3000 gods but only yours exists

[Shaolen]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

 

[DustinQuick]

I would youtube bishop Barron: the yeti theory of God for sure!

 

[crystal_waters]

Id ask him how HE came to the 3000 number…?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I’d ask him why he’s making the illogical assertion that people arriving at the wrong conclusion previously automatically prevents other people from arriving at the correct conclusion.

It’s an irrational position held by people who are more interested in soap boxing than in actually considering given evidence.

In short, I wouldn’t waste your time responding, they won’t listen.

 

[Evania]

Sometimes prayer is better than any intellectual argument you may have. If his heart is closed, your arguments will be futile. However, prayer goes in the back door and softens his heart over time.

 

[Peter_Plato]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

Ask him if he wants to apply the same principle to the drugs his doctor prescribes him next time he has a serious ailment - “Thousands of drugs so far, but only the one you prescribe for me will actually work?”

Or ask if he wants to apply the thinking to science and scientific theories. Thousands of theories about everything so far, but only yours is actually true about or properly explains X. (Let X stand for any scientific position he might have strong convictions about.)

Also ask him what he supposes a true concept of God is intended to do. If God is meant to explain why there is something rather than nothing, the purpose or reason for existing for everything, then why would he think everyone of the proposed 3000 gods is adequate or sufficient to the task? How many of the 3000 gods have been proposed for the task in fact? Venus? Mercury? Ishtar? Baal? Anat? Mot? Tláloc? FSM?

 

[Peter_J]

Anyone for 30,000 denominations?

 

[womanatwell]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

I think Catholics should be aware of the mind-boggling complexity of biological systems in order to teach others that life is too complex to have come about by chance, and therefore a God, and only one God, could have created life. I know this goes against what many scientists and much of the media try to tell us, and I will not speculate on their motives. People should be like jurors in learning facts and considering them in order to think for themselves. I have a relatively short post that shows, with pictures, just a small sampling of biological complexity. It is at:

womanatwell.blogspot.com/2013/01/beneath-surface.html .

Even if you don’t read the post, go down to the diagrams and you will see that the cell carries on a myriad of intricate biochemical reactions. The first diagram shows an overview of biological systems, such as respiration, the next shows an example of the chemical reactions in that system, the next shows the makeup of a specific chemical in that reaction (a protein) and the next is a picture of the protein. So it starts in general and gets more specific as you go down.

In the same vein, the Intelligent Design community just made a video of how DNA works to make proteins and why they believe that only an Intelligence could have brought about our biological systems. It runs about 20 minutes and is found in this post:

evolutionnews.org/2015/12/3_of_our_top_st101911.html .

Once you believe only one God was involved in making life, we narrow it down by certain historical events in which we have witnesses who wrote about them. In the Bible we have witnesses who heard Jesus Christ say He would die and then rise again on the third day and these same witnesses saw Him after His death. There are other factors that carry weight, which are listed in my short, free booklet, “Heaven’s Passport” which you can read online and/or download:

womanatwell.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html .

The more we learn through research, the more we should realize how phenomenal life truly is and give credit where it is due.

 

[PRmerger]

I would youtube bishop Barron: the yeti theory of God for sure!

Do you have a specific link or specific video you’re referencing?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I think Catholics should be aware of the mind-boggling complexity of biological systems in order to teach others that life is too complex to have come about by chance, and therefore a God, and only one God, could have created life. I know this goes against what many scientists and much of the media try to tell us, and I will not speculate on their motives. People should be like jurors in learning facts and considering them in order to think for themselves. I have a relatively short post that shows, with pictures, just a small sampling of biological complexity. It is at:

womanatwell.blogspot.com/2013/01/beneath-surface.html .

Even if you don’t read the post, go down to the diagrams and you will see that the cell carries on a myriad of intricate biochemical reactions. The first diagram shows an overview of biological systems, such as respiration, the next shows an example of the chemical reactions in that system, the next shows the makeup of a specific chemical in that reaction (a protein) and the next is a picture of the protein. So it starts in general and gets more specific as you go down.

In the same vein, the Intelligent Design community just made a video of how DNA works to make proteins and why they believe that only an Intelligence could have brought about our biological systems. It runs about 20 minutes and is found in this post:

evolutionnews.org/2015/12/3_of_our_top_st101911.html .

Once you believe only one God was involved in making life, we narrow it down by certain historical events in which we have witnesses who wrote about them. In the Bible we have witnesses who heard Jesus Christ say He would die and then rise again on the third day and these same witnesses saw Him after His death. There are other factors that carry weight, which are listed in my short, free booklet, “Heaven’s Passport” which you can read online and/or download:

womanatwell.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html .

The more we learn through research, the more we should realize how phenomenal life truly is and give credit where it is due.

While I agree with your position, we need to arm ourselves with knowledge, the problem is that people who hold positions like this will all attribute it to random chance. They put their faith in chaos; so when they see the complexities they see the eventual outcome of billions of years of randomness.

 

[PRmerger]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

I think anyone who talks about “gods” when we are talking about God is demonstrating an impoverished understanding of God.

We are talking about the God of the Philosophers. Not a being that’s like a superhero, only more awesome.

God, by definition, is One. There cannot be more than one God because God is, by definition That Which No Greater Can Be Imagined.

And God is, by definition, the eternal, infinite, transcendent, immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient creator of the Universe.

So if there’s more than one god, then it’s not God.

 

[PRmerger]

Sometimes prayer is better than any intellectual argument you may have. If his heart is closed, your arguments will be futile. However, prayer goes in the back door and softens his heart over time.

On the other hand, sometimes intellectual arguments go through the head, and into the heart.

 

[ClearWater]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

Why not call a truce and agree to disagree. Agree not to discuss religion in the interest of your friendship. Yes, you could argue and debate, but it’s unlikely you will change him or him change you. It’s possible but improbable. You may, however, lose a friend over this. So, instead of focusing on your differences, why not focus on what you have in common. :twocents:

 

[PRmerger]

Why not call a truce and agree to disagree. Agree not to discuss religion in the interest of your friendship. Yes, you could argue and debate, but it’s unlikely you will change him or him change you. It’s possible but improbable. You may, however, lose a friend over this. So, instead of focusing on your differences, why not focus on what you have in common. :twocents:

This is absurd.

Friendships with religious discussions are entirely possible.

 

[Evania]

On the other hand, sometimes intellectual arguments go through the head, and into the heart.

Yes, I absolutely agree. However, I think prayer is what needs to happen first in order to open both. I’ve been guilty of losing sight of that, and the conversation never really goes well. I think this is because we don’t battle merely with flesh and blood but with powers of darkness as referenced by St. Paul.

 

[PRmerger]

Yes, I absolutely agree. However, I think prayer is what needs to happen first in order to open both. I’ve been guilty of losing sight of that, and the conversation never really goes well. I think this is because we don’t battle merely with flesh and blood but with powers of darkness as referenced by St. Paul.

Both/and.

Prayer and apologetics.

Not either/or.

 

[KEP1983]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

Your friend is equivocating on the term “god.” That is, he’s using one word which has two meanings and mixing them together.

Think of the word “bat,” which can refer to a flying animal or a long wooden object used to hit baseballs. The same word has two different meanings.

Likewise there are two meanings to the word “god” as well. One meaning refers to powerful creatures that exist within the universe that are very powerful. They are physical beings. They’re more like today’s concept of a superhero. The other meaning of the word “god” refers to the creator of the physical world, who exists outside of the physical world and brought it into existence.

One doesn’t need to be a Catholic to believe in the existence of this second meaning of God. Vatican 1 taught infallibly that one can know the existence of the Creator without divine revelation (the bible, tradition, or the church). Anyone who believes in the Creator believes in God. The next question is “has this Creator revealed Himself to us?”

 

[MarcoPolo]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Why can’t you just say, “Correct. The reality of God is not dependent on historic people who worshipped the sun or whatever.” Then you can get into the historicity of Christ if you have to. Or you could go into the tendency even for those ancient peoples to recognize a singular almighty deity, which does touch on the truth of a single God (Chesterton and Bishop Sheen made these points). But if this is just some obtuse sophomore pounding his chest with what he thinks are winning ideas, then you can yawn and move on and pray or fast for him if you like. The reality of God is also not dependent on whether or not we humor polemicists.

 

[womanatwell]

While I agree with your position, we need to arm ourselves with knowledge, the problem is that people who hold positions like this will all attribute it to random chance. They put their faith in chaos; so when they see the complexities they see the eventual outcome of billions of years of randomness.

Thank you for your interest. This is an excellent example of the need for better education. “Billions of years” has been the excuse for allowing that anything could happen in that time. But people miss the fact that a functional sequence (such as that of DNA) must be in place before any improvement can be made and this would take much longer than even billions of years. As I wrote in another thread, my husband worked out a problem:

**One million monkeys on one million typewriters.
They type 60 words per minute, 5 letters per word (with spaces).
They do not worry about the capital letter and type 24/7/365.
How long does it take, by chance, to type:

It was a dark and stormy night.

On average it takes them:

7 thousand trillion, trillion, trillion years.**

This is where the Intelligent Design people have done a great job in showing how rare functional proteins are (only one in about 10^77 of possible combinations of 150 sub-units form a functional protein). To compare, there are about 10^65 atoms in our galaxy. There could have only been less than 10^50 organisms on Earth in 4 billion years (calculated by volume of water), so they could not have made samples enough to try for functional proteins—too many non-functional would have formed in the attempts. In order for natural selection to work, you must have an organism that is working in the first place and a variety of proteins to choose from. That again is the critical step that people miss. These are points made on the ID website at the address I gave above but will repeat here:

evolutionnews.org/2015/12/3_of_our_top_st101911.html .

I don’t agree with Intelligent Design advocates about everything, but they have done a wonderful job in showing the complexity of biology.

 

[TarkanAttila]

Well, you claim that none exist. We both have a one in 3000 chance of being right.

Well, that is, if I denied the existence of the other 2999 “gods”. Augustine and Tertullian and the other Church fathers believed they existed. They simply denied the praiseworthiness of those other “gods”.

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Addendum/Side note:*

If they be called “gods” rightly.

What is a “God”? You might say, “why, it is a supreme Being”.

Has not every other “god” been bested at some point by another being or god? Was not Zeus, the “king of the gods”, bested by Prometheus, who gave men fire, and taught men to trick Zeus with the skin and bones of animals so they could have the meat and fat? And then, was not this great humanitarian chained to a rock to have his liver pecked out for ever?

Suffer me one question: How can such gods, to whom are attributed such weakness, such poverty of power, wisdom, knowledge - how can they be gods?

Ah. And how can I believe in a God - supposedly - that died on a cross due to men?

Did He not rise again and thwart their plans to end Him? Prometheus did no such thing. Zeus was never imprisoned nor injured; no. He was far too weak to be tested by chains, whips, or even death. It takes a strong person to suffer at all.

Prometheus was put in chains against his will. Jesus was crucified, understanding it was to happen to Him anyway.

So the only real comparison between Prometheus and Christ - for Zeus is a weakling, for he spurns suffering - is: did Christ break free in the end?

And there is the pivotal question. Did Christ really live again after He died?