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tonyrey
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By rejecting the supernatural you imply that natural causes are an adequate explanation of reality. Can you explain how purposeless particles have produced persons and purposeful activity?
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Mystic_Banana
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You clearly have more faith than many on this forum, including perhaps myself. Your incapability to recognize that, however, is not my problem
You’re as much the one with the burden of proof as I am. You may wish to deny that burden is there, or insist I believe your rules implying my burden is greater, but I doubt you can justify it, largely because you have failed so far
I’m not saying your superstition is restricted to denial of the possibility of God. That said, I suspect you would have a somewhat lower standard of proof for, say, anything important to the history of evolution
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Mystic_Banana
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What??? Aristotle is now supposed to have invented *both *Plato and Socrates?!? Last I looked, Plato was believed to have invented Socrates, and Aristotle was held to be a different ballpark all together.
Klick reality changes again! Amazing how it’s all empirically reasonable to hold completely different viewpoints from one decade to the next, and yet few lose faith that the process involved demonstrates true understanding of what happened in history…
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Mystic_Banana
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Do you have testimonials or evidence to indicate the infinity of universes (that is the latest attempt by mainstream science to explain how implausably unlikely **us **might have turned up *without * God) actually exist?
If not, got something else to justify your atheism? Rationally, that is? As opposed to Rationalistically?
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samiam1611
Guest
We’re not allowed to discuss atheism. We can’t really go very far in defending our beliefs bc the mods will delete it or close the thread. We can critique your beliefs and we can discuss supernatural events. But we can’t tell you all the reasons we have for not believing in God so I ask that you give us the benefit of the doubt - that our reasons are sound and convincing. Maybe some day they’ll lift the ban and we can talk about but till then you’ll have to ask questions that aren’t directly about justifying atheism.
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samiam1611
Guest
No I can’t explain it. Just bc I can’t doesn’t mean that a non-supernatural explanation can’t be found. Also, it is hard to accept, but some things do not have an explanation. People make stuff up when they can’t accept it. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “everything happens for a reason.” In my opinion that is absolutely not true. That is wishful thinking. Sometimes there is no reason.
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atheistgirl
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I find it much easier to think we are nothing more than a chance event, than to think about some sort of super being controlling it all. There’s just no evidence for it, for me. I think a lot of people have a hard time getting their heads around the idea we’re just not that important, expecially to nature.What once was supernatural is still such, or never was - if you assume a material explaination, then even the most ridiculous physical explanation will appeal more than a supernatural one. And still, we don’t know exactly why people sometimes people see things that aren’t physically there. Not, that is, if we are honest with ourselves
And science isn’t always atheisms friend. If we’d never discovered germs, we’d still be believing abiogenesis happened all the time, rather than being such an absurd unlikelihood we’re still trying to dream how it happens without…
So yeah, I guess - I would take just about any physical explanation over any filling of the void with some sort of supernatural being or occurance.
Sarah x
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Glennonite
Guest
I think this thread is becoming too snarky and isn’t helping me wrestle with my dilema: how can I KNOW my faith-experience is for real and not of my own making?
Please give me the red pill.
Glennonite
Please give me the red pill.
Glennonite
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danserr
Guest
This is not entirely true, threads have been allowed on the problem of evil, divine hiddenness and other topics often used as reasons for unbelief. Whether they are allowed is in large part due to how it is phrased. A thread titled “Proof the atheism is true!” will be deleted, but a thread titled “the problem of evil” seems to be often allowed. I think this is because the mods want to try to keep the tone less combative.
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danserr
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You can know your faith experience is real if you have no defeaters for it or actual reasons to doubt it.
For example, I trust my sense knowledge on a daily basis. When I speak of information gained from my senses, then I “know” that my sense experience is real. There is no way for me to get outside my sense knowledge and test it, but nonetheless, I believe the deliverance of my senses in the absence of some reason to doubt them.
Now I might disbelieve my senses if, for instance, it could be shown that I was hallucinating. But the default position is to trust them, and in the absence of some reason to think that I was hallucinating, I believe my senses.
Similarly, unless someone (or yourself) can provide a compelling reason to doubt your faith experience, you should believe it. It is not enough to suggest a theoretical possibility that it “may” be delusion. Just someone telling me that I “might” be hallucinating does not cause me to doubt knowledge from my senses. Just as I believe my senses in the absence of strong proof to the contrary, I should believe my religious experience in the absence of strong proof to the contrary.
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samiam1611
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Oh ok cool. New here, kinda paranoid about breaking that rule. I actually started my 2nd thread on Friday and they closed it shortly after. But then I asked why bc it wasn’t about atheism (but had atheists in the title) - so they reopened it! Just changed my title and took out a paragraph. So I guess they are are a little bit flexible when it comes to that. Cool.
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alongexpected
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As for me, there’s been only three pieces of evidence I’ve ever heard that point to the existence of a god.
One…Fatima. This wasn’t some event that happened a thousand years ago; this was the twentieth century and was covered by newspapers and photographers and experienced by some seventy thousand people. But I’ve read some pretty convincing debunks of this. One is that nearly all those people could’ve gone there so hepped up on seeing a miracle that their minds couldve fabricated something that wasn’t there. And/or that staring at the sun for any amount of time is not a healthy idea and could lead one to think they’re seeing something that isn’t there. Like the sun dancing, changing color, or falling to them. Lastly, that the testimonials of the masses differed pretty heavily, with some claiming the dancing, others the falling, while others cited no change at all. I think when you add all this logic up, the “miracle” falls flat.
Two…incorruptibles. Like above, This isn’t something that happened in near-prehistoric times; bodies have been exhumed fairly recently and theres been pictures taken. But before i believe this unconditionally, i have some questions. One, the cemeteries that these bodies have been taken from, do other corpses show the same signs of retarded decomposition? (maybe it’s something in the soil, or the areas climate…i don’t know im just positing). Two, do other religions claim the same phenomena or is this a strictly catholic thing?
Three…what happened before the Big Bang? The educated believe that 99 percent of the worlds scientists have gotten it right that all matter and energy originated from a single point billions of years ago. But science hasnt given much explaining what happened beforehand (though they’re trying!). At this point a catholic will say something like “Science is a wonderful thing that can explain so much of our universe and bestow us with wonderful things, but theres a point where it’s capability to explain will stop, and the answers from there on are known to God alone.” i admit, it’s hard for me to believe that something arose nothing and that does seem to indicate some creator was behind it all. But wait a second. The religious are doing the same thing! They’re asking me to believe that a creator arose from nothing! Both don’t make any sense to me, so they both cancel each other out.
One…Fatima. This wasn’t some event that happened a thousand years ago; this was the twentieth century and was covered by newspapers and photographers and experienced by some seventy thousand people. But I’ve read some pretty convincing debunks of this. One is that nearly all those people could’ve gone there so hepped up on seeing a miracle that their minds couldve fabricated something that wasn’t there. And/or that staring at the sun for any amount of time is not a healthy idea and could lead one to think they’re seeing something that isn’t there. Like the sun dancing, changing color, or falling to them. Lastly, that the testimonials of the masses differed pretty heavily, with some claiming the dancing, others the falling, while others cited no change at all. I think when you add all this logic up, the “miracle” falls flat.
Two…incorruptibles. Like above, This isn’t something that happened in near-prehistoric times; bodies have been exhumed fairly recently and theres been pictures taken. But before i believe this unconditionally, i have some questions. One, the cemeteries that these bodies have been taken from, do other corpses show the same signs of retarded decomposition? (maybe it’s something in the soil, or the areas climate…i don’t know im just positing). Two, do other religions claim the same phenomena or is this a strictly catholic thing?
Three…what happened before the Big Bang? The educated believe that 99 percent of the worlds scientists have gotten it right that all matter and energy originated from a single point billions of years ago. But science hasnt given much explaining what happened beforehand (though they’re trying!). At this point a catholic will say something like “Science is a wonderful thing that can explain so much of our universe and bestow us with wonderful things, but theres a point where it’s capability to explain will stop, and the answers from there on are known to God alone.” i admit, it’s hard for me to believe that something arose nothing and that does seem to indicate some creator was behind it all. But wait a second. The religious are doing the same thing! They’re asking me to believe that a creator arose from nothing! Both don’t make any sense to me, so they both cancel each other out.
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alongexpected
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I’d love to debate with you! What would you like to talk about?I’ve got to say, from my experience, Humanism may as well refer to itself as ‘antitheism’ - all I’ve seen from organised humanism during my lifetime is how much it thinks religion should have essentially no presence whatsoever on modern life!
I’ve checked out all of Dawkins arguments, and they’re mostly pretty feeble, I have to say. I’d be tempted to read the arguments in tehir recently popular ‘book’ format, but on the other hand I realised that there is such a gratuitous amount of clearly deliberate anti-theistic influence in modern (British) culture that I suspect I already have an incredibly materialist-skewed mountain of influence, cradle-Catholic or no. Much more effective to come here and see if any atheists attacking Catholicism can effectively defend atheism! Some day I should go to argue on Dawkinsnet or something, but that seems to be full of such a bunch of self-righteous bigots I don’t think I could cope with the torrents of hate…
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alongexpected
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What proofs were you given?
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alongexpected
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Chessman, this isn’t solid evidence that Catholicism is correct. Why? Because all the religions say things like this! You’re obviously not a Muslim. So you reject that a god gave Mohammed the “final” revelations that were started in Judaism and Christianity. You reject that Mohammed rode to heaven on a flying horse. But you firmly accept that Paul saw Jesus on a road one night. And that he was executed but miraculously rose. Why is it this way? Why are you so convinced of one set of ridiculous occurrences and not the other? Because you born in Michigan or someplace much like it and not in Indonesia.
Or hey, maybe you really did do some research and soul searching, read the philosophy and reasoning of Augustine and came away convinced that Catholicism holds the ultimate truths. Props if this is the case, since the vast majority of the faithful are believers solely because they were randomly born into it. But again, all religions have “unshakeable” holy books, prophets, and revelations that are supposed to be “proof” . Why should I accept yours over all others?
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danserr
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No religious I know has every claimed that God was created out of nothing. God is uncaused and has existed eternally. The universe is clearly shown to have a beginning from the Big Bang, so we are right to think that the universe has a beginning and hence a cause and that God does not.
Except for the last, those are incredibly weak pieces of evidence. You might consider some more recent stuff. Alvin Plantinga lists 2 dozen or so arguments philofreligion.homestead.com/files/Theisticarguments.htmland you will find Swinburne and Wl Craig saying far better stuff that what you suggest.
Because there is specific evidence for Christianity that there is not for those other things. It has nothing do do with being born somewhere. Rather, when one actually considers the evidence for Christian theism, it is far better than specific evidence for those other things. Some I have presented here forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=549205
But there are other books you can consider as well. NT Wright is very good, carsten peter thiede is not bad, and there are many others.
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alongexpected
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alongexpected
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Huh? You think that what religion you are has nothing to do with where you’re born?
And wouldn’t an imam be able to give me all sorts of reasoning and citations of past works to “prove” to me why Islam is correct and Christianity isn’t?
Look, it’s fine to have faith. Just please, please admit that you’ve taken an incredible leap of faith and are believing in things and concepts that defy all logic and common sense. (I’m not saying everything in religious teachings fits this description) And also be open to the possibility that you are wrong, as I am.
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Red_Paladin
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Everything that is created needed something before to give it that existence, they depend on other things for their existence. But it would be illogical to assume that this chain of dependence goes onto infinity. So the only solution would be that there must exist a being who receives his existence from no one, in other word, he IS existence, existing is part of his essence and he does not get this existence from somewhere else. We call this being who is existence, God, coupled with a few arguments that show his characteristics.
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danserr
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I deny I have taken an incredible leap of faith and that my beliefs are contrary to logic and common sense. There are plenty of reasons I could be rationally warranted in believing in God such as scientific and philosophical evidence for the origins of the universe, God as an explanation of why something exists rather than nothing, scientific evidence of the fine-tuning of the universe for life, and the existence of objective moral values and duties to name only a few. I told, you, The Christian Philosopher Plantinga in a recent lecture listed about 2 dozen reasons philofreligion.homestead.com/…uments.htmland
How does any of this deny logic and common sense?
Finally, whether an imam would try and give you reasons for Islam in no way means that I am not warranted in believing Christianity provided my reasons for Christianity are better than the reasons for Islam. And there is no case for Islam that comes even close to historical evidence for the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=549205
Of course it matters. You are essentially saying that the problem with using the Big Bang as evidence for theism is that if the same issue (can’t come from nothing) would apply to God. ie, that theists claim that the universe can’t come from nothing, but they make precisely this claim about God. But this is evidently false.
The Big Bang shows that the universe had a beginning, and everything that begins to exist has a cause. All well and good. But how does this also apply to God? We have evidence that the universe began to exist (the Big Bang), but no evidence that God began to exist. Therefore we are rationally justified in believing that the universe began to exist and has a cause, but still believing that God exists eternally uncaused.
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