Agnostic versus Atheist

[PRmerger]

Do atheists simply “not believe” the biblical stories about talking donkeys as opposed to knowing that it’s fiction? smh

Egg-zactly.

It’s circular.

“I reject the Bible because there are stories of talking donkeys and walking on water and resurrections” and

“I reject the resurrection because it’s in the Bible”.

 

[Tomdstone]

“I reject the resurrection because it’s in the Bible”.

Atheists don’t reject the resurrection because it is in the Bible. Generally speaking atheists will accept many things which are in the Bible. They reject the Christian explanation of the resurrection on the grounds that it is contrary to what would be expected in a world without divine intervention. The atheist may offer various natural ways of explaining what Christians call the resurrection and in doing so, they may agree that something occurred, but what did occur was a purely natural event, and not a miracle.

 

[PRmerger]

Atheists don’t reject the resurrection because it is in the Bible.

Sure they do.

If I remember correctly (and my memory for written things is like a steel-trap!), Bradski has done exactly this.

“Give me another example of a text [that’s not in the Bible] that describes Jesus’ resurrection”…because the Gospels should be rejected because they contain miracle stories.

 

[Cheiron]

Atheists don’t reject the resurrection because it is in the Bible. Generally speaking atheists will accept many things which are in the Bible. They reject the Christian explanation of the resurrection on the grounds that it is contrary to what would be expected in a world without divine intervention. The atheist may offer various natural ways of explaining what Christians call the resurrection and in doing so, they may agree that something occurred, but what did occur was a purely natural event, and not a miracle.

Most atheists I know are not that charitable and neither am I. I do not agree that ‘something happened’ and that it’s not only the Christian explanation that I reject. Dead people do not come back to life. Neither do virgins give birth. These things simply do not happen.

 

[PRmerger]

Most atheists I know are not that charitable and neither am I. I do not agree that ‘something happened’ and that it’s not only the Christian explanation that I reject. Dead people do not come back to life. Neither do virgins give birth. These things simply do not happen.

They do if God exists.

See this circular reasoning?

God doesn’t exist, therefore dead people can’t come to life and virgins can’t give birth*.

Dead people can’t come to life, and that’s in the Bible, and the Bible is putatively God’s revelation, therefore God doesn’t exist.

#circular

*It’s entirely possible now, thanks to science, for virgins to give birth, and, I would presume, for dead people to come to life…(although death is a separation of the soul from the body, so it’s impossible to tell if the resuscitation involved an actual death, or near-death experience)…but that’s a topic for another thread.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

**That seems like that would be a slam dunk for the atheist.

No thinking person would embrace God if it was a logical contradiction.**

Yeah–I think that this argument fails…there’s no logical contradiction that can be argued for God’s existence.

The bold font part of your post is one reason why I question some atheists claims of simply ‘believing’ that God does not exist or of lacking belief completely. When the atheist accepts it as a rational reason it goes beyond belief and even agnosticism towards the Christian God.

Some agnostics see evidence for and against God’s existence and therefore will not proclaim that they believe nor disbelieve in God’s existence. You will hardly ever see an atheist claim that there is some evidence for God’s existence or that there’s evidence to support both sides so this is hallmark difference between agnostics and atheists.

From searching this forum for what people think of agnostics and atheists, it is refreshing to see that even Catholics notice that there can be a difference as is captured in this 10-year-old convo:

First of all, he an agnostic, not an atheist. There’s a difference.

Secondly, many of us have read the scriptures “properly” (e.g., with the help of orthodox Catholic commentaries) and have still become agnostics.

Ok firstly, I am sorry that I said atheist instead of agnostic. I know there is a difference.

Yea, then you have to “study” to understand it fully. Like I said. Not only reading it.

 

[Cheiron]

They do if God exists.

See this circular reasoning?

God doesn’t exist, therefore dead people can’t come to life and virgins can’t give birth*.

Dead people can’t come to life, and that’s in the Bible, and the Bible is putatively God’s revelation, therefore God doesn’t exist.

#circular

*It’s entirely possible now, thanks to science, for virgins to give birth, and, I would presume, for dead people to come to life…(although death is a separation of the soul from the body, so it’s impossible to tell if the resuscitation involved an actual death, or near-death experience)…but that’s a topic for another thread.

In reverse order: Yes, it is possible now for virgins to give birth. It wasn’t possible 2016 years ago.

I’ve never said that dead people can’t come back to life because God does not exist. If an atheist ever made that argument, he was either a fool or a troll. Dead people can’t come back to life because the whole ‘system’ (body) begins to decay and break down at death. Unless a human body is instantly frozen, there might be a possibility of survival. But this can only happen to very small animals.

 

[PRmerger]

In reverse order: Yes, it is possible now for virgins to give birth. It wasn’t possible 2016 years ago.

I’ve never said that dead people can’t come back to life because God does not exist. If an atheist ever made that argument, he was either a fool or a troll. Dead people can’t come back to life because the whole ‘system’ (body) begins to decay and break down at death. Unless a human body is instantly frozen, there might be a possibility of survival. But this can only happen to very small animals.

So we are agreed that if God exists, virgins could give birth (2000 years ago) and the dead could resurrect?

 

[Cheiron]

So we are agreed that if God exists, virgins could give birth (2000 years ago) and the dead could resurrect?

If God exists and intervenes in the world, then my answer is yes. I must emphasize the word ‘could’ in your question. If God exists, then these things could happen. These miracles have to be judged on their own merits and evidence. But the existence of an intervening God would certainly be a strong mark in their favor.

 

[PRmerger]

If God exists and intervenes in the world, then my answer is yes.

Excellent.

So the question isn’t whether resurrections happen or virgins can give birth, but whether God exists.

And that’s something we can discuss here.

What evidence for God’s existence have you examined, and why does it fail?

 

[Solmyr]

Agnosticism in some cases is compatible with atheism but in other cases it is not.

That is obvious, since we are talking about two unrelated phenomena. There are agnostic theists and agnostic atheists. Also there are gnostic theists and gnostic atheists.

Agnostics can be completely neutral, that is, without belief nor disbelief.

The law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle say that you are wrong.

Why are some atheists afraid to take the next step and just claim that they KNOW the Christian God does NOT exist?

Again you forget that atheism is the lack of belief in ANY god or gods. The Christian God is just one example of ALL the gods atheists do not believe in.

Do atheists simply “not believe” the biblical stories about talking donkeys as opposed to knowing that it’s fiction? smh

There is no reason to speculate why an individual atheist does NOT believe. One size definitely does NOT fit all. Personally, my lack of belief (which may or may not be shared by others) is rather simple. The alleged attributes of the Christian God are partly nonsensical, partly mutually exclusive and partly refuted by the observed reality. It has nothing to do with the veracity of the bible.

Many believers love to redefine the inconsistent attributes as “mysteries”, so they can exercise double-think and maintain the mutually contradictory ideas and believe both of them. How do they do that, I cannot imagine. When I first read 1984, I thought that such a society cannot exist in reality. People are not able to entertain two mutually exclusive ideas and accept both as correct. But then I realized that people are able to do that, by rationalizing the problem away, like redefining contradictions into “mysteries”. Very strange.

 

[PRmerger]

The Christian God is just one example of ALL the gods atheists do not believe in.

This demonstrates an impoverished understanding of what is being discussed.

God, by definition, cannot have other “gods”.

What you are describing are “superheroes, only more awesome”.

As atheist BC Johnston states: “Such a God, if not dead, is the next thing to it. And a person who believes in such a ghost of a god is practically an atheist. To call such a thing a god would be to strain the meaning of the word.”

Just stick to the classical definition of God so to eliminate straining the meaning.

 

[Cheiron]

Excellent.

So the question isn’t whether resurrections happen or virgins can give birth, but whether God exists.

And that’s something we can discuss here.

What evidence for God’s existence have you examined, and why does it fail?

Well, God’s existence makes those things more likely, but as I wrote before: they should be judged on their own merits.

The reason I don’t believe is because the God as depicted in the Bible simply doesn’t jibe with the facts. The origin of humans according to Genesis is a myth. Exodus is a myth. God never created humans nor did he lead Jews to a promised land. Also, natural disasters are not examples of God’s wrath, but can be explained by meteorology.

God is a falsified scientific hypothesis. Just like the other many gods invented by many people to explain natural phenomena. I have never believed in God.

 

[PRmerger]

Well, God’s existence makes those things more likely, but as I wrote before: they should be judged on their own merits.

Fair enough.

And if God exists, then it’s entirely possible for God to rise from the dead and for virgins to give birth.

The reason I don’t believe is because the God as depicted in the Bible simply doesn’t jibe with the facts.

Ok.

But we would be agreed that this doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist. It just means that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist.

What evidence do you have for God, the classical God of the Philosophers, not existing?

The origin of humans according to Genesis is a myth. Exodus is a myth. God never created humans nor did he lead Jews to a promised land.

These are actually not arguments against the God of the Bible.

What arguments do you have that the God of the Bible can’t exist?

Also, natural disasters are not examples of God’s wrath, but can be explained by meteorology.

The Catholic view is also that natural disasters are not examples of God’s wrath, and that they can be explained by meteorology.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be God.

It’s the ever-present Catholic Both/And at work here, and that’s what makes Catholicism so formidable to refute.

God is a falsified scientific hypothesis.

Really?

What study falsified God?

I have never believed in God.

Interesting…

BRADSKI??? Do you see this?

 

[PRmerger]

Also, natural disasters are not examples of God’s wrath, but can be explained by meteorology.

Let’s take this parallel:

“The creation of a baby is not an example of God’s power, but rather can be explained by sperm and egg donated by man and woman”

True.

But it’s not ONLY explained by sperm and egg.

Catholics say: yes, parents are the explanation for babies, but that doesn’t mean it’s ONLY parents. It’s parents AND God.

 

[Cheiron]

Fair enough.

And if God exists, then it’s entirely possible for God to rise from the dead and for virgins to give birth.

Ok.

But we would be agreed that this doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist. It just means that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist.

What evidence do you have for God, the classical God of the Philosophers, not existing?

These are actually not arguments against the God of the Bible.

What arguments do you have that the God of the Bible can’t exist?

The Catholic view is also that natural disasters are not examples of God’s wrath, and that they can be explained by meteorology.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be God.

It’s the ever-present Catholic Both/And at work here, and that’s what makes Catholicism so formidable to refute.

Really?

What study falsified God?

Interesting…

BRADSKI??? Do you see this?

Let’s take this parallel:

“The creation of a baby is not an example of God’s power, but rather can be explained by sperm and egg donated by man and woman”

True.

But it’s not ONLY explained by sperm and egg.

Catholics say: yes, parents are the explanation for babies, but that doesn’t mean it’s ONLY parents. It’s parents AND God.

First, the onus is not on me to prove that God doesn’t exist.

Second, despite the fact that I do not carry a burden of proof, I nevertheless already gave you arguments against the Biblical God. If Genesis says that God created humans in Mesopotamia, but science shows that humans first wandered around in Africa, then Genesis is not true and the human-creating-God is not true. The Bible ascribes to God the achievement of having liberated Jews from Egyptian slavery, a story which archeology has proved to be completely fabricated. So the Jews-liberating-God doesn’t exist either.

Thirdly, you say that God is also involved in creating babies. What evidence do you have for that? This can’t simply be asserted, you have to provide evidence. What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Same goes for natural disasters.

You say:

But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be God.

It’s the ever-present Catholic Both/And at work here, and that’s what makes Catholicism so formidable to refute.

I disagree. This is what makes catholicism so incredibly weak. Again, God’s involvement is merely assumed. You did not provide evidence. God is still a hypothesis in your argument.

 

[PRmerger]

If Genesis says that God created humans in Mesopotamia, but science shows that humans first wandered around in Africa, then Genesis is not true.

You are on a Catholic forum, Cheiron. As such, it behooves you to be familiar with what Catholicism professes.

We view much of Genesis as “epic poetry”. Not with a fundamentalist lens.

Genesis is not to be read as a science text any more than we would read your love letter to your girlfriend that said “Your eyes are like limpid pools of beauty” as a treatise on ophthalmology.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

The law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle say that you are wrong.

I don’t see how your point applies to my point about someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in God’s existence. I agree that in reality, there are only 2 options, which is ‘true’ or ‘false’ but those options must be judged for or chosen and the agnostics that I brought up have not made a decision. This is no different than a Democrat, who being given a choice between 2 candidates, chooses neither.

I can even support my case of how contradictory beliefs are possible in the ‘mind’ as opposed to reality, but your objection was towards another point of mine.

Again you forget that atheism is the lack of belief in ANY god or gods. The Christian God is just one example of ALL the gods atheists do not believe in.

This is no different than what I said for agnostics, that is they have no belief nor disbelief in God’s existence; in other words no belief. When you say that you don’t believe, that is not the same as saying that God is true or God is false, so therefore no belief towards god’s existence.

The only disagreement I have with you is that there are atheists who don’t simply lack belief but rather they believe that God is false or does not exist. As soon as you offer a reason for your belief, like the incoherency of God’s attributes, then that constitutes as a belief that God does not exist. This is because A) you offer a belief or reason which is different then having a lack of belief and B) the belief relates to God’s non-existence.

There is no reason to speculate why an individual atheist does NOT believe. One size definitely does NOT fit all. Personally, my lack of belief (which may or may not be shared by others) is rather simple. The alleged attributes of the Christian God are partly nonsensical, partly mutually exclusive and partly refuted by the observed reality. It has nothing to do with the veracity of the bible.

Too bad that there is no “partly” when it comes to having a lack of belief. Absence of belief towards God’s existence means that you have NO belief as opposed to having ‘some’ belief. Had you said that you don’t believe because of lack of evidence, then I could see your point since that would be no difference than a baby who lacks evidence for God and therefore has no beliefs towards his existence.

This is the majority of active atheists. Very rarely do you see an atheist come on a forum, especially a Christian forum, and have no belief or views towards God’s existence. Atheists usually have their own underlying philosophy which by itself leaves no room for God, and then they have viewpoints that stem from those underlying views which comes out when they want to defend their views.

Many believers love to redefine the inconsistent attributes as “mysteries”, so they can exercise double-think and maintain the mutually contradictory ideas and believe both of them. How do they do that, I cannot imagine. When I first read 1984, I thought that such a society cannot exist in reality. People are not able to entertain two mutually exclusive ideas and accept both as correct. But then I realized that people are able to do that, by rationalizing the problem away, like redefining contradictions into “mysteries”. Very strange.

I’m glad you have had this observation because not only does it support my point about how agnosticism can be a mutually exclusive position but it also just happens to be the reality of the mind. The brain does not always function as a unified whole as far as thought goes but can function as multiple components, left brain and right brain, and then that can be broken down into individual compartments of each component., limbic system, frontal lobe, etc. Anyways, this is possible psychologically since we have observed such behavior like when it comes to having conflict between thoughts and emotions, 'cognitive dissonance, ‘compartmentalization’, ‘ambivalence’, ‘split-brain syndrome’, etc … just to name a few examples.

Even on a rational basis this can occur like when you have an issue that has evidence for and against it. This would of course only happen in matters where the truth is not definitively known.

 

[Cheiron]

You are on a Catholic forum, Cheiron. As such, it behooves you to be familiar with what Catholicism professes.

We view much of Genesis as “epic poetry”. Not with a fundamentalist lens.

Genesis is not to be read as a science text any more than we would read your love letter to your girlfriend that said “Your eyes are like limpid pools of beauty” as a treatise on ophthalmology.

I have studied the teachings of the Catholic Church on this. For example, this website disagrees with your reading of Genesis as poetry. catholic.com/tracts/adam-eve-and-evolution

Here is a particularly interesting quote:

Real History

The argument is that all of this is real history, it is simply ordered topically rather than chronologically, and the ancient audience of Genesis, it is argued, would have understood it as such.

Even if Genesis 1 records God’s work in a topical fashion, it still records God’s work—things God really did.

The Catechism explains that “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337), but “nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history is rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun” (CCC 338).

It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

Adam and Eve: Real People

It is equally impermissible to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen. 2–3) as a fiction. A question often raised in this context is whether the human race descended from an original pair of two human beings (a teaching known as monogenism) or a pool of early human couples (a teaching known as polygenism).

In this regard, Pope Pius XII stated: “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parents of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now, it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the teaching authority of the Church proposed with regard to original sin which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam in which through generation is passed onto all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis 37).

The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism states, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents” (CCC 390).

Yet the scientific evidence points to polygenism. Either the Catholic Church is wrong or science is wrong. There is no alternative.

 

[Solmyr]

We view much of Genesis as “epic poetry”. Not with a fundamentalist lens.

There is no official requirement on how to interpret Genesis. You are allowed to read it verbatim, along with talking snakes, rib-women etc., or you are allowed to consider it a fairy tale. Every believer is a cafeteria-believer. They all pick and choose which parts are literal and which parts are allegorical. Unfortunately the church does not come to help you. There is no official writ to separate the wheat from the chaff.

As such, you are not in the position to lecture others how to read the bible.