Is it unreasonable, for some one to establish a belief without proving it as a fact?
It may very well be, but I would hazard that most people (including you) are badly guilty of doing so. In general, we live our lives NOT on established fact but on "good enough" and on consensus.
For starters, there is a whole set of presuppositions standing firmly behind all world views; any world view that denies this or even glosses over it is an unfortunately bankrupt one (though it may address a narrow area well, it isn't a good candidate for being part of a theory of everything). Purported scientists like to say that the only things worth believing are those that are fully proven scientifically, forgetting that they can't prove this belief scientifically which right quick puts the lie to their words.
Science is a good resource for choosing things to believe, but it is not the only one. Just for starters, science cannot determine whether logic is useful. Rather, science is a formalized *extension* of logic that aids investigation into the physical world. One has to uncritically accept logic entire before doing any science at all. Clearly the idea that science is the only way to find things worth believing is nonsense.
The second part of the "proven as fact" myth is that few things are proven as fact with the kind of rigor that you might expect. Or rather, they may be proven—by someone, somewhere—but not proven directly to most people, to YOU. Instead, you were
told by someone that it was proven. This is where consensus comes in. You can't tell if something is true by how few or many people believe it. You also can't claim something is false the same way.
You believe that the moon was visited by humans, but can you prove it? Yourself? You believe there are atoms comprised of basic building blocks called protons, neutrons, and electrons—themselves composed of even smaller thingies—but can you prove it? No, you were taught it.
Trust and credible witness then enter the picture as crucial, unremovable aspects of the everyday beliefs of the ordinary folks. And for specialist researchers who actually do the proving, they are only proving to themselves the very narrow things they are studying, while accepting the great weight of their beliefs from the supposedly reliable claims of others, just like the general public.
When you look at the consensus-driven reality of the vast majority of everything most people believe and throw into the mix the deadly serious factors of sin and the Kingship of God—and rebellion to God and his Kingdom—it should be no surprise that in some areas, people aren't thinking clearly. At the deepest emotional/personal/spiritual level, a person who in his heart has rebelled viciously against God simply cannot objectively weigh all evidence.
Atheists don't simply "lack God-belief" any more than people who don't believe machines can fly simply "lack machine-flight-belief." They have been exposed to convincing evidence, even if only in the privacy of their own soul, and *rejected* it. And to maintain this rejection properly, they can't take the position "God exists and thus rightfully I must bow my knee, but I will not." They must instead actually disbelieve in God. It is a requirement!
Anyone with this kind of emotional disability to face serious truths about the nature of the universe, the nature of people, and the nature of how both of those things came to be, cannot really be trusted in any scientific inquiry to have not improperly ruled out evidence that, to them, smacks of "God-belief"
even if it was the best evidence and the appropriate conclusions thereof would have had superior explanatory power over the "non God-belief" alternative.
Second, many people are not aware of how the peer review system of publication is seriously corrupt, and aren't aware of the kinds of nasty tactics taken against people who don't comply with the party line—destroying reputations and careers.
When you combine the underlying emotional subjectivity required by atheists in matters of "God-belief" plus the corrupt peer-review system that militates against allowing alternate viewpoints from gaining credence or dissemination, you have a recipe for controlling the beliefs of the world, in the name of "science" (which I put in quotes because it's not the real thing any more).
Consensus that a thing is so, by people who have the most soul-deep and personal-identity-based violent reasons to resist anything that smacks of God, should mean
little to true critically thinking people.
It unfortunately leaves us in the position of being uncertain in a lot of areas.
I don't have the time, money, wherewithal, or inclination to perform all sorts of original scientific research myself. I'd need trillions of dollars and a team of thousands of unlikely people committed to the ruthless pursuit of truth, wherever it leads, with no egos or careers or reputations on the line, all performing with perfect honesty, to really do anything on that front.
In the meantime, I do the best I can, and I rely on the most authoritative book I know, and do my best to restrict it to the arena to which it speaks (spiritual matters) unless REALLY clear.
This is why I say that it appears, based on the evidence, that the universe is Old, but I am not sure. And even if it is, this still does not rule out some kind of special creation of the Earth and its environs that still literally match the 7-day account in Genesis.
If I am not mistaken, Jesus himself is reported as having spoken of Eve as a real person. That makes it hard to take Genesis as all allegory. This hardly takes us all the way to a literal 7-day creation, but it does limit things a bit.
... perhaps more later.
Erik
