Merrium-Webster says: faith is a firm belief in something for which there is no proof. This is the defintion I have always used.

"Every faith in the world is based upon fabrication. That is the definition of faith — acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday schoo. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.
The Da Vinci Code, page 451.

All I can say is math does not lie.

Objectivists are fond of A=A. This I totally agree with.

0 + 0 = 0 or nothing + nothing or times Nothing or nobody still = 0 or nothing.

In order for anything other than God to exists, 0 + 0 must = something other than zero at least once.

Your proof is that we exist, not that we were created. And you also have no proof that the human body is the most complicated thing in the universe. You seem to make your proof is that we exist, not that we were created. And you also have no proof that the human body is the most complicated thing in the many assumptions without realizing they are leaps in logic.
Many complicated things exist which we know happen naturally. Coastlines have been shown to be extremely complex fractal patterns. Does that necessarily mean that the coastline was drawn by a math program? Or is it that the laws of nature follow mathematical principles?
Quit espousing assumptions as rational arguments. If you cannot answer "why?" Then you have not done the require logical work.

You ask me to define God. I can do so Biblically, but that would not be acceptable to you so let me approach it this way.

Would you agree your alive? I would presume you will say yes.
Being alive you have what is called "Life." I will also assume you would agree with this.

Now Define Life...

You can define all the the things life is not, you can define the things you do in life, you can define the limitation of life, .but try to define life,

Life itself cannot be "defined" other than to simply say "Life ..."is""

so by your logic murder of a child is better than being inconvenienced. as the moment sperm and egg join and conceived it is alive and growing . but to you why should your pleasure be denied because you might create a child. hell we can just scrap it out into a bucket and go on to our next bedding

Everything you have said in this post is contrary to all of Rand's theories. And two state that our current predicament began in the 1960s is contrary to history.

Randja, you will notice that I used the word "IF" so it is up to YOU to decide to what extent YOU understand metaphor.

Definition of Faith:

Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for and the evident demonstration of reality though not beheld.

THAT is the definition of faith as written before English and Websters.

You again have no proof of a creator, only supposition based in a lack of knowledge about how a complex organism can come to be through natural processes. Just because you don't understand something doesn't necessitate the existence of intelligent design.

Finally, in the end the acceptance of reality existing excludes the possibility of a being existing outside of existential reality, which would be nesessary for it to have created existence itself. For a more in-depth analysis, look up Rands statements on atheism. I do not think you fully understand her position, you just simply suppose that she is anti-Christian or possibly biased based on being raised in Communist Russia.

which came first the chicken or the egg

I keep telling you I do not claim there is no god. I say I do not believe in one. Did you see my post above which explains this?

I am saying unless you can define what you believe in, even you do not know what the god is that you claim to believe in.

As Branden put it: The man who claims to have faith that he will win at cards, can at least define what it is in which he has faith in the sense that he knows what he means by winning at cards. But if he claims that he has faith in god, he cannot, in any like sense, specify what he means. He can identify god, in effect, only as a feeling, he has faith in a feeling. But since faith itself is only the worship of feelings, the man who declares to have faith in god is declaring that he has a feeling about a feeling. A feeling that his feeling is true. Thus, faith is god is mysticism two times over. It is an act of faith twice compounded.

i'm feeling hurt that as a Christian your saying i don't understand metaphor, would that be colorful one or regular ones? :)

Indeed. I was quoting from Alexander Pope's poem. I suppose you can have hope grounded on some basis---like seeing a cloudy sky and hoping it rains, but faith (by defintion) is baseless.

people alway miss the mark with faith and a religion . faith is something one has or does to have . religion is a tool created by man to rule mankind. Jesus said the kingdom of god was with in each and everyone of us, something the church no matter the denomination denies us

America greatness is because we had the blessing of Our creator and when we began to falter in the sixties and then over the decades most people have lost there faith and belief. I know Rand was an atheist, I thought myself one once also. my rebirth is not important. God blessing is... We will never be a great nation again if we abandon him from our lives and nation

Yes, a fetus is not an actual person. If you accepted that it was, then you would create a conflict of rights which cannot exist.

The burden of proof rests upon the person asserting the proposition and not upon anyone else. This is not only in theistic discussion. This is the rule in all instances of rational thinking. Google “burden of proof fallacy” and pick one of the articles or books to explain this very important methodological principle: it is impossible to prove a negative and irrational to attempt it.

By a negative, in this context, I mean a negative for which no positive exists, such as the attempt to prove that one is not guilty, when no positive proof of one’s guilt has been offered, or the attempt to negate something for which there is no positive evidence. Proof, logic, reason, thinking, knowledge pertain to and deal only with that which exists. They cannot be applied to that which does not exist. Nothing can be relevant to, or be applied to, the nonexistent. The nonexistent is nothing. In short, that which is asserted without proof may be dismissed without proof. (That is a quote from somebody, I forget whom, that just came to mind.)

I do not assert there is no god. I assert I do not believe in a god and the reason I do not believe in a god is the proposer must present (1) an intelligible definition of the god and (2) adduce evidence to support its existence. No one has ever presented me with (1), so I never got to (2). You are proposing there is a god. All I ask you to do is start with (1) and advance to (2).

DanShu, for whatever it is worth, I have rarely come across any atheist who does not act or react against the idea of God with similar dogmatism as the Knights during the Crusades. They all think they are too smart or well educated to believe in a God and that Christians are delusional.

One thing is for sure and is a 100% certainty. Eventually we will all find out one way or another as to the nature of God, and one of us will be very surprised at the true answer.

Edited for Grammar.

Let me turn this one around. You are trying to use the "Absence of Proof" to imply that my belief in God is a fallacy.

The reverse can also be true, meaning that you claim there is no God, but you offer no proof the backup that claim since you have no proof.

II clearly state that my belief in God is based on observance of the things around me and the logic that they exist and that there is order to everything and a precision that cannot be matched by any devices CREATED by man.

Since Man must CREATE, or build, there is intelligent design in building any timepiece even the atomic clock that uses laws of physics that are proven, logically the universe with its precision that far exceeds anything created by man implied that the universe must have also been designed and created.

One cannot achieve order through chaos.

While this is not proof, using the powers of observation, I see the effects of this design.

While science cannot "prove" gravity, we can observe the effects of gravity, and even though we have no proof of gravity we know it does exist.

Just because I cannot offer you physical being you can touch and speak to, does not mean that being does not exist either.

I have never seen or spoken to people in Africa, but I know they exist. I have never seen by nephews and nieces because my brother is an asshole, but I know they exist.

I have never seen or touched my brain, but I think therefore I am, and that implies my brain exists regardless of the diminished capacity you might think it operates at.

To say it is a fallacy because I cannot prove something works also to your disadvantage in your argument as well.

You cannot prove the Big Bang, you have no "evidence", only theory and supposition therefore it is fallacy I say your theory is a fallacy as well then.

Now Logically since you have NO empirical proof of your position, you also are demonstrating that little thing we call "Faith."

Isn't Hope and Faith very much similar in nature?

One could rephrase that to say "Faith springs eternal." Since both Hope and Faith draw on the same basis.

Ok, then you PROVE there is no God....Show me your empirical proof...

Tyrants also used Judeo-Christian faith to rule. Look at the Dark Ages. While you may consider it an aberration of "true" Christianity, it is still faith based in the Bible. It just had emphasis on other parts.
The problem is that Christianity is rationally inconsistent and actually often puts down rational thinking, like the scientific method. Asking for proof, specifically. Doesn't Jesus state that a person who believes without proof is more "blessed" than one who requires proof to believe? Faith is accepting something in the absence of proof, which is opposite of rational thinking.

What tyrants need to do to rule is to suppress individual thought and to promote collectivism in any of its forms, including racism, nationalism, religion, socialism, communism, classism, etc. While many (not all) of our western thinkers who brought us to the understanding of freedom we have today were also Christians or Deists, that does not mean that Christianity was the cause of the thoughts. Correlation does not prove causation. Everyone at the time was some form of Christian. It was unthinkable to not be. We can speculate all we want on what their thought processes were, but it is not necessary. They were wrong in their assumption that a deity exists.

Essentially, if all our rights were "given" to us by a supernatural being, they really aren't rights but permissions to act in accordance to His wishes. If he gave them, he could also take them away. That is the nature of gifts and permission. If a right is not inalienable, it is not a right.

There are plenty of these little difficulties once you try to define individual rights in terms of Christianity. The deeper you go, the more you will find.

There are no such inconsistencies or contradictions in Rational Selfishness.

I am saying your brilliant well respected scientists have not presented (1) an intelligible definition of the god or (2) adduce evidence to support its existence. The intelligible definition must be the core quesetion before proceeding forward. Their opinions are of no moment, what they might say on topic would be useful.

Unless you grasp the cognitive principle that lack of evidence is proof of nothing, you miss the point.

Wow, long thread, so forgive me (is that allowed in the Gulch? ;-) ) if I repeat someone else's thoughts.

Christians can certainly share the political and aesthetic aims of Objectivism: freedom, individual rights and limited government, and romantic realism in art. There is nothing in Christianity per se which says one should impose one's morality on others by force.

However it starts running into trouble with ethics: there, Christians can share a lot with Objectivists, but there is a strong stain of self-sacrifice in Christian morality which is not shared by Objectivism.

Runs into rather more trouble with epistemology: Objectivism allows nothing between your own mind and reality, whereas Christianity is at best once removed (taking its evidence from the written words of long-dead people whose beliefs are at best unreliable and at worse obviously fabricated) and at worst explicitly faith-based, placing faith above reason and evidence.

And of course it has a big problem with metaphysics, as Objectivism recognises no Gods. Though even there it isn't quite as bad as many Objectivists think, as one can believe in a God who is part of reality, part of existence.

So overall, the answer to the question depends on whether the purpose of the Gulch is to harbour a way of living together or a whole philosophy. Speaking for myself, I have no problems with Christians in the gulch, as long as any discussions of the anti-Objectivist aspects of religion are in the spirit of polite enquiry. And as long as they can honestly take "the oath" - which again personally, I believe the better type of Christian can in fact do.