Sorta like saying one can’t point to evidence for an assertion which offers no details…
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This is a really terrible argument on his part. I know something exists, but I can’t tell you anything about it.
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Which word is tripping you up?
it’s in the dictionary.
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But that isn’t my argument, you’ve misunderstood me.
The argument could be written as: what assurance can you provide that you will not simply reject every piece of evidence presented to you? How can I have some confidence that you don’t simply intend to say “Nah, Nah, Nah…” over and over? How can I be sure you have an open mind?
I have never seen a unicorn, I can only tell you how some people depict them, does this mean I should start believing they might be real? By @Sherlock-Holmes rationale it would be “irrational” not to. 
Oh good, so you can accurately define the deity you believe exists, and why? It was a long wait lets hope it is worth it.
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That’s tough. You are essentially asking us something we cannot provide you. You would have to look at our personal history. I left Christianity because they couldn’t verify their claims. I cared more about truth than I did my preconceived ideas. It would have been easy for me to stay a Christian here in Texas. I picked the hard road for truth.
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Not the word, the meaning of the sentence.
You see if you come to the view that belief in X is now warranted then you must be able to reason that that’s the case, you must be able to write a logical argument that justifies your new belief.
All logical arguments begin with premises, but a premise is an already held belief. Therefore that already held belief must have its own logically reasoned arguments and so on else you’d not believe it.
Therefore one cannot start out with no beliefs because without any one has no premises and if one has no premises then one cannot produce a logically reasoned argument for adopting their first belief.
Quod erat demonstrandum
#3…are you refusing to fully describe your god/s?
No, but I will not do so to those with closed minds.
Are you saying I’ve a closed mind? If so, please let me know what I said to lead you to that so I might correct it.
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No, I’m saying the only way you can assure me you do, is to demonstrate that you’d recognize evidence for God if I did present it, otherwise I must take your claim of open mindedness on faith, trust why should I do that.
And again, it comes down to the point at which we decide what & when we will be able to explain something.
What you don’t seem to get about science, something that’s implicit in the method, is that nothing is held to be so absolute it is beyond challenge. While science represents our best current understanding of the universe we observe around us, there is always more to explain and we can never be absolutely sure that what we’ve already explained is correct.
So at what point does anyone (presumably you or someone like you) decide that enough is enough and whatever it is they are explaining cannot be explained more? More to the point, what if someone disagrees with that person? That was the problem with Dembski when he tried to argue exactly that in support of his “theory” of intelligent design and that seems to be exactly the view that you’re advancing.
And that is why the gaps have to forever remain just gaps, shrinking for the most part but still gaps.
UK Atheist
You honestly don’t get that it’s impossible for me to assure you that I would recognize any evidence you present when I don’t know what you are presenting evidence for?
And I’m not asking you for evidence! I’m asking you to fully describe your god.
That you won’t do so because I cannot assure you of something else, is, I find, astonishing!
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All scientific explanations, theories, presuppose the existence of material quantities and laws governing their interactions.
Therefore an explanation for the very presence of these material quantities and laws cannot be scientific because it cannot presuppose the existence of things it seeks to explain.
That’s it, that’s the realization I came to while studying theoretical physics, that’s the harsh reality of science - it can only explain how already existing things behave over time, it cannot explain how the universe came to be.
I can’t dumb that sentence down sorry. You understand the word we yes, and start, and you know what lacking means, and what belief is yes?
We all start from a position of lacking beliefs.
Yes, but irrelevant, as before one was remotely aware of x it would be absurd to imagine one held any belief about x, ipso facto one lacked beliefs about x.
So all the beliefs you hold, you have always held, from birth? That’s absurd, re-think what you have said.
So where did your first belief come from? Or are you claiming you were born with it and all else came from that? I am dubious, though it matter not, since I was not born with any knowledge of deities, ipso facto I held no beliefs about any deities, ipso facto I was born an atheist, as are we all.
All you have demonstrated is you don’t understand the difference between a belief and an argument. Here’s a clue, a belief need not be rational, or based on any argument, it needn’t even be true.
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Yet as an atheist you say “I do not hold a belief in God” but if you really mean “I do not hold a belief in things that I can’t perceive” then why not just say that and drop all this “God” stuff.
So explain to me how any mechanistic system would establish its very first belief, justify that very first belief?
This is getting more into a 17th century philosophical discussion again. John Locke’s idea of a “tabula rasa” is not thought of as correct. We have instinct and notions we get from our biology, parents and first experiences. I don’t think there is any way a person can point to a first belief. Maybe a set of beliefs. However, the whole point of coming up with an epistemology like the scientific method is to derive truth outside of our beliefs. Have it form them rather than just assuming our beliefs are true. I think we here all had pretty diverse first beliefs. Clearly that’s not what brought us here.
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Again, you put words in my mouth. You seem to do that a lot. I never said that. I do not hold to that.
Why don’t you try addressing the words I actually wrote instead of engaging in what sure appears to be avoidance redirection?
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