Ask an atheist anything! (seriously, anything)

[Wozza]

I’m going to go on record, as saying that no I don’t believe you can be good without God

So half the world is bad?

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

If you have this genuine conversion through the Holy Spirit then isn’t there some process that you then have to go through to accept all the various beliefs associated with this conversion?

So how do you become a Christian and then justify everything that goes with it? Is it the case that ‘I am now a Christian so therefore everything associated with it must be true’.

Excellent question. Basically, when the Holy Spirit changes & convicts your heart, your eyes are open to the truth, which you weren’t open to before. You are hearing the same thing you heard before, but before you rejected it, but now, it makes sense & you can better discern truth from falsehood. You realize that believing in the crucifixion & the resurrection of Christ has nothing to do with science, but that it’s a historical reality that is verifiable. Once this reality “clicks” for the first time, then you trust what Jesus said about everything else - that He is God, He is the only way to Heaven, that the events in the OT & NT really did happen, which Jesus was able to back up with His bodily resurrection from the dead, which - again - is verifiable historically.

Fair enough. But I have to say it makes no sense to me that you could offer excellent and well thought out, intelligent and personally justified arguments against various aspects of Christianity and then…Bam. The following day you can put forward excellent arguments that directly contradict what you were so convinced of the previous day.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

Well sometimes things work out for the best and sometimes they don’t whether we pray or not. So if I pray to the FSM, the exact think will happen if I pray to God or I don’t pray at all.

How do we tell the difference is all options turn out the exact same result?

The purpose of prayer isn’t to use God like some sort of genie to grant us three wishes. We pray so that God may be glorified. Sometimes His desire is for us to pray to Him & He waits to act, to remind us if a prayer results in something that ends up benefiting us, it is a reminder that God - not us - made it happen. Sometimes God answers our prayer with a “No,” because not only would it not glorify God, but because it may not be the direction God wants us to go in our lives. Prayer is done to remind us to rely on God to help us get through the trials & tribulations of our lives, which end up strengthening us. IOW, prayer is a form of worship.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

The term ‘eyewitness’ is one thrown around too easily I find. For example, I have been told more times than I could count that there were 500 eyewitnesses that saw Jesus after the resurrection. When that is patently untrue. All we have is someone SAYING (decades after the event) that 500 people saw Him. Likewise when someone writes: ‘Jesus said…’ when to be accurate we need to say: ‘It was reported that Jesus said…’

The exact same thing could be said about any historical event we weren’t alive to eyewitness for ourselves. For instance, I could just as easily say, “when someone writes: ‘George Washington said,’ it would be accurate we need to say ‘It was reported George Washington said.’” However, no one ever does this, which the converted Christian seems to be the only one who realizes this is an inconsistent argument. You either be consistent with this reasoning with ALL historical claims, or you learn to discern whether a historical claim can be verified or not.

And as far as the 500 eyewitnesses, since you are the one making the claim they didn’t eyewitnesses, then the burden of proof is on you. The point of Paul bringing this up, is if the resurrection didn’t happen, at the time of Paul’s writing, most of the 500 were still alive. If the readers didn’t believe Paul, the majority of the 500 still alive would validate Paul’s claim with their own eyewitness accounts. Plus, there are ZERO testimonies from antiquity that Paul’s eyewitness account was untrue.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

Fair enough. But I have to say it makes no sense to me that you could offer excellent and well thought out, intelligent and personally justified arguments against various aspects of Christianity and then…Bam. The following day you can put forward excellent arguments that directly contradict what you were so convinced of the previous day.

Could you give an example?

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

Well sometimes things work out for the best and sometimes they don’t whether we pray or not. So if I pray to the FSM, the exact think will happen if I pray to God or I don’t pray at all.

How do we tell the difference is all options turn out the exact same result?

The purpose of prayer isn’t to use God like some sort of genie to grant us three wishes. We pray so that God may be glorified. Sometimes His desire is for us to pray to Him & He waits to act, to remind us if a prayer results in something that ends up benefiting us, it is a reminder that God - not us - made it happen. Sometimes God answers our prayer with a “No,” because not only would it not glorify God, but because it may not be the direction God wants us to go in our lives. Prayer is done to remind us to rely on God to help us get through the trials & tribulations of our lives, which end up strengthening us. IOW, prayer is a form of worship.

I’ve no problem with your definition of prayer as a form of worship. But you are tending to what stpurl was saying that sometimes you get what you want - because you prayed, and sometimes you don’t. Well, that happens whether you pray or not. It was that aspect of prayer that I was talking about.

I’m certain that prayer has benefits for the person praying in any case. Whatever the result.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

sometimes you get what you want - because you prayed, and sometimes you don’t.

Again, that way of thinking assumes the purpose of prayer is to “get” something, which turns prayer into focusing on the person praying. It isn’t.

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

Fair enough. But I have to say it makes no sense to me that you could offer excellent and well thought out, intelligent and personally justified arguments against various aspects of Christianity and then…Bam. The following day you can put forward excellent arguments that directly contradict what you were so convinced of the previous day.

Could you give an example?

Hmm. I now realise, after pondering this whilst making breakfast, that I might be on a loser here. I was going to list a few things that I now realise would not be necessary to be a Catholic. Anything in Genesis for example. And if I suggest anything that IS required then, if I were you, I’d invoke faith first and foremost.

Durn, if you were of the fundamentalist stripe (YEC, evolution denier etc) then I’d be good. As it is…I think I should concede to save us both the time.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

Durn, if you were of the fundamentalist stripe (YEC, evolution denier etc) then I’d be good. As it is…I think I should concede to save us both the time.

Regardless, the Christian faith rises & falls on the resurrection being true, which can be verified historically, as well as Scripturally. Therefore, based on the authority of Jesus proving His claim as Messiah by miraculously rising from the dead, based on his miraculous testimony, we can trust what He says about the events of the NT being historically true as well.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Did you ever investigate other religions besides Catholicism, or did you go from Catholic belief to atheism in one fell swoop?

 

[Neithan]

I’d agree with @casslean that the harm principle doesn’t contradict theism, let alone Catholic morality. Or what am I missing? If you have no ultimate ethical reference point beyond yourself, is it truly a principle that you believe in, or is it more like a personal preference? The issue with morality is how we define harm.

 

[Neithan]

Sure, we’re all sharing the planet; but in relativism, in the end, you can only ask nicely and wait for them to agree with you. Or force them. Where there is ethical disagreement, it eventually devolves into might makes right. If you’re appealing to culture: we have many different cultures. How could you or anyone convince someone else they have acted shamefully? By what measure of manners are you weighing their rudeness? Any moral code that could produce shame is a matter of opinions, and has no real objective grounds.

 

[PickyPicky]

If you’re appealing to culture: we have many different cultures

But if you are appealing to God; we have many different gods.

By what measure of manners are you weighing their rudeness? Any moral code that could produce shame is a matter of opinions, and has no real objective grounds.

That’s right. It is subjective. Fortunately what counts are (a) my subjective opinion and (b) the subjective opinion of the culture of which I am part.

 

[stpurl]

No, you didn’t get it straight. There is more than ‘not getting an answer we want’.

You pray to Zeus and you won’t get an answer at all, since Zeus doesn’t exist.

You pray to God and you WILL get an answer. You might not like it because it’s not the answer you want, but you get answered.

You might not even recognize the answer --at first–or even, if you’re sufficiently obtuse, at all while living.

That doesn’t reflect on God, it reflects on you.

Not the same at all as ‘praying to something that doesn’t exist in the first place’.

And it’s not really saying, "God is perfect and people are stupid’. Some things are hard to figure. Some people aren’t quick on the uptake.

But God does give each of us ‘sufficient means’ to ‘get the answer’. We have free choice; we can choose to use those means or not.

Scripture refers to this, both in proverbs and with St. James.

The main difference is that in the end, God’s answers and our ‘efforts’ will be shown. And the foolishness of those who compare “God” to ‘nonexistent’ critters or false idols will also be shown.

 

[Wozza]

No, you didn’t get it straight. There is more than ‘not getting an answer we want’.

You pray to Zeus and you won’t get an answer at all, since Zeus doesn’t exist.

You pray to God and you WILL get an answer. You might not like it because it’s not the answer you want, but you get answered.

I think that @RaisedCatholic has answered this quite well. If you find succour in praying and you find it a way to get in touch with God, then that’s fine.

Having prayers answered is a different matter which we can skip I think.

 

[Thinker_Doer]

You pray to Zeus and you won’t get an answer at all, since Zeus doesn’t exist.
You pray to God and you WILL get an answer.

It all depends on what you mean by “answer”. You can pray to a beer bottle, and depending on the subject of the prayer, you may get a positive result. If you call a positive result an “answer”, then the beer bottle “answered” your prayer.

 

[snarflemike]

In my list of resources I forgot to add Peter Kreeft. Here’s the revised list.

1. Edward Feser. Catholic. My favorite Thomist. VERY sharp. Has a blog.
2. William Lane Craig. Protestant. Extremely active on youtube and in debating.
3. Alvin Plantinga. Catholic philosopher.
4. Bishop Robert Barron. Very active on youtube.
5. Fr. Robert Spitzer. Has a number of books, including at least one on modern science and the existence of God.
6. Peter Kreeft. Philosopher, convert to Catholicism, has written many books and articles on religious topics.
   http://peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm

 

[lelinator]

You pray to God and you WILL get an answer. You might not like it because it’s not the answer you want, but you get answered.

But this raises an obvious question, how does one differentiate a prayer answered by God, from mere chance, if the outcomes are identical?

 

[stpurl]

Excuse me, but the ‘beer bottle’ does not give you the positive result of your prayer. Your argument is specious. Strawman.

If you didn’t understand what I said (and obviously you didn’t) you could PM me. Making up your own definitions and then putting in your personal definition as supposedly what I’m saying and then refuting it is the epitome of ‘strawmen’.

Again, PM me and I will explain what I mean, which is quite different from your incorrect assumptions. But please, in a couple of hours; I have an errand.

 

[stpurl]

What do you call ‘mere chance’? Is mere chance somehow something completely disassociated from God?

Is there "God did this’ for group A ‘answers’ and "mere chance did this’ for group B?