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The Foolishness of God…
Disclaimers
First of all - Who am I?
Short answer, Nobody.
Second - What are my Credentials?
Short answer, I have none.
Third - Why should you trust what follows?
Short answer, Why should you trust anything on the internet?
My purpose in making the simple declarations above is a (possibly) useless attempt to prevent the inevitable personal attacks that the following sections may provoke. In my opinion, it is a waste of time attacking me personally, if you are in disagreement with the following statements and ideas. After all, I just stated that I am nobody. Generally, it is assumed that one should attack when one is threatened and if one is threatened, it stands to reason that if one is going to attack then one should attack the threat. If you are alone in the midst of the African Savannah in the middle of the night and you hear the roar of a lion close behind you that would certainly be a threat. If you were armed with a gun (which is an obvious need if you are in the middle of the savanna in the middle of the night), would it be wiser to attack the air, which carried the lion's roar, or the lion that made the roar? Even when threatened by a hurricane or a tornado do you take shelter from the air or from the wind? In both of these examples, the air is not the threat. The threat is not the air that carries the roar. It is not the roar. The threat is the lion while the air is the messenger. The threat is not the air carried by the wind. It is not really the wind; it is the power of the storm that creates the wind that is the threat. I am not the lion. I am not the lion's roar. I am simply air, the messenger. I am not the power of the storm. I am not the wind it creates. I am simply the air it carries, the messenger.
How do you know what you know is so?
This is always the starting point of any discussion regardless of how much or (unfortunately) how little time is spent on this point during the discussion. For most people the criteria for establishing certainty about a particular statement is assumed to be universal. But a truly rational and skeptical mind should recognize the importance of both sides of a discussion agreeing to and actually using the same criteria for truth. For a true skeptic, assumptions are anathema! The problem is that due to human physical, and mental limitations at some point even for true skeptics, assumptions prove to be a "necessary evil". This does not mean however, that all assumptions are necessarily evil.