@Satellite
I don't know what you mean when you say that Greece and Rome "could have reached a far higher potential". For what? Civilisations come and go - there's nothing particularly interesting about that. And I sure as hell can't see what the Bible has to do with it either way. (Note, of course, that the Roman collapse was the collapse of a Christian empire.) Greece and Rome were top of the class at the time. For sure, there are things we can do now that they couldn't then... but so what?

When it comes to assessing the correctness of a belief, I have sympathy with falsificationism: the idea that you can never tell whether a claim is correct. It's always possible that you're wrong. However, some claims contradict the best avaialble evidence, or are incoherent (either in their own terms, or alongside other beliefs). It's incoherent to say that this triangle has four sides, therefore the statement must be false. Other claims are empirically bogus. Finally, there are claims that we have no need to accept as true (because there's no evidence) and that we ought to believe to be untrue (because intellectual parsimony is a virtue and it demands that we accept the simplest possible account of the world). Religious claims often fail on all three bases: they're incoherent, they're empirically falsifiable, and they're needlessly complicated (inasmuch as they introduce into the world entities that are completely unnecessary for an understanding thereof).

What the PoMo crowd has right is the idea that there are often no "external" supports for some claims. Where they go wrong is in saying that "often" implies "always" and that any claim is therefore as good as any other. That's simply not true.
I also like where you're going with the 'belief' thing - shows you're not part of the post-modern crowd. However, what helps you judge whether a certain belief is right or wrong? External sources or yourself only? Is in yourself everything you need to know about any given situation?

BTW - I really don't see where you're headed with the "hope and joy" malarkey, either...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 20 May 2008, 9:32, Reply)