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Originally Posted by asaris
I'm pretty much a Kirkegaardian on the subject of proof, which means that while rational consideration can lead us towards believing in God (and some part of this is the arguments for his existence), it cannot actually get us there. We need a leap of faith.
This might be inaccurate, but one might characterize Janey's point as that any argument requires premises, the ones for the existence of God as well as the ones for his non-existence. And if you demand proof of the premises, you're eventually going to get an infinite regress.
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I really respect that way of looking at the world, and the idea that it takes a leap of faith to get there. It seems to make the most sense to me.
Your point (or hers, if that's what she was saying) is definitely true; however it's true of all knowledge (and thus meaningless). You might say it requires as much faith to believe in triangles as it does in God, or that it takes as much faith to believe in your existence as it does in his. It also removes the boundaries of truth: at that level it also takes as much faith to believe in Santa Claus or Leprechauns as it does in oranges and Dolly Parton.
However, we think we can distinguish levels of knowledge such that we're fairly sure oranges exist, but not so sure Santa Claus or Dolly Parton exist. There's some basic reality we accept (on faith, certainly) and then we can assert the further reality of some things.
Bingle