideas are wrong because he himself is flawed? It’s not there and you refuse to give an answer and then you complain about all the stupid Christians who you claim don't answer you. This is my evidence of your redundancy.

Noun ad hominem (ad hominems)

1. a logical fallacy, arguing that an idea or concept is wrong because its proponent is flawed
2. an attempt to argue against an opponent's idea by discrediting the opponent himself
3. a personal attack

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ad_hominum <<that is called posting your source

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Here is my question after reading the article.... why should a skeptic have the burden of proof when "god/s" hasn't even proven with reasonable doubt that he/they exist/s? Or for that matter that theists have yet to give a reasonable argument that "god/s" exist/s. if this is your life long crusade where is the evidence? personally I don't give a damn if people believe that god/s exist/s let them no skin off my back but in the world of science it is so that if you are trying to prove something the burden of proof is on you no on the skeptic.

...that there are certain basic propositions which do not include 'God exists' and, two, that other such propositions as 'God exists' must be justified by grounding them in basic beliefs. The theist can accept this model of justification and blandly add that 'God exists' is one of his basic propositions. Why not?
This should not be understood in a private or subjective sense. When Job says that he knows that his redeemer liveth, he is not simply reporting on his psyche; he doesn't mean that he knows that he knows something or other, it doesn't matter what. It is the object proposition and the truth it contains he is asserting. Does the believer who says 'God exists' is basic for him want simply to report on his idiosyncratic convictions?
If he does, he may be saying only that he has as much right to take 'God exists' as basic as his critic does to take sense data or truths about the world as basic. Perhaps that is all Plantinga wishes to do. The upshot is then to claim that the believer and his critic are in the same boat. They agree on some formal account-that there are basic propositions and propositions derivative from them-but there is no way to adjudicate claims as to what propositions, materialiter loquendo, can function as basic. The skeptic is simply wrong if he thinks some version of empiricism is beyond dispute or, worse, that it is part of the formal theory.
My own first question envisages a meatier interpretation than that. I am asking whether the skeptic is justified in calling into question the truth of 'God exists.' Why not put the burden on him? Why not insist that he is attempting to convict of irrationality generations of human beings, rational animals like himself, whole cultures for whom belief in the divine and worship are part of what it is to be a human being? Were all those millions, that silent majority, wrong? Surely to think something against the grain of the whole tradition of human experience is not to be done lightly. It is, need one say it, presumptuous to pit against that past one's own version of the modern mind. This suggests that the present generation is in agreement on things incompatible with belief in God. Or that all informed people now alive, etc. etc. Meaning, I suppose, that all present day skeptics are skeptics.
Is there thus a prima facie argument against atheism drawn from tradition, the common consent of mankind both in the past and in the present time? I think so. There is a way in which it is natural for human beings to believe in God. I think of St. Thomas who on several occasions observed that a person need only look around at the world and gain the idea of God. The order and arrangement and lawlike character of natural events impose the idea. Indeed, so easily does the idea come that it seems almost innate.
This may be taken both as a factual historical remark as well as a theoretical claim. Thus it has been in the experience of the race. The difficulty with this all but universal acceptance of the divine lies in the identification of God. That is, trees and wind, sun and the world itself have been identified with God, nor has it been necessary to choose among these possibilities. This diversity does not tell against the naturalness of the recognition.
Let me cite a parallel in St. Thomas in order that it may be clear what he is and what he is not saying here. Thomas, as you know, agrees with Aristotle that there is an ultimate end of whatever we do, that any human action of any human agent aims at the supreme good or ultimate end which is happiness. The familiar objection to this is that humans have very different aims when they act and that any given human appears to have a plurality of aims not easily reducible to the kind of unity Thomas's view suggests. Since Thomas was not the village idiot, we may presume that he is aware of the diversity mentioned and that he does not think it tells against his doctrine of ultimate end. How not?
He distinguishes in any action the ratio boni, the note of goodness, the formality under which we do any action, on the one hand, and, on the other, the particular deed done in which we take that formality to be realized. What the dizzying variety of deeds done have in common is the reason we do any of them, our aim, and that is that they are good for us to do, meaning, to do such-and-such is perfective of the kind of agent I am. A vast variety of types and tokens of act fill that bill. Some do not. Just as I may, misled by a miracle diet plan, think ground glass is good for me, so I may think theft is a kind of action perfective of the kind of agent I am. To want to be healthy, the presumed goal of dieting, with being wealthy and wise following hard upon, of course, is an unquestionable good for man; physical well-being is a constituent of any adequate account of a fulfilled human life. The problem lies with the ground glass.
No need to go on about this here. What I wish to recall is the way in which Thomas holds that human agents always act under the same formality-aiming at what is perfective of them-and that this in no way precludes legitimate and illegitimate diversity in action.
In similar fashion, the idea of the divine, the concept of a god, is what is shared; the identification of this or that or the other thing as God does not destroy the common assumption. Men disagree about who and even what God is. Another way Thomas makes this point is by saying that 'God' is a common noun, not a proper name.
Consider Thomas's remark about Anselm's proof. Someone might not agree that 'God' means that than which nothing greater can be conceived. What does Thomas think is the common formality of the term 'God.' The etymology of the Greek term suggests to him: one who sees, with the connotation, I think, of one to whom we are responsible, one on whom we depend for being or well-being, one to thank, petition, worship, placate.