Apologetics: "God is an imaginary friend"

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I’m looking for apologetic guidance on how to reply to people, especially young people who make the argument “God is an imaginary friend” or imaginary daddy"?

I myself, although born and raised Catholic, spent most years of my life at a atheist/existentialist. I can only answer this question by saying, “How can you be so sure He does not exist?” because really, after years of nihilism I finally gave in an tried blind faith and then things improved from there. That works for me, but it does not work for most if not all young people today, many of whom have never had an exposure to God or religion. So what have Apologetics to say about he statement, “God is an imaginary friend”?

Point me to existing posts or resources if I missed any. Thank you!
 
I have not read it but I have heard it adversited on Catholic Answers Live. I would suggest the book “The Godless Delusion: A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism” by
Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley
 
YankeeRC said:
I’m looking for apologetic guidance on how to reply to people, especially young people who make the argument “God is an imaginary friend” or imaginary daddy"?

I myself, although born and raised Catholic, spent most years of my life at a atheist/existentialist. I can only answer this question by saying, “How can you be so sure He does not exist?” because really, after years of nihilism I finally gave in an tried blind faith and then things improved from there. That works for me, but it does not work for most if not all young people today, many of whom have never had an exposure to God or religion. So what have Apologetics to say about he statement, “God is an imaginary friend”?

Point me to existing posts or resources if I missed any. Thank you!
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First thing to say, imho, would be, “Why do you think that?” (which is not far off from your answer).

After that what you say depends on the answer you get to your question. The first step in correcting a particular person’s misunderstandings has to be to understand his or her misunderstandings.
 
Perhaps it would help to define the Triune God. They seem fixed on God the Father, at the exclusion of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
 
Point out it’s an ad hominem claim and holds no ground. Then point out that it demonstrates a lack of ability on their part to properly defend their belief system from an intellectual standpoint and that it demonstrates intense emotional attachment to their atheism/agnosticism/antitheism which is supposed to be purely intellectual as claimed by Dawkins and the rest of the “pop atheist apologist” gang.
 
A non-exhaustive list of great apologetics books:

God is no Delusion
A Meaningful World
Answering the New Atheism
Science and Evidence for Intelligent Design
Is belief in God good, bad or irrelevant?
The Dawkins DELUSION? (no emphasis added)
The Grand Inquisitor (from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov)
Fundamentals of the Faith (the first section of it)
Atheist Delusions
There is a God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind
Any C.S. Lewis books

Some books I have not read but seem worth investigating and reading are:

Reasons to Believe
A Severe Mercy
The Twilight of Atheism
Nature’s Destiny
The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (one of my favorite atheist philosophers has a conversation with a Christian dude in this book)

I think I read more atheist stuff than I do Christian stuff. Is that bad? Zizek, Camus and Sartre are some of my favorite authors among the Christian ones!

Obviously there are many others, but these are the ones I have read and liked. With that said, there are some REALLY REALLY bad ones. “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” is among those bad ones (probably because it is written by Norman Geisler). Some of Timothy Keller is not so good either, but some of it is great but I do not remember the titles. “Reasons for God” might be a title of one of them… I have not read any of James Sire but I do have two of his books and they look pretty good on concepts (which have a direct relationship on immaterial stuff so it is probably good against a materialist). InterVarsity Press has some good stuff. Anyway, I digress. I hope these help

God bless:)
 
GreggAlvarez said:
“I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” is among those bad ones (probably because it is written by Norman Geisler).
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I know it’s off-topic, but could you specify what you don’t like about this book? I’m considering getting it and it looks somewhat nice from what I’ve seen, but if it doesn’t have much substance I’ll spend my money elsewhere.
 
Just say, “Yea, well my imaginary daddy can beat up your imaginary daddy” then stick your tounge out at them. 😛

-Tim-
 
Pieman333272 said:
I know it’s off-topic, but could you specify what you don’t like about this book? I’m considering getting it and it looks somewhat nice from what I’ve seen, but if it doesn’t have much substance I’ll spend my money elsewhere.
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Good question…

I am a former atheist, so I know what goes on in the mind of an atheist. I read atheist apologetics with the eyes of an atheist to find out if it is actually useful, that is, objective. This book does offer good arguments but there is absolutely nothing new in it. It probably does not help its cause by being too subjective. At the end of the book, he offers a “conversation” with an atheist. I gathered one of two things from the “conversation”: 1. He made up the conversation (which is fine but should have been mentioned it) OR 2. the atheist in question did not know very much about atheism (or even theism) because no intelligent atheist would say those things. The “conversation” is not fair to atheism. But remember that this is my opinion. It has had good reviews but for me as a former atheist, it is way too subjective. Perhaps, you might find it useful, but I certainly did not.

So, I guess the moral of this post is that it is not fair to atheism, nor is it objective.

All those books I listed provide a variety of ways of looking at the existence of God and are interesting. With that said, I do not agree with EVERY single thing they say, but they are still objective.

I forgot two really good ones also:
Faith and Certitude
The Everlasting Man (This one rips to shreads the idea that the Gospel story is a myth; I know it is outside the OP but it is pretty good)
 
Pieman,
Needless to say, I am NOT a book critic. It could be regarded as the best on the planet, but I would not know. If it looks good to you, then by all means… My critique is just MY opinion. Some notable people said good things: Lee Strobel, David Limbaugh (he REALLY liked this book; his foreword has really good things and I imagine he knows much more than me), William Dembski, Phillip Johnson…

Here is the setup of the book and it explains each premise point by point throughout the entire book:
  1. Truth about reality is knowable.
  2. The opposite of true is false.
  3. It is true that the theistic God exists. This is evidence by the
    A. Beginning of the Universe
    B. Design of the Universe.
    C. Design of Life
    D. Moral Law
  4. If God exists, then miracles are possible.
  5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God (i.e., as acts of God to confirm a word from God).
  6. The New Testament is historically reliable. This is evidenced by:
    A. Early Testimony
    B. Eyewitness Testimony.
    C. Uninvented (authentic) Testimony
    D. Eyewitnesses who were not deceived.
  7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.
  8. Jesus’ claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by:
    A. His fulfillment of many prophecies about Himself
    B. His sinles life and miraculous deeds
    C. His prediction and accomplishment of His resurrection.
  9. Therefore, Jesus is God.
  10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) teaches is true.
  11. Jesus taught that the Bible was the Word of God.
  12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).
At the beginning of each section, it has this long syllogism and it bolds the part that it is going to explain. I will give the book credit for number 6. That part is actually really good. The rest of it is nothing new and like I said, it assumes way too much for me. Obviously, I believe all the premises, but I personally do not like most of the explanations.

But hey if the historical reliability part is good enough for you (or any other part of it for that matter), then go ahead and get it. I hope this helps. But more importantly, if you DO get the book, I hope that it helps you even more than my explanation. And if you do NOT get it, then I hope whatever you DO get helps you! 🙂

God bless
 
Ask them:

Who is your imaginary mummy? The blind Goddess we call Chance?
 
I’m looking for apologetic guidance on how to reply to people, especially young people who make the argument “God is an imaginary friend” or imaginary daddy"?
Click to expand...
Ask them:

Who is your imaginary mummy? The blind Goddess we call Chance?
 
“Reasons to Believe”

Reasons to Believe has a program on the Church Channel on DISH that I watch each week titled “Reasons to Believe”.

Hugh Ross and his three cohosts present information about various topics pertaining to the Bible and the various views about the cosmos (anthropic principles - fine tuned physical properties of the universe & earth ):

google.com/search?q=anthropic+principle+hugh+ross&rlz=1I7ADBR_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7

It’s all very interesting.
 
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