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Atreyu
Guest
The substance of your posts are very good, but your tone is anything but. I don’t think Paul won any converts (with the grace of God of course) by being utterly condescending…
- Status
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Montalban
Guest
One definition of this isUsing ghosts as an example perhaps wasn’t the best one I could’ve come up with (it was late, and I’d had a very, very long day). I’ve known atheists who believe in such things as ‘genius loci’ or spirits of places.
The distinctive atmosphere or pervading spirit of a place.
which is not a literal spirit, no more than in the term Zeitgeist (or ‘spirit’ of an age/era).
Like some people give their cars a name and talk to them without actually believing that there’s some possessed force (a la Stephen Kings Christine)
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
In addition to that, Christians:
- have been accused of atheism on much the same grounds as was Socrates: viz., that of not worshipping the gods of the state
- are atheists - at least far as all gods but one are concerned
- have in practice revised their notions of what is compatible with faith in God - they longer wage holy wars or kill heretics, for example. And there is a difference of some sort between a stern unsmiling Christ Pantocrator, and a Christ Who is the Friend of Sinners - they are different conceptions of the same figure. A piety which sees Christ as too terrible to be approached by sinful mortals is not quite the same as one which regards Him as accessible. ##
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
Not if you have no Scottish ancestry, you couldn’t .
Maybe the trap is that people try to define what or who is a Christian: it’s quite possibly not our business to do so, but God’s alone. Churches after all are not by definition gatherings of the elect alone (though there are those who try to define the Christian Church in that way) - they can very well be a mixture of the elect and worldlings (which is one description of the Catholic view of this matter).
IOW - God knows His own, whom He has elected; they are in His Church. But, also in that Church are worldlings. Outwardly, and for practical purposes (= those of man, who cannot “see the heart”), both alike are Christians. In fact, the only real Christians are the elect: who they are God knows, while man does not.Therefore, it is impossible to say for sure who is a Christian in God’s eyes; so there is no point in trying to use knowledge that we cannot (in the nature of the case) have access to, as a basis for argument. ##
Now you have tried to use the argument that Christians would not need to pray - nor to do good works at all - to be a Christian, correct? Now (remembering that 75% of all statistics are made up on the spot) what if I told you that, out of all those who have called themselves Christians throughout history, more than 95% of those Christians have believed that you need to pray and to do good works to be Christian? ## But: in what sense ? Are we talking about the life of Christian discipleship - or about how people become Christian in the first place ?
Prayer does not cause us to be elected to salvation - God elects His own from His sheer good pleasure, His voluntas beneplaciti, and this election is consistently described in the NT as being from “before the foundation of the world” - so its cause is in God, not in anything of man’s. In their election & in their justification their prayer & good works play no part: they cannot be the causes of the gracious goodwill of God toward them, otherwise they would be their own saviours; & the question how they could be that would then arise. So unless their salvation (including its remotest and deepest beginnings) is entirely the doing of God, one is involved in an infinite regression.
OTOH, once the elect are justified (= once they have become disciples of Christ by receiving His grace that saves them), prayer & good works are necessary. ##
…continue…]
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
…continued + ended]
##That does not contradict sola fide. Faith alone is like a cup of tea - by putting the cup to one’s lips, one has access to the tea that is in the cup: i.e., FA *includes *everything in the Christian life. Where so many Catholics go wrong, is in understanding FA in an exclusive sense - as though taking the cup necessarily involved not having the tea.
A further cause of confusion is that Luther, in talking about FA, was not using the word “faith” in the sense it had acquired in CC theology, as that of of a single specific theological virtue - he was thinking far more of its background in Habakkuk 2.4 (“My righteous one shall live by faith”, IIRC) & the use of that text in Romans 1 by St.Paul. (“Iustus” does not really translate the Hebrew, as Tyndale was to point out a few years later.
Unless they know the Biblical sources of Luther’s thought, his critics are certain never to understand what or why he had in mind - misunderstanding is guaranteed. ##
##That does not contradict sola fide. Faith alone is like a cup of tea - by putting the cup to one’s lips, one has access to the tea that is in the cup: i.e., FA *includes *everything in the Christian life. Where so many Catholics go wrong, is in understanding FA in an exclusive sense - as though taking the cup necessarily involved not having the tea.
A further cause of confusion is that Luther, in talking about FA, was not using the word “faith” in the sense it had acquired in CC theology, as that of of a single specific theological virtue - he was thinking far more of its background in Habakkuk 2.4 (“My righteous one shall live by faith”, IIRC) & the use of that text in Romans 1 by St.Paul. (“Iustus” does not really translate the Hebrew, as Tyndale was to point out a few years later.
Unless they know the Biblical sources of Luther’s thought, his critics are certain never to understand what or why he had in mind - misunderstanding is guaranteed. ##
If we could be justified by works, St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians & Romans need to be trashed, because he wears himself out insisting that works cannot, do not, will not justify anyone. He could hardly have made himself clearer. ##
Antinomianism is not the same thing as FA - see explanation of FA above. Luther never retracted FA, & he was resolutely opposed to Antinomianism even so. There is al the difference in the world between sovereign grace (the Lutheran & Reformed position) & “cheap grace” (which is what is at the root of Antinomianism). It’s very strange that Catholics can’t tell the difference, because it’s the difference beween
- 1. Valuing grace so as to realise that it is not an excuse for sin, but a means to avoid it
- 2. Considering grace as an excuse, or (worse still) a reason to sin “that grace may abound”.
We live the difference each time we make an act of Contrition. St. Paul complains of 2 in Romans 6 - he exalts, underlines, insists upon, champions & expounds 1 unceasingly. ##
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Gilbert_Keith
Guest
suat
What I take issue with is the assumption that works alone can be used as a means judging whether or not a person is Christian.
What you take issue with is irrelevant. You are not even a Christian and don’t know what you are talking about. It is Christ’s Church that determines whether faith without works is dead, and Christ’s Church has decided it (Matthew 25 and the Epistle of James). That you don’t know Scripture is too bad, because you like to pass yourself off as an authority without being one. Read your Bible, then come back and tell us that nowhere in the Bible does it say “Faith without works is dead.”
Chances are that most sins are committed on impulse and sorrow is only felt after reflection.
And what makes you an authority on this? How do you know that more sins are committed on impulse compared to those that are committed according to a planned strategy? Sins of a criminal nature, the kind that land people in jail such as breaking into peoples’ homes, selling drugs to children, murder for hire, are more likely to be thought out ahead of time in order to avoid detection by the police.
Why should we arbitrarily say that sins that land a person in jail show that the person is less likely to be Christian than the ones that cause them to go to confession?
Because a Christian has built into him a conscience that is based on the commandments of Moses and Jesus. An atheist, if he has a conscience, has built it according to the influences surrounding him as he grew up, and there is every possibility that he has never been exposed to the training that emphasizes law and love. In fact, there is every possibility that he has been trained in the opposite ethic of arrogance, lies, and selfishness, depending on the luck of his draw.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding Gilbert, however, he seems to be everyone who is not deeply religious into the non-religious category if they have been jailed, yet may not have bothered to do the same for the non-incarcerated population.
This is a gray area that depends on the background of the individual prisoner. Practicing Christians who are in jail are more likely to have committed crimes of passion. Ask any prison chaplain why so few men go to chapel. The usual explanation is that most prisoners (not all) never went to church long before they were arrested … and so they see no reason to start up because they were not Christians in their hearts.
Gilbert is trying to show that people who are religious are less like to be jailed than those who are non-religious.
Yes, and anyone with any iota of common sense leans that way.
However, they only way he can back that up right now is to use the strictest definition of religious, deeply religious Christians.
Not really. Some Christians, I have already said (and FRanklin has implied) end up in jail. A mildly religious person is less likely to live a life of deliberate crime than one who is not religious, even though in his personal life he may backslide in ways that are not considered criminal or punishable in the courts. You don’t have to be a saint to stay out of jail … but I daresay there are very few saints in jail.
Stating that the non-religious make up the majority of the prison population is useless unless we can come to a conclusion as to what qualifies as non-religious.
Simply stated, a non-religious person is one whose ethical values are largely independent (even defiant) of traditional religious values rooted in the authority of God. I think this has been made abundantly clear. If you want to offer another definition of non-religious, I’m listening.
Once he has defined Christian morals and the definition of Christian, then we could do the same for a common moral philosophy embraced by atheists.
There is no such common moral philosophy embraced by atheists. It’s every man for himself. Atheists pride themselves on being iindividuals and unorganized, unlike the Christian sheep and their Shepherd.
I would bet that anyone with a deeply held moral philosophy is equally likely to end up in jail, regardless of whether or not they are Christian or religious.
How many atheists have a deeply held moral philosophy? Where would they get such a deeply held moral philosophy? I have heard many atheists deny that atheism says anything more than that there is no God.
At the risk of offending you by repeating myself, I recently saw and heard a foul-mouthed young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Legalize Crime.” Do you really think it’s equally likely that he is a Christian or an atheist?.
Unfortunately, Gilbert seems only capable of quoting Ben Franklin ad nauseam.
“If the world is so bad with religion, what would it be like without religion?” Benjamin Franklin
For the last century the world has been finding out.
What I take issue with is the assumption that works alone can be used as a means judging whether or not a person is Christian.
What you take issue with is irrelevant. You are not even a Christian and don’t know what you are talking about. It is Christ’s Church that determines whether faith without works is dead, and Christ’s Church has decided it (Matthew 25 and the Epistle of James). That you don’t know Scripture is too bad, because you like to pass yourself off as an authority without being one. Read your Bible, then come back and tell us that nowhere in the Bible does it say “Faith without works is dead.”
Chances are that most sins are committed on impulse and sorrow is only felt after reflection.
And what makes you an authority on this? How do you know that more sins are committed on impulse compared to those that are committed according to a planned strategy? Sins of a criminal nature, the kind that land people in jail such as breaking into peoples’ homes, selling drugs to children, murder for hire, are more likely to be thought out ahead of time in order to avoid detection by the police.
Why should we arbitrarily say that sins that land a person in jail show that the person is less likely to be Christian than the ones that cause them to go to confession?
Because a Christian has built into him a conscience that is based on the commandments of Moses and Jesus. An atheist, if he has a conscience, has built it according to the influences surrounding him as he grew up, and there is every possibility that he has never been exposed to the training that emphasizes law and love. In fact, there is every possibility that he has been trained in the opposite ethic of arrogance, lies, and selfishness, depending on the luck of his draw.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding Gilbert, however, he seems to be everyone who is not deeply religious into the non-religious category if they have been jailed, yet may not have bothered to do the same for the non-incarcerated population.
This is a gray area that depends on the background of the individual prisoner. Practicing Christians who are in jail are more likely to have committed crimes of passion. Ask any prison chaplain why so few men go to chapel. The usual explanation is that most prisoners (not all) never went to church long before they were arrested … and so they see no reason to start up because they were not Christians in their hearts.
Gilbert is trying to show that people who are religious are less like to be jailed than those who are non-religious.
Yes, and anyone with any iota of common sense leans that way.
However, they only way he can back that up right now is to use the strictest definition of religious, deeply religious Christians.
Not really. Some Christians, I have already said (and FRanklin has implied) end up in jail. A mildly religious person is less likely to live a life of deliberate crime than one who is not religious, even though in his personal life he may backslide in ways that are not considered criminal or punishable in the courts. You don’t have to be a saint to stay out of jail … but I daresay there are very few saints in jail.
Stating that the non-religious make up the majority of the prison population is useless unless we can come to a conclusion as to what qualifies as non-religious.
Simply stated, a non-religious person is one whose ethical values are largely independent (even defiant) of traditional religious values rooted in the authority of God. I think this has been made abundantly clear. If you want to offer another definition of non-religious, I’m listening.
Once he has defined Christian morals and the definition of Christian, then we could do the same for a common moral philosophy embraced by atheists.
There is no such common moral philosophy embraced by atheists. It’s every man for himself. Atheists pride themselves on being iindividuals and unorganized, unlike the Christian sheep and their Shepherd.
I would bet that anyone with a deeply held moral philosophy is equally likely to end up in jail, regardless of whether or not they are Christian or religious.
How many atheists have a deeply held moral philosophy? Where would they get such a deeply held moral philosophy? I have heard many atheists deny that atheism says anything more than that there is no God.
At the risk of offending you by repeating myself, I recently saw and heard a foul-mouthed young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Legalize Crime.” Do you really think it’s equally likely that he is a Christian or an atheist?.
Unfortunately, Gilbert seems only capable of quoting Ben Franklin ad nauseam.
“If the world is so bad with religion, what would it be like without religion?” Benjamin Franklin
For the last century the world has been finding out.
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Atreyu
Guest
This was actually the point I was trying to make. I was trying to say that Antinomianists are not Christians because the overwhelming witness of those who profess to be Christians utterly condemn Antinomianism. Therefore it is unfair to apply the No True Scotsman fallacy to this case, because anyone can call themself a Scot and that doesn’t make them a Scot.
As for the rest of your two posts, I think they are off-topic. However, I will mention that when I was saying that we are justified by our works, I had grace in mind: our good works are done only with the grace of God. The act of faith in God is in itself an act and therefore a work. It is a straw man to lay the charge that
justification by good works = justification by ourselves (apart from grace).
If you disagree with me, then please explain how it is possible to do a good work apart from grace? Justification is by grace alone, through faith and works.
That being said, I find the teaching on justification to be quite confusing. I may well have made mistakes here, but I think that my on-topic point still stands.
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Judas_O
Guest
That’s because saints are dead. Duh.
But I’m sure you will just say that you meant “good people” by “saints” and I can laugh at you for that too. Your whole point is absurd and you should be ashamed of yourself, really.
How about a definition that doesn’t rest on the silly notion that morality sprung from religion?
Man, what a dumb comment. You bring up moral philosophy, which is an attempt to get at the kernel of what makes an act right and spans everything from virtue ethics to deontology to utilitarianism, and then say it’s every man for himself? Go back to school kid.
I would guess the same number that are also philosophers? And they would get it from reading, properly considering, and then forming a conclusion based on which view properly captures their moral beliefs?
I’m pretty sure that’s called a “joke” and I don’t think you are going to convince anybody of the evils of atheism by appealing to such a retarded example.
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Gilbert_Keith
Guest
Judas
That’s because saints are dead. Duh.
Your whole point is absurd and you should be *ashamed *of yourself, really.
How about a definition that doesn’t rest on the silly notion that morality sprung from religion?
Originally Posted by Gilbert Keith forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
There is no such common moral philosophy embraced by atheists. It’s every man for himself. Atheists pride themselves on being iindividuals and unorganized, unlike the Christian sheep and their Shepherd.
Man, what a dumb comment. You bring up moral philosophy, which is an attempt to get at the kernel of what makes an act right and spans everything from virtue ethics to deontology to utilitarianism, and then say it’s every man for himself? Go back to school kid.
Originally Posted by Gilbert Keith forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
At the risk of offending you by repeating myself, I recently saw and heard a foul-mouthed young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Legalize Crime.” Do you really think it’s equally likely that he is a Christian or an atheist?.
I’m pretty sure that’s called a “joke” and I don’t think you are going to convince anybody of the evils of atheism by appealing to such a retarded example.
Hang in there!
Gilbert
That’s because saints are dead. Duh.
Your whole point is absurd and you should be *ashamed *of yourself, really.
How about a definition that doesn’t rest on the silly notion that morality sprung from religion?
Originally Posted by Gilbert Keith forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
There is no such common moral philosophy embraced by atheists. It’s every man for himself. Atheists pride themselves on being iindividuals and unorganized, unlike the Christian sheep and their Shepherd.
Man, what a dumb comment. You bring up moral philosophy, which is an attempt to get at the kernel of what makes an act right and spans everything from virtue ethics to deontology to utilitarianism, and then say it’s every man for himself? Go back to school kid.
Originally Posted by Gilbert Keith forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
At the risk of offending you by repeating myself, I recently saw and heard a foul-mouthed young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Legalize Crime.” Do you really think it’s equally likely that he is a Christian or an atheist?.
I’m pretty sure that’s called a “joke” and I don’t think you are going to convince anybody of the evils of atheism by appealing to such a retarded example.
Hang in there!
Gilbert
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john_ennis
Guest
J
Judas_O
Guest
More like an example which rings retarded.
You guys need some perspective. It’s a non sequitur on a t-shirt for crying out loud.Wow, you managed to tell that I was being snide. Good job.
You deserve it. I’m sure you think that I should treat you cordially as if everyone on the internet is some kind of king, but I’m not going to. I read this entire thread (regretfully) and all you did during the whole thing was quote Benjamin Franklin, make a lot of goofy assertions, and ask other people what makes them qualified to make their goofy assertions. I don’t see how any of those activities could advance (or even maintain) your position.
And no, despite the fact that I’m clearly attacking you in some way, I’m not attacking your position from any opposing position of mine. I’m just trying to provoke you into either making some sense or maybe reading some books so that you might make sense in the future. I’m not an atheist, but frankly, I could bury almost everything you’ve said without knowing a single thing about atheism.
You can reply to me in an insulting manner if you want, that’s fine. You can call me an idiot right back if you really think that you’ve been correct about anything this entire time. But so far all I have seen from you is a lot of talk about things you don’t understand. Suat’s comments about moral philosophy were pretty damn vague, but your reply to them was so unjustified that I almost had a full-body aneurysm and barfed blood all over the place.
But not really.
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Hastrman
Guest
I lose my patience when philosophical illiterates chide me, oh so gently, for using things as premises that I am not using as premises, and which no competent person could accuse me of using as premises. If rivertim doesn’t want me to condescend, maybe he shouldn’t presume to read–if I can even use the word–ignorant, “pie in the sky” implications into what I write. I mean what I say, and nothing else.
As for the rest of the thread, I find the argument that atheism makes people bad unconvincing. There’s some truth to it (considering atheists committed more mass murders in a hundred years than religious people have in all human history), but it’s not necessarily true–Stalin, Mao, and Hitler all had evil ideologies other than atheism, it could be argued, that motivated their bad behavior. Also, of course, the countless principled atheists are walking disproof of the theory. The unfortunate fact about a negative proposition, like “There are no good atheists,” (or, for that matter, “there is no God”), is that a) proof requires one be omniscient and b) a single counter-example disproves it.
The only logical argument against atheism is that it isn’t true. In other words, you have to prove the existence of God. Problem is, Aquinas’ Five Proofs aren’t actually that good (he himself admitted as much), and, as rivertim has demonstrated handily, the unschooled don’t understand the argument from the contingent nature of the universe, as postulated by Mortimer Adler.
You can also, and much more easily, demonstrate that most atheists, especially the reductionist materialists, don’t know any philosophy, therefore rendering their conclusions suspect. Richard Dawkins, for instance, hasn’t so much as scanned the chapter headings in the Summa Theologiae; if he had, he would know there is no need to explain “the complexity of God,” because there is none. Hence the chapter, “On the Simplicity of God.”
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Mirdath
Guest
While I mostly agree with the rest of your post (from a non-theist point of view, granted) Atreyu’s right, you’re being uncouth and uncivil about it. Isn’t being right enough?
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rivertim
Guest
By referring to the various cosmological arguments from Aristotle, through Aquinas to Adler: If God was the first cause to create intellectual snobs, does that mean that he is not perfect thereby making him contingent rather than necessary? If God is therefore not omnipotent or divine, but just contingent like the rest of us, wouldn’t religion suddenly become irrational?
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Atreyu
Guest
No, because we have free will - God does not create sin. As Augustine said in his Confessions (paraphrasing): “God is the ruler and creator of everything, but of sin, the ruler only”.
Correct. Of course, God is omnipotent and divine…
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Atreyu
Guest
Ok, but what is your agenda here? Do you want to simply win an argument? To what end? I started this thread to try to challenge the world-view of the atheists here, and to try to give them some motivation into looking at the evidence for Christianity. Saint Thomas Aquinas (I think it was him) said “the greatest charity you can do for someone is to instruct them” (paraphrased again). Now it’s pretty clear from your posts that Rivertim had it wrong (in my opinion). I just think that you could have corrected him without being condescending. Why? Because being condescending will just turn him off.
My goal in this thread was to try to use the First Cause Argument to show that theism is much more likely than atheism. I will concede that atheists can get their way around this Argument, but it takes a very unconvincing argument to do so. This is why my goal is “theism is more likely than atheism”, rather than “theism is absolutely true, no doubt about it”. If the atheists and agnostics here will concede my point, then I hope it will start them onto the path to discover more about theism - and in particular, Christianity.
Hehe!
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Hastrman
Guest
I am an intellectual snob, I fully admit–if by that you mean I refuse to grant equal rights to bad arguments as I do to good.
I do apologize for being rude, though. I have never been a patient person.
By the way, Adler’s argument isn’t cosmological but ontological, and has no requirement of First Cause (which is a good argument too, but not, I think, as good). The argument from contingency is also used by Shaivista or Dvaista Hindus, whose universe is co-eternal with God but dependent upon Him.
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Gilbert_Keith
Guest
Judas O
I said:
Originally Posted by Gilbert Keith forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
At the risk of offending you by repeating myself, I recently saw and heard a foul-mouthed young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Legalize Crime.” Do you really think it’s equally likely that he is a Christian or an atheist?.
You replied:
I’m pretty sure that’s called a “joke” and I don’t think you are going to convince anybody of the evils of atheism by appealing to such a retarded example.
Go here: spreadshirt.net/shop.php?sid=78424&search[text]=legalize
I agree the t-shirt is a retard’s joke: but you still haven’t answered the question: who is more likely to be wearing it: a retarded Christian or a retarded atheist?
Wow, you managed to tell that I was being snide. Good job.
All I did was hold the mirror up to your debating skills. Not very impressive. Name-calling is your weakest strategy. Please work on that.
I said:
Originally Posted by Gilbert Keith forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
At the risk of offending you by repeating myself, I recently saw and heard a foul-mouthed young man wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “Legalize Crime.” Do you really think it’s equally likely that he is a Christian or an atheist?.
You replied:
I’m pretty sure that’s called a “joke” and I don’t think you are going to convince anybody of the evils of atheism by appealing to such a retarded example.
Go here: spreadshirt.net/shop.php?sid=78424&search[text]=legalize
I agree the t-shirt is a retard’s joke: but you still haven’t answered the question: who is more likely to be wearing it: a retarded Christian or a retarded atheist?
Wow, you managed to tell that I was being snide. Good job.
All I did was hold the mirror up to your debating skills. Not very impressive. Name-calling is your weakest strategy. Please work on that.
W
whatever
Guest
I have never seen statistics about how many atheists remained that way after birth and how many rejected whatever faith they were indoctrinated into or acquired at their own volition, but I would go out on a limb and say that the majority of extant non-theists rejected their religious faith and have already made up their minds about Christian apologetics, which they’re probably all too familiar with.
Those who never adhered to Christianity are almost by definition immune to the religious meme and not receptive to Kreeft et al.
Turnabout is fair play, though. Feel free to challenge your own world view by trying the games found here:
The Philosopher’s Magazine: Games and Interactive Activities
The First Cause arguments are flawed and not very persuasive even if you’re a Deist. I don’t intend to debate this and you can easily find objections to these arguments on a number of websites and other publications.
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