Jasper, you appear to think that I don't believe in the uniformity of nature. But I do. As do you. But if it is so "damn rational" to believe it, it should be easy to make a rational case for it. If it works, you should be able to easily make an airtight case that proves it works. But, on the contrary, although it seems eminently rational and reasonable, one finds that when one attempts to justify this belief, one is confronted with a situation of hopeless doubt from which an epistemology cannot be built. I agree that it seems reasonable to believe that the universe is consistent and uniform, and that we gain information about it through the use of our senses, and that communication is possible, and all these other things we take for granted. It is reasonable to believe these things because the universe is upheld continually by a rational and orderly God, who enables knowledge and communication—and we are all created with an innate knowledge of this. Given a naturalistic worldview, we would to have no reason whatsoever to believe these things.

How can you say this if you haven't read it? Are you just believing it because you feel like it must be true? That is certainly not very rational.

Justifiable and provable mean effectively the same thing. Something is rationally justified if it is rationally proven. How would you justify uniformity?

In any case, my worldview is certainly not based on an assumption; it is based upon the work of God's Spirit in renewing my mind to know the truth of his word. Naturally you will reject this as impossible since you reject, a priori, the existence of God himself; but I have already shown that you have no valid foundation for knowledge, and so your rejection is merely an opinion you hold, and in no way reflects upon the actual state of reality. You may not believe me, but this does not make my testimony false.

As for the size of the universe, even if God had failed to mention why it is so big, what precisely is your argument? That because God has not revealed everything, he therefore cannot exist? I am confused. In any case, you spoke out of turn by presuming to know that the Bible does not comment on this, when in fact it says, saying, "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork" (Ps 19:1). The heavens are vast and beautiful to remind us of how infinite and magnificent God is.

I have already answered this objection by pointing out that words have meaning, and that the validity of reasoning can be evaluated using reasoning itself. As for dialogs with God, I am not sure from where you plucked that particular gem. I have never claimed such. And if the numerous authors of the Bible were all insane, it would not be congruent with reality, and would not be consistent between books.

You appear to have missed the point where the presupposition of the Bible as the word of God has logical priority over every other proposition within my worldview. This is what an epistemology does, by definition: rationally justifies other propositions which would otherwise be assumed without warrant. So again, you need to show that you have a valid epistemology in order to justify your assumptions, but I have already done this and so asking me how I justify my assumptions would appear to indicate that you have simply failed to understand most of what I have said so far.

Upon what foundation are you asserting this? It amazes me that you would openly affirm such an obviously self-refuting statement. Since I have a "house-shaped" epistemology, I am in an invincible position from which to declare that you are simply wrong about this. Your inability to construct your own epistemology does not mean that one need not be constructed; that is simply foolish. You are effectively admitting the complete inability of your own worldview to make justified claims to belief, and so are moving the goalpost to obfuscate the fact and pretending that it doesn't matter.

The biblical foundationalist approach is not the same as others. I have already clearly and adequately explained that the foundation of the foundation is the foundation. Obviously a non-revelational foundational approach will fail, because it has no objective propositions upon which to rest. But the Bible is not subjective; it is the revealed word of the self-affirming, self-existent God who created and sustains all things, and in whom knowledge itself exists. It justifies itself by definition.

I am not sure if you are being serious or not; it's hard to take you seriously, but I have heard more insane and obviously self-refuting things affirmed in the past, so I suppose I should give you the benefit of the doubt. In any case, you are simply admitting that you think a totally subjective, knowledge-destroying worldview in which all beliefs are simply chosen and prioritized arbitrarily is acceptable. If that is the case, then it is certainly true that the fool says in his heart, "there is no God" (Ps 14:1), and whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool (Pr 28:26), for you have made knowledge utterly impossible, and thus have no foundation upon which to mount argumentation at all. You may believe that Christianity is false, but you certainly cannot pretend to have rational reasons for it, since your entire worldview is founded upon non-rational assumptions and beliefs.

If you were either, you would not claim to know anything—including that absolute knowledge is impossible, and that Christianity is false. You certainly wouldn't claim to be more rational than me.

In what sense are these plausible? To claim that they are plausible you must have some way of determining this; some foundation of knowledge! When you say they are plausible, you really mean they have a high probability of being correct. But probability is a mathematical function, and is not worked out in the way you would apparently like to think. It requires knowledge of a numerator and a denominator. You do not have these. Do you really only believe without rational justification that it is plausible to think that your senses are accurate. It could be equally plausible that they are not. Again, if you are simply using unjustified subjective beliefs as axioms, you have no foundation for knowledge—you are admitting that nothing you know is necessarily true, and that everything you believe is held irrationally, apart from any kind of logical proof. This is not the position in which the Christian finds himself, since he does not rely upon subjective axioms at all.

If that is merely your opinion, then I can safely ignore it, since it is both unjustified by rational argumentation, and obviously false besides. Do you have any reason for saying this?

And again, on what epistemic basis do you hold this belief about epistemic bases?

As for logical laws, since it takes logic to deny logic, I reject your notion that logic is not universal. How will you prove otherwise? If you try, you use logic, and thus prove my point.

Upon what basis do you assume this? I am glad you seem to agree that a universal knowledge-giver, who must be a personal Mind, must exist for logic to exist, but this does not solve all your problems. If he grants us knowledge, then he must be meddling with us every moment of our existence. Knowledge is not unrelated to other events, so presumably if he is giving us knowledge of them, he is also causing the events themselves, and ordering everything according to his will. In any case, we can agree even on this tentative hypothesis that this Mind is intimately and continually involved with our existence, which certainly implies that we are of some concern to him.

That being the case, and since he is concerned with giving us knowledge, and since I have shown already that only a public and objective revelation can constitute a valid foundation for building a worldview, we should assume that he has given us this revelation. Simply assuming the existence of this mind on the basis of an argument from reason is insufficient. It still does not answer many metaphysical or epistemological questions, and so it does not constitute a valid first principle. For example, the problem of the one and many—how do we answer it? We can only guess. If we are to have a valid worldview, we must be doing more than guessing; we must be certain. So again, we come back to the need for revelation.

Anyway, that's enough for now.