Atheist bored at work. Feel free to ask questions

  • Thread starter Thread starter Russell_SA
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Fine, can we investigate how that happened? All we can do at this point is point to an event and only be able to look at the results of that event. We can not investigate how that event takes place. So all claims to know and have ruled out any other solutions are not valid. IE: you walk into the house and find a broke vase. You claim a ghost did it but all we can do is see the broken vase. Are you correct that it was a ghost instead of anything else? Can we investigate ghosts at all? How they interact with reality? etc? no, no we can not.
 
I like talking to people that do not agree with me so that I can work on my skills of communication and get out of my bubble. It’s important to understand how people see us when we talk about things we like to discuss. They say, don’t talk about politics, family values, and religion but that’s only because we need to convert people to our sides. I don’t care about converting people to my side, but it’s important to me to be able to talk about any of these topics in a fair way. It doesn’t have to be argumentative, it can just be informative.

I don’t know if I will always be an atheist, that’s up to your deity. It should know what information it would take to change my position and has either chosen not to or it can not do so. Either way, not my problem.
 
Interesting that you put the onus on the deity and not you. Curious, but have you ever asked?

Do you think that ethnocentrism is ever a factor? I mean if you are to be plucked out of Texas, or whatever you are from and plopped down somewhere else on the globe, do you think you would draw the same conclusion? How are you certain, that even with the same disposition, that your cultural lens is an appropriate gauge of your understating of God?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
 
Last edited:
Onus on the deity? to do what? inform me that it exists? Well since we can not go investigate that realm for ourselves but the religious claim that the beings in that realm can come to ours, it’s a one way street for verification. So yes, it is on the deity to present itself to me. I understand what it means to be in a relationship with conscious creatures, but your deity seems to be playing the best game of hide and go seek. So good in fact, that it appears to be no different than just an imaginary friend someone is playing that game with.
I think people understand morality as best as they can. It’s absurd to assume that someone who grew up within a social bubble to not have the understanding of people outside of that bubble. Once we run into people that have moral conflicts with our own, then we can have a conversation about moral systems moving forward with new information. I’ll use my pi math example. If all someone can understand about the value of pi is to the 8th decimal place, how can they claim the problem is better or more correct if they can’t see a difference between their results of the equation and someone else using pi to the 12th, 200th, etc. values beyond the 8th decimal place. This is why children brought up in a household where the myth of santa is taught to them is real to them until someone comes along and points out holes in their understanding of santa that their environment was not presenting.
I am only certain about ideas that I can understand. That is why I reference Human Wellbeing as the reference point for morality since it seems to me and everyone else that appears to be the most common overlapping reference point to improve the human condition, aka moral systems. I’m fine with changing my reference point once I understand why the new reference point is better.
 
Wow, you have a really strange, unsophisticated, stereotypical notion of Christianity. Do you really think a Christian’s answer to every problem is merely “God will solve it.” That if it’s raining a Christian will pray rather than construct a shelter? That if it’s cold a Christian will pray rather than fashion clothing? That if it’s dangerous a Christian will pray rather than build a shield?

Am I understanding you correctly?
 
Russell_SA said:
We assess them from the reference point of how it benefits the human experience.
Click to expand...
This still all sounds very arbitrary. Who’s experience? An average of all experiences? The experience of the majority 51%? What about the unborn? Is Planned Parenthood’s idea of human well-being the standard?
 
Since the deity can not be demonstrated to be any different than an imagined idea of a deity, all appeals and practices to the supernatural are just cultural traditions at this point. So power of prayer, water to wine, bread to flesh, etc. is all nonsense until the deity is demonstrated to be there and that what it’s followers are asking for is actually within it’s power to do and that it has the ability to choose to do that. But at this point there is no evidence that the deity is there. I do not see people praying for the rain to stop until they are being flooded out. They appeal to their deity for things outside of their control that they wish was not the case. If they try to channel that power for mundane things, then fine. They also pray for non-mundane things as well, but it’s all appeals to the same empty idea. Until you can demonstrate that it is there, its all just cultural tribal practices.
 
I’ve addressed these points, see previous posts. Don’t care that you think its’ arbitrary, but at least its referenced to reality instead of an imagined idea of a deity to solve this problem.
 
The data also demonstrates that consciousness does not arise spontaneously from non consciousness matter. The data indicates that it comes from a prior consciousness, does it not?
 
Russell_SA said:
No idea on how the universe came into being. Can you demonstrate that your solution actually is the case and how you can demonstrate that?
Click to expand...
the starting point. the big bang theory has been put forth as a best guess. what created that energy that started the ball rolling? was it always there? was it created by an outside force?

i believe it takes more faith to believe that this energy was always there or just magically popped into existence than to believe it was somehow created.

what created this energy is where the discussion needs to continue; imho. ymmv
 
Russell_SA said:
Referencing Human Wellbeing as the grounding for moral absolutes for our reality seems to be the universal reference that everyone is using.
Click to expand...
the problem i see is that the definition of human wellbeing isn’t absolute. who gets to define it and more importantly what if i don’t agree it is human wellbeing. what if i think it is subjective and dependent on my wellbeing.

i see this trend in our society especially in merica and the me be what i want generation.
 
We can investigate the outcome of the event but we can’t investigate how it happened, unless we look at eye witness testimonies (which can’t totally be relied on anyway).

Likewise, we can’t really investigate how the beginning of the world came to be, or climate change. We can only investigate the outcome of such events (the evidence they left behind) and come to a likely conclusion.
 
Last edited:
Russell_SA said:
Let me clarify some terminology so that everyone can understand the what I mean by the labels I use

Knowledge is a subset of Belief
I see knowledge is something that you have more evidence of than just argumentation through hearsay. Knowledge of something you experience first hand.
Belief is something you have been convinced of to be the case regardless if you have directly experienced it or not.

[snip for space]
Click to expand...
Thomas Aquinas is known for this quote

One with faith no explanation is necessary, one without faith no explanation is sufficient.

I can say, from my own experience, that quote is spot on.

Since faith is a gift from God, and God desires all to be saved & come to the knowledge of truth, then if one feels they don’t have faith, AND desires it, (that’s key) then just ask God for that gift. I’m sure He won’t refuse a sincere request.

I can’t speak to an insincere request.
 
Many have the false notion that God is hiding from us for no other reason than to play games. I would think the same if I had not been Catholic and got to understand why God is this way.

I know it may sound ridiculous, but bear with me here.

The only reason God is hiding is because we pushed Him away.

So before Adam and Eve sinned, God was around. They could easily communicate with Him and God loved them and they loved God. But then temptation arose. Sin then arose. Sin is basically just a weakening of our relationship with God. Every sin we commit can weaken our relationship with Him because sin makes us imperfect. Water doesn’t mix quite well with oil. Perfection doesn’t quite mix well with imperfection.

God also cannot force us to love Him. He gave us free will to love Him if we wish; essentially to love God is to do His will and to follow His laws. That is why we must seek God and not vice versa, because we push God away every time we commit sin. God wants us to love Him, to desire Him, to know Him. But that cannot happen if we don’t seek Him. That won’t happen if we don’t try to follow His commandments. That is why the saints are so well known for their miraculous lives, because they were so close to perfection and got to know God.

God also gives us enough graces for conversion in our lives. Whether we accept them is up to us. There is plenty of evidence out there to convince someone that He does exist. It just depends on how hardened our hearts are.
 
Russell_SA said:
I don’t know if I will always be an atheist, that’s up to your deity. It should know what information it would take to change my position and has either chosen not to or it can not do so. Either way, not my problem.
Click to expand...
If you don’t put aside your pride and ask God to reveal Himself, you will never know. You’ll spend the rest of your life haunting discussion boards saying, “prove it!” We can’t prove it. No one can. Quit daring people to prove the supernatural and instead start asking God. That’s the only way you’ll know. Trust me, there is no other way.
 
BoomerangToo said:
If you don’t put aside your pride and ask God to reveal Himself, you will never know. You’ll spend the rest of your life haunting discussion boards saying, “prove it!” We can’t prove it. No one can. Quit daring people to prove the supernatural and instead start asking God. That’s the only way you’ll know. Trust me, there is no other way.
Click to expand...
With respect, this is the same advice I totally ignore when the Mormon boys tell me to pray to the Holy Spirit to tell me that the Book of Mormon is the inspired word of God. If I have no logical reason to believe the Book of Mormon is the word of God, why should I spend time asking God to reveal that to me? I don’t do this with other religious texts, and I don’t pray to Gods of non-Christian religions, asking for them to reveal themselves to me?

Our Catechism says (CCC #35) that proofs of God can predispose man to faith, and Vatican I (Dei Filius 2) maintains that one can know God with certainty through the light of reason applied to the things God created. So I think it is fair of Russell to ask for convincing proofs before he would emotionally commit himself to dialoguing with a God he does not yet believe in.
 
Tarsier said:
So I think it is fair of Russell to ask for convincing proofs before he would emotionally commit himself to dialoguing with a God he does not yet believe in.
Click to expand...
The problem is, to an atheist, there is no convincing proof. Nothing we, or Thomas Aquinas or the Bible or the Catechism will convince someone who is spiritually hard of hearing. There is no scientific proof, which is what most atheists are looking for. They don’t understand that a person has to approach God first, then God will start speaking to you. God wants to be known. Jesus said, “I stand at the door and knock”. He didn’t say, “If you don’t answer the door, I’m gonna break it down!” A seeker has to be approachable, and a hardened heart makes them unapproachable.
 
Someone might have already asked or commented on this but, what do you think of the Thomistic definition of love as an act of the will, rather than an emotion?
 
BoomerangToo said:
The problem is, to an atheist, there is no convincing proof. Nothing we, or Thomas Aquinas or the Bible or the Catechism will convince someone who is spiritually hard of hearing. There is no scientific proof, which is what most atheists are looking for. They don’t understand that a person has to approach God first, then God will start speaking to you. God wants to be known. Jesus said, “I stand at the door and knock”. He didn’t say, “If you don’t answer the door, I’m gonna break it down!” A seeker has to be approachable, and a hardened heart makes them unapproachable.
Click to expand...
That’s an unfair characterization of all atheists. I was an atheist and reasoned my way to faith. I set out to disprove what I saw as silly beliefs of my (then fiance’s) Catholicism. I found the arguments for God more probable than those against. I accept that there are those with a “hardened heart”, but such people exist in every walk of life, including among believers (hearts hardened to reason, but also to fully following God when his word conflicts with their preferred lifestyle). Most of my recent contributions on here have been on a thread on the Monty Hall Problem in the Casual Discussion forum, where despite mathematical and simulated proof to the strong contrary, otherwise reasonable people will not accept what their intuition is resisting. I know this analogy is not a perfect, as nobody assumes a supernatural assistance to the reasoning ability of mathematicians, but at the same time, the Church teaches the place of logic in concluding the existence of God. If, as a believer, you feel God might grant Russel the gift of faith, then it would work in tandem with his exploration and the sharpening of his iron against yours.

Russel might be such a hard-headed person or not. I’ll admit I haven’t read the whole thread. However, I do know that whether he is stubbornly closed to reason (and from what I’ve read, he doesn’t appear to be) or not, asking him to pray to a God he doesn’t believe in and ask for belief sounds a bit absurd. At least it does to me when the Mormon boys ask me to do the same. They probably leave and brush the dust off their feet, concluding that I have a hardened heart. I don’t. I just find their persuasion lacking, so I’m not going to pray about their book or their interpretation of God.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top