Proof is not required of both sides: When making an existence claim, the burden of proof is on the party claiming that [x] exists. It is NOT incumbent on the counter-party to show that [x] doesn't exist. This is firmly established and isn't at all controversial.
If a believer ever manages to find some evidence for the existence of gods then we'll have to change our stance.
And I feel bad for calling this out again, but you are fundamentally wrong here:
"All knowledge has been lost except that which has been written down. Faith does come into play whenever we read history..."
It is misleading to claim that we can't know anything that wasn't ever written down.
There exist techniques that archaeologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, geneticists, et alia can employ to learn about the past independent of written documents. For one thing, if you rely only on written documents we're limited to only about 4000 years of history. Clearly people were doing things before then, and clearly we know that they were - we have physical evidence.
There are also techniques that epigraphists use to evaluate the content of ancient documents. Not all copies are identical, and it's possible to reconstruct family trees of provenance. Translations of the same document may differ, in many cases there aren't corroborating texts - in which case the orphan text can't be treated as definitive. There's no faith or belief here. It's science. It's analysis. Conclusions are drawn within bounds of confidence levels.
To me Faith is a confidence level.
It also seems to me that I have been attributed of proposing a "Truth".
I am still being accused of not knowing. No one can tell me what I do or do not know. No one can even tell me what I know is true or not. I have never injected nor have tried to imply that I know a "truth".
It seems that those who reply to my questions are assuming too much. But I cannot say they are, else I assume to know what they are acknowledging.
In your post you say that it is up to the one holding the "unknowable" truth to hold the burden of proof. I am not even getting to that part of the debate.
I am trying to claim that; like Defient47, there are things that one individual does know. There are things that another individual does not know. This knowledge has nothing to do with truth. It just means that there is knowledge that one can know and another cannot know.
There is knowledge that both individuals can experience at the same time that is known to both of them, even if perceived differently. That would be common knowledge. If you state that there is common knowledge that every single 7 billion individuals alive today knows, you will be laughed at. Why are you scoffing one individual for having knowledge that the other 7 billion people lack? Seems to me there is knowledge that some people lack and others have. Until one realizes that, should they even judge if knowledge is "true" or not?
It seems that even if you had mountains of evidence against a knowledge that one individual has, you still do not have that persons knowledge, thus you cannot declare it a lie, even if that individual can not prove to you it is not a lie. I may be wrong, but that is called trying to falsify an unknown. You can easily cast doubt and that individual may change his way of thinking and even forget that he had that knowledge. That is how the brain works. People develope non-sensical fears from an instant of "knowledge". It is up to a psychologist to re-write that instant so that individual can overcome that fear. Whether or not one
believes there is a God or not, there is a lot more "truth" relating to a God than a split second of revelation that inserts such knowledge into the brain patterns of an individual.
If there were split second revelations, it would be easy for science to overwrite those instances in the brain and after a few generations there would be no more "beliefs" around. It is just not a written record from antiquity that pushing this belief system forward. It is not even people growing up in a religous "setting" that pushes this belief forward. It is not even having Faith that pushes this belief forward.
A lot of people can say they have faith. What happens when the Faith crumbles? They are disallusioned and know that there is no God. They tested that Faith and were able to prove that there is no God.
No one believes me, but knowledge comes before faith. If you do not have knowledge, you will never have faith. Faith is trusting a knowledge that no one else has and when that faith is realized, then that knowledge is strengthened and may even be proven true. It is not humane to think that way, because that makes God selective, and that knowledge is only given to a few. God is not selective and we are not robots. Every one has an equal chance but every human is different and re-acts to that chance differently.
Now I have stated a "truth" in this post that I will have to provide a proof of. However, I will decline. This is not my thread. Most will not like my analogy, but I am sure there are mathematicians that shake their head and can not understand why some humans just don't "get it".
