Ask an Atheist

[CatsAndDogs]

I would encourage you to check this link out:

greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/archive/2005fallwinter/FallWinter0506_deWaal.pdf

Don’t know why it didn’t properly link. You’ll have to cut and paste. This article and many other demonstrte that morality also exists amoung other “lower” species and how through the evolutionary process this is possible.

My dog is very “free will like”, but is merely demonstrating a non-person (mechanical) form of “free will”.

You can point to as many “scientific studies” as you like to show us that non-persons are persons, but you will never convince us that they are.

God placed these nearly-person creatures in our midst to give us something to learn about which points us toward the real persons within the world (and supernatural world).

Pets let us practice being parents, or siblings, or simply humane, for example.

:shamrock2:

 

[CatsAndDogs]

People do not need to have a litteral belief in the book of genisis to behave morally. People can be more and understand that evolution is a reality and that the universe is older than 6-10 thousand years old. Supersticious beliefs are fine when you keep them to yourself, but when you start voting based soley upon totally disproven ignorance then that becomes a problem for all of us.

I am just trying to get the word out.

No. You’re trying to get your misunderstandings of what your atheistic masters have convinced you to “get the word out” about.

I live in a nation where people are actually voting for a canidate who recently had a witchdoctor protect her from witches, who believe that the Catholic Church is of “Satan” and that the universe is about 8000 years old. She’ll likely be the canidate for president in 4 years. What’s worse is that they are voting for her not inspite of her wacked out beliefs but because of them!

Please name the candidate.

Is it a “Sarah”, by chance?

I’m very sorry that your misunderstandings are dragging you around by your various demons, and yes, demons are VERY real, but we’re here to help you get rid of your demons, should you at all, even unconsciously, desire to be free of them.

Praying for you!

:shamrock2:

 

[CatsAndDogs]

We need some terms defined. What is hell? There are a variety of definitions. Some believe that…

Oy! Yet another “dictionariolater”!

…always a fun thing.

:shamrock2:

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Let me provide you an analogy:
Imagine that the next time I met my friend Steve I ask him “Hey Steve, how’s your son Tommy”?
He replies, “Not well…he has fallen into the pit I dug in my backyard and can’t get out. He’ll likely starve to death over the next 20 - 30 days”.
"Oh my gosh, " I reply “that’s horrible. Can’t you get him out”?
“Well yes…of course I could, but here’s the deal: Two years ago, I warned him not to get near that pit, and here he goes, two years later and falls into it. He deserves his fate, and if I rescued him…which I easily could…he would not learn a lesson from this sad experience. Like I said, I warned him to stay away from that hole”.
“But…but…he’s just 8 years old…you’re his father. You can’t just let him starve to death in that hole”!
“Listen, I love Tommy more than anything. I love him with my whole heart, but he was warned two years ago…he deserves his horrible fate”.
“Do you know why he got so near that hole in the first place…like you said, you did warn him”?
“Well…my neighbor, he likes to put toys and candy in the hole…you know…to tempt Tommy to enter it. Tommy was attempting to get a Power Ranger out of the hole”?
“WHAT! Why do you allow this”?
“Well, my neighbor likes to lure children into harms way, and I allow him to do it…I could stop him if I wanted to, but I don’t. Anyway, like I said, I told him two years ago when he was 6 to avoid the hole. If he loved me he would have listened. Do you know how saddened I am by this whole situation?”.

Ask yourself, what’s your opinion of Steve’s parenting skills? If Steve allows this to happen, does Steve truly love his son? How is Steve attitude any different from that of a God who would all his children to suffer eternal hell. At least the son’s torment will be over in 20 -30 days; God mercifully allows us to suffer for an eternity if we stray”.

Steve is not God.

Why are you confusing Steve for God?

Since you (obviously) don’t have the vaguest clue as to who God is, why do think Steve is a sensible “stand in” for God?

Our universe was created for us so that we, both individually and as “mankind”, can learn the consequences of sin.

We are created by God as persons, with free will.

We are given time on this earth to learn. We are considered “adults” by the time our earthly life ends. At that point we have a choice to make, either to hold to God or to hold to “elsewhat”.

Those whose life ends before they “seemingly” reach adulthood are dealt with according to their actual culpability as known be God, as His mercy will have done.

To choose God is to have heaven eternally. To choose “elsewhat” is to have hell eternally.

The various misunderstandings illustrated in your story are a very good description of why you are as you are, and why you hate what you think is God.

The problem is that what you think God is is not what God is.

Should you desire some education in what God qua God is, please put your statements in the form of questions so that we can address them so as to correct you.

(( I may break up your “story” into it’s various errors and address them one by one, but I don’t have the time right now. ))

Thanks!

:shamrock2:

 

[CatsAndDogs]

You are correct God doesn’t dig holes, he just creates hells from which there is no national guard to save you. Hell only exists because God created it and because he wants it to exist. The fact of the matter is, the most evil and horrible sin any of us can ever commit is measurable and finite, and for our finite sins we will face the infinite terror of hell. Where is the justice of an infinite punishment for what is by definite a finite sin? Where is the mercy? I will not deny that Hell exists, but only that if it does then the one who constructed it is an individual who certainly lacks the all-loving and merciful characteristics you attribute to him. If hell exists, then Fred Phelp’s is correct…God loves who he loves and infinitely hates who he hates. I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with punishing evil doers, but make the punishment fit the crime. Furthermore, do you honestly believe that any sane person who honestly understood the consequences of his actions (as you describe them) would ever really choose infinite torment over eternal pleasure. Of course not! The only true sin is ignorance, the failure to understand what’s at stake. This is why, JPII preached of Universal Salvation…the notion that in the fullness of time all might have the truth revealed to them and upon knowing the truth all will receive salvation. This is of course a massive departure from long standing Catholic teachings, but it’s what makes sense if you wish to believe that God is not in fact a monster.

romancatholicism.org/jpii-quotes.htm

So, you’re some variety of pseudo-marcionite?

Do you think that God could in fact exist but be evil?

Do you reject the existence of God because if He did exist He’d HAVE to be evil?

:shamrock2:

 

[Allnamesused]

Hell is the irrevocable choice of something other than God “lived out” through eternity.

Hell is necessary because justice is necessary. Justice is giving one what is truly owed and is best for one. Hell is merely God’s allowing persons their free will choices even unto eternity.

Our free will is more important than our “comfort”. Our free will IS our personhood, and will not be violated by God as God does not un-create, and to violate our free will is to un-create us as persons.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

We Catholics should inform those of other faiths of where they are wrong, and what the correct “answer” to their wrong is, but it is uncharitable, and therefore unCatholic, to mock others.

Are we (rather often) sinners who DO uncharitable things? Yup!

:shamrock2:

Assuming that Justice is in fact “necessary” (I see no evidence to support this claim), how does one conclude that justice = eternal and excruciating suffering? How does justice = punishment that infinitely exceeds the crime? Justice, to my knowledge has always meant receiving a punishment or reward that was commensurate with the act or the failure to act. Hell is an option that God created, which certainly he did not need to (particularly since an all powerful being has neither needs nor compulsions). You say that “Hell is merely God’s allowing persons their free will choices even unto eternity”. What you mean is hell is God allowing persons their free will choice up to the end of their brief mortal existence. Hell ,if it exists, exists only because God created it and because God wants it to exist. It is the definition of an imposed consequence. Why would an all loving creature permit it’s children to suffer for an eternity? Why would an all loving creature even create it as an option in the first place?

 

[Allnamesused]

So, you’re some variety of pseudo-marcionite?

Do you think that God could in fact exist but be evil?

Do you reject the existence of God because if He did exist He’d HAVE to be evil?

:shamrock2:

I am merely saying that the existence of an all loving, all powerful and all knowing God is necessarily a logical contradiction to the existence of a hell. I’m say that if this God does’ exist, then hell does not (or vice versa). I’m saying that a creature that would eternally torture creatures that are infinitely inferior to itself is not unlike a child that would pull the wings off butterflies…except of course infinitely more so. I’m saying that even your former pope recognized this fact and became a proponent of the concept of universal salivation. This is the notion that in the fullness of time all will be redeemed. A notion in direct violation of Catholic doctrine. He was in fact a heretic, but because he could not continue to speak so ill of his Lord as to call him the creator of something as evil as hell.

 

[Allnamesused]

Oy! Yet another “dictionariolater”!

…always a fun thing.

:shamrock2:

I’m somebody who knows that words have meaning; even if others do not.

 

[Allnamesused]

No. You’re trying to get your misunderstandings of what your atheistic masters have convinced you to “get the word out” about.

Please name the candidate.

Is it a “Sarah”, by chance?

I’m very sorry that your misunderstandings are dragging you around by your various demons, and yes, demons are VERY real, but we’re here to help you get rid of your demons, should you at all, even unconsciously, desire to be free of them.

Praying for you!

:shamrock2:

I genuinely appreciate the intent behind your willingness to pray for me. BTW…I am very much my own master, at least as far as that is possible.

and yes it is Sarah.

 

[JMJ_coder]

I am merely saying that the existence of an all loving, all powerful and all knowing God is necessarily a logical contradiction to the existence of a hell. I’m say that if this God does’ exist, then hell does not (or vice versa). I’m saying that a creature that would eternally torture creatures that are infinitely inferior to itself is not unlike a child that would pull the wings off butterflies…except of course infinitely more so. I’m saying that even your former pope recognized this fact and became a proponent of the concept of universal salivation. This is the notion that in the fullness of time all will be redeemed. A notion in direct violation of Catholic doctrine. He was in fact a heretic, but because he could not continue to speak so ill of his Lord as to call him the creator of something as evil as hell.

Sounds like someone wants to have his cake and eat it too. Oh, I want to completely abandon God, but I still expect Him to make me happy - without realizing that you are abandoning the only source of happiness. It’s like flushing a winning lottery ticket down the drain and then complaining that you’re so poor and that <enter name of superior - government, lottery commission, etc.> is evil for not giving you any money. They hand you a bank bag with millions of dollars, you throw it on the fire and continue to make the same complaints.

 

[Allnamesused]

Sounds like someone wants to have his cake and eat it too. Oh, I want to completely abandon God, but I still expect Him to make me happy - without realizing that you are abandoning the only source of happiness. It’s like flushing a winning lottery ticket down the drain and then complaining that you’re so poor and that <enter name of superior - government, lottery commission, etc.> is evil for not giving you any money. They hand you a bank bag with millions of dollars, you throw it on the fire and continue to make the same complaints.

Wow…did you mean to respond to another post. I don’t see how you comments are even slightly relevant to what I said.

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Assuming that Justice is in fact “necessary” (I see no evidence to support this claim), how does one conclude that justice = eternal and excruciating suffering?

I’m terribly sorry for you that you don’t don’t see justice as a necessary thing within the universe.

Justice is giving one one’s due.

Since one will know that to not choose God when one’s choices are irrevocable is to choose hell, how is it not justice to give one their due choice and not override it?

Is giving everyone the same reward regardless of their culpable choice your definition of justice?

Are you a product of California public education?

How does justice = punishment that infinitely exceeds the crime?

It is not a “crime” to choose hell. It is a choice amongst possibilities, always culpably made.

That is your error. No allowance of a culpable choice can exceed the results of that choice, as the choice IS it’s results.

You seem to think that it’s possible to choose hell inculpably, in other words to not realize what we choose when we choose hell. It is not possible to do this.

Hell is an option that God created, which certainly he did not need to (particularly since an all powerful being has neither needs nor compulsions).

Hell is not created by God. It is allowable by God. Hell is created in it’s being populated. Those who choose to be there create it.

You say that “Hell is merely God’s allowing persons their free will choices even unto eternity”. What you mean is hell is God allowing persons their free will choice up to the end of their brief mortal existence.

No. We are allowed our free will for eternity, but we are allowed to revocably choose only while in earthly life.

Once one chooses God irrevocably, one is never again capable of choosing not-God, also known as “to sin”.

Hell ,if it exists, exists only because God created it and because God wants it to exist.

You have an overly simplistic understanding of God.

Hell exists because God promised that He would never violate our free will.

Just as God allows suffering, while not wanting it, because it is a part of our “lessons” given us due to our wanting to find out about the consequences of sin, God allows hell, while not wanting it, because it is necessary for justice to exist.

It is the definition of an imposed consequence.

It is the definition of a choice badly chosen.

Why would an all loving creature permit it’s children to suffer for an eternity?

Suffering is waiting for God. To irrevocably choose to wait for God is a bad choice.

Why then did God create the need to make irrevocable choices? Because that is what makes not-earthly life different from earthly life.

If you don’t believe that we are here (earthly life) for a reason, for an “education”, then it makes no sense that there would be any need to differentiate heavenly life from earthly life, because God should simply make everything PERFECT, and in so much as God hasn’t created everything PERFECT God is truly evil, and we are merely hopeless ants at the mercy of some psychopath with a heavy foot and a really big magnifying glass just waiting to use it.

But the reason FOR earthly-life is to prepare us for making the choice of God or not-God. No one makes that choice without culpability, without knowing what the choice REALLY and truly is. Those who seem to us to not have enough information to make that choice culpably are handled by God as God sees fit, but it is simply axiomatic that God allows no one to choose not-God who doesn’t know the difference between God and not-God.

A lesser joy chosen over a greater joy is quite possible due to habit, and is still a choice for “joy”, but to choose any joy less than God Himself is to choose hell, and it is not that the lesser joy is converted into a torment in hell, but that the objective difference between the lesser joy and God is a terrible torment.

Why would an all loving creature even create it as an option in the first place?

Because you don’t know what “love” means.

Hell is preferable to oblivion. God will not “destroy” us and commit us to oblivion.

To de-person us, by violating our free will, is to send us to oblivion.

Thus, justice is demanded, as the consequence of our free will and the mercy of God in not allowing us oblivion.

:shamrock2:

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Quote:
Originally Posted by CatsAndDogs View Post
So, you’re some variety of pseudo-marcionite?

Do you think that God could in fact exist but be evil?

Do you reject the existence of God because if He did exist He’d HAVE to be evil?

I am merely saying that the existence of an all loving, all powerful and all knowing God is necessarily a logical contradiction to the existence of a hell.

No it’s not. Your error is in not understanding what love, mercy, omnipotence, hell and God qua God mean.

I’m say that if this God does’ exist, then hell does not (or vice versa).

You would LIKE God and hell to be mutually exclusive, but they aren’t.

Your formulation makes it quite reasonable to deny God’s existence, which allows you to do as you like (“relativistic morality”) while at the same time denying hell, as hell is to you merely the creation of this now nonexistent God.

Therefore, you get a lovely threefer (3-for-1 special!), which is that you get to do what you like as there is no morality but what you “invest in” and both the angry evil father and the nasty awful dungeon are banished into nonexistence!

How nice for you!

I’m saying that a creature that would eternally torture creatures that are infinitely inferior to itself is not unlike a child that would pull the wings off butterflies…except of course infinitely more so.

So, to get back to the questions you seem “averse” to answer, you DO think that God if He exists MUST be evil in the extreme?

I’m saying that even your former pope recognized this fact and became a proponent of the concept of universal salivation.

Rubish.

“Universal Salivation” sounds very unsanitary, indeed!

(( …a little pun on your misspelling, up there. ))

Show me where the Church has ever promulgated “universal salvation”?

Check this out: “Universal Salvation”

…especially, “Apocatastasis”.

CCC-1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire."617 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

This is the notion that in the fullness of time all will be redeemed. A notion in direct violation of Catholic doctrine. He was in fact a heretic, but because he could not continue to speak so ill of his Lord as to call him the creator of something as evil as hell.

So, God is either evil or nonexistent, and a Pope was a heretic, which invalidates the Church as being what she says she is, which is rather irrelevant actually, because if God does exist then He’s evil and the Church is therefore evil or if God doesn’t exist then the Church is baseless.

So, show me where Pope JPII put forward “universal salvation as a certainty” as a doctrine of the Church?

(( The “God is either evil or nonexistent” is easily handled by the simply fact you don’t know the correct meanings of the various terms that you used to come to that very logical conclusion. ))

:shamrock2:

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Quote:
Originally Posted by CatsAndDogs View Post
Oy! Yet another “dictionariolater”!

…always a fun thing.

I’m somebody who knows that words have meaning; even if others do not.

You know what you want them to mean. (probably? )

You’ve proven quite well that you have no clue, or only a misinterpreted slight clue, as to what some of the words that you use mean as they are used by Catholics. You just assume that we all mean what you mean when we use the same “phonemes” that you do. That is an incorrect assumption.

I don’t mind if you disagree with me as to what some words mean, but when you insist that you are the single arbiter of the only possible meaning of various words, your “idolatry of your dictionary and the mind that reads it” doesn’t help us to understand each other.

:shamrock2:

 

[FollowTheWay]

Cats and dogs - remember that he is not a believer therefore you must remember
1 Corinthians 5:12-13

"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

reach out to others in the fruit of the spirit

 

[juhothenero]

I wanna ask an Atheist. I noticed many times reading atheists posts and famous atheists writings a strange contradiction. They always oppose God existance on the ground of skepticism but it seems that Atheists are not willing to use same skepticism on the issue of science and scientific reasoning, which to me would be logical.

There seems a strange double standard among atheism. Use the most vigorous possible skepticism on anything trying to prove God but ignore skepticism almost complitely on issues such as empirical evidence and their power for example. Empirical evidence has never been successfully proven be the only or even close to the best standard of evaluating facts. It is just a wild assumption from which the whole of science as an example is based upon.

What I find most terrible is that often atheists attack those who ask this question. They will tell a person that they are stupid for being skeptical. Themselves use the same standard in evaluating religion and even worse often they don’t even understand religion. For example Harris, Dawkins have no idea what religion is all about.

Why this double standard? And why not proof the position of empirical evidence?

(Sorry the last question is impossible, you cannot prove it empirically because then you have the same logical problem as: God wrote the bible to be true and infallible. How do you know God exists? Because bible tells me so.)

 

[CatsAndDogs]

Cats and dogs - remember that he is not a believer therefore you must remember
1 Corinthians 5:12-13

"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

reach out to others in the fruit of the spirit

I’m not judging him. I’m merely informing him.

If he’s not here to be informed then he’ll get nothing from what I tell him. If he is here to be informed, then he will.

In any case, I’m here to inform others as best I can, which is often very badly done indeed, as I tend to get led around in circles by “trivially disputatious” persons who aren’t interested in learning and only want to play “cat and mouse” with their enemies.

This mouse (me) can’t be killed, and is eternally hopeful that anyone who is here is here to learn at least SOMETHING, and that eventually they might goof up in their “play” and actually learn something.

:shamrock2:

 

[guanophore]

I have come across a woman who embraced the essence of the religion, and she accepted me completely for who I was.

She didn’t care what my beliefs were, and I didnt’ care what hers were. We loved each other, and she is still my best friend. She changed me as a human completely. Was the first time in my life, that I understood the power, of christ…the power of unconditional love.

Wether it’s make belief, an ideal, a human evolutionary trait it actually doesn’t matter. It works.

Thanks to my christian friend and you are right Mr poster. More love, less judgement. Most christians haven’t gotten to that point yet however. They are still too busy figuring out the rules, to understand the essence of their faith tradition.

This is great! Yes, I agree, if more Christians were Christlike, we would have heaven on earth.

This post does not sound like something an atheist would wright.

 

[Erchomai_Kyrios]

Hello, I have a question for a-theists?

To be or not to be? That is my question.

Deu 30:14-19
Thank You! Nice to be here.

 

[eva6206213]

i’m not the Atheist
and can’t say anything!