Perhaps we define “atheist” differently. You don’t then deny and/or absolutely disbelieve there is a God. You just don’t know one way or the other, but lean towards disbelief because there are no miracles that you consider reliable enough to be irrefutable proof of God’s existence. And, that absence of miraculous proof for God is “evidence” you do consider acceptable and solid enough to support doubting the existence of God. Lack of evidence serves as evidence?
Have I got that right?
Perhaps being a former “card carrying” atheist myself, I probably should “chime in” here.
Like most atheists, “Atheistgirl” is a negative (or weak) atheist, or, as they like to sometimes call themselves, an “agnostic atheist.” The “gnostic” refers to knowledge and the “theist” refers to belief, so “ag-nostic” refers to “not knowledge” and “a-theist” refers to “not belief.” To paraphrase the late Carl Sagan from his book
Contact, the main character “Ellie” (if I recall correctly) when asked, “Do you believe in God?” replied, “If I say ‘No,’ do I mean that I am convinced that God does not exist, or do I mean that I am not convinced that God does exist.” Atheistgirl, like most atheists, are in the later category. Not many “strong atheists” exist in the World today; most such atheists would claim that there is at least a 1 in 10*17 chance that a god exists, or to quote Carl Sagan loosely, “Some forms of atheism are stupid, because they claim to know that which they cannot know.” Again, paraphrasing here.
So, atheistgirl is a negative atheist; she, like Bertrand Russell, considers the “god of Judaism/Christianity” to be like the “proverbial teapot” in orbit between Earth & Mars, Jupiter, etc. For them, the “god of Christianity” is on par with the “gods of Mount Olympus”. If you don’t believe in the later, “why believe in former?” or so goes their logic. So, in their view, the most rational approach is to “suspend judgment” with respect to the Christian god, and just as they do not continuously check their closets for “invisible trolls” which, by the laws of probability, might be there, so, too, they are not going to “waste their time” checking the “miracle claims” and other “evidences” for the Christian god, which, in their view, is on par with alien abductions, Big Foot, Nessy, etc.
Their flaw is, of course, in not recognizing the fact that we do have evidence, just not the hardcore scientific evidence which, they say, is required for them to believe in our God. However, as all we Catholics know, such evidence will, someday, be forthcoming on the Last Day when “Christ will come in his glory, and all the angels with him. . . . Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. . . . And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (CCC, #1038). On that Day, everyone, including Atheistgirl, will be “a believer.”
She, like most “agnostic atheists” will object, saying, “You can’t prove that assertion?” To why I reply, so what, “It’s true, which means that when it does happen, you will no longer doubt it.” Not a threat, but a promise, and an eternal one at that. Reality has its own existence, so to quote Carl Sagan once again, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” even if “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But, “says who”?
A much better question would be to ask, “Is the One and Triune God, a Perfect and Infinite Being, a circus animal?” If not, why do atheists and other nonbelievers expect Him to perform as one? Still, we have many excellent reasons to believe that the Catholic Faith is the One True Faith:
- “The Universe came from nothing by nothing.” We can credit William Lane Craig, a Protestant apologist, for popularizing this teaching of the scholastics, but everything which begins to exist must have a cause, and since the Universe began to exist (13.7 billion years ago), it must also have a cause.
- Actual infinities cannot exist in Nature. You can judge Dr. Craig’s Hilbert Hotel example for yourself, but to believe in an infinite Universe has its own set of paradoxes, one of which is that there are an infinite number of “mes” and “yous.”
- My neurons made me ‘do it’. If the conservation laws of nature are true (energy, momentum, angular momentum, etc.) and your “conscious self” is just electrons transitioning from one quantum state to another, then you have no free will, hence, you are not responsible for anything that you do, say, or believe.
- The conscious self survives the death of the brain. Never been proven, of course, but the late Pam Reynolds comes close:
youtube.com/watch?v=WNbdUEqDB-k
Is the glass “half-full” or “half-empty”?
- The Miracle of the Sun. The direct witnesses from that day are numerous and credible:
fatima.org/essentials/facts/miracle.asp
No embellishment can be alleged, as the event made the October 15, 1917 newspapers, within 48 hours of its occurrence. Likewise, the “distant witnesses” eliminate any “local” naturalistic explanation.
- The 500 witnesses to Christ’s Resurrection. Very few Biblical scholars argue with respect to the authorship and dating of 1st Corinthians (the Apostle Paul, 55-56 AD) or with the fact that Paul, in 1st Corinthians 15, is reporting a list of witnesses to the Risen Christ which he received from others. The “500 brethren” is in all extant manuscripts, and most ardent skeptics like to claim that it was an embellishment, a later ad-don, even though there is not a shred of historical evidence to support their claims.
). Still, more recent claimed miracles, which have been examined in a scholarly manner and with the findings being peer-reviewed, would serve as better material for this thread.
