Atheist conversion

[EricFilmer]

Here’s the point you’re not understanding: I am not championing the scientific method as the only path to knowledge.

I am asserting that evidence-based inquiry is the only reliable way to come to conclusions about the world. Science and the scientific method provides one kind of evidence for reason to operate on, but it’s not the only kind.

Well, I guess this means that you don’t want to treat this in a separate thread. Well, no big deal.

Ok, if I understand you correctly, you are saying there are methods of examining evidence to determine truth other than the scientific method. I am in agreement. I never claimed to be “anti-evidence.”

I don’t need to do some scientific experiment to know that love feels good to me – because my knowledge of that fact comes from the evidence of observing my own emotional state and my reaction to it, and for that claim, those observations are sufficient evidence.

Feeling good is the definition of happiness, not the definition of love. To suggest that the entire concept of love can be reduced to momentary fleeting emotions within a single person is a very unrealistic understanding of the human experience of love.

Your list of ways of coming to knowledge is really just a list of kinds of evidence.
There is scientific evidence, evidence gathered from personal experience, evidence drawn from testimony, evidence drawn from books (another kind of testimony). “Philosophical constructs” are the exception, as they are really part of the reasoning process, not evidence per se (it is possible to reason a valid conclusion that is unsound because there it is not based on evidence).

Once again, I am not “anti-evidence”. As I pointed out in an earlier thread, the question concerns what can be accepted as evidence. If you say “only that which can be applied to the scientific method” then you have to rescind what you stated above, that there are ways other than the scientific method for doing this.

The way we come to conclusions is that we take evidence gathered from those sources, use reason to determine what claim is supported by this evidence, and use reason to measure how good this particular evidence is to support the claim.

So, on the basis of evidence – the fact that, for example, the vast majority of human beings also report feeling various kinds of good emotions in their interpersonal relationships (similar to mine, though not identical, judging from their descriptions) – it is fair to say that that the variety of emotions we label with the word “love” are a universal experience. No science required…but evidence is required.

Once again, love is more than “good emotions.” People also associate bad emotions (anger, jealousy, compassion, worry, nurturing, etc.) with love. I pointed this all out in Post #58 to sadiebelle. If love is to be described simply in terms of the emotions associated with it, then the definition would end up being along the lines of “Love means having emotional thoughts associated with another person”, and this is obviously untrue.

Now, if we want to know something about the nature of this emotion ( “Is it natural or supernatural?”), we’d have to gather evidence outside of our minds, and for this, scientific experiments would serve us admirably. And not only is there no evidence that love is supernatural, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it comes from brain chemistry.

I believe that the nature of all virtues, including love, has it origins in God, and therefore, yes, supernatural. But that was not my position in this discussion. Love obviously transcends both the concept of emotions and the individual for the simple fact that it can only be expressed in terms of a relationship. In this discussion I never used the human experience of love as a proof of the supernatural, only that love is an example of something whose existence cannot be proven via the scientific method.

If you were going to seriously suggest that love is some kind of force that is external to individuals, you’d have to, at the very least, be able to measure its operation outside of the human consciousness… because that’s what forces are – they tangibly manifest in regular, predictable ways.

I did not simply “suggest” this, I clearly demonstrated it. Love has a subject (the person) and an object (the one whom he loves), and therefore is manifested in a relationship between the two. Is the subject of the objects love external to him? Yes. Do the emotions and chemicals in the brain direct the object’s awareness to an external subject? Yes. Is the manifestation and fulfillment of love possible without the cooperation of an external subject? No. Is love therefore confined within the object? No. Just as love involves an object and a subject, it is both internal and external.

And human consciousness is not limited to the individual mind either because it also is an expression of subject and object. But I never used the term “force” to describe this. Perhaps Star Wars was playing on your TV while you were typing your response.

(concluded in my next post)

 

[EricFilmer]

(continued from my last post)

Your explanation for “love is transcendent” is inane. That an emotion can serve as the basis of action (and actions do generally involve a “subject and an object”) is in no way an indication that the emotion is “transcendent” (in the sense that it transcends the physical world

I clearly stated that “transcendent” means that love goes beyond a person’s emotions and individuality to find its fulfillment in the object of the relationship. Whether or not this concept “transcends the physical world” depends on what you mean by “physical world.” The relationship that connects two people is clearly non-physical. Nevertheless, it does not transcend the realm of human experience. As a side note, I personally believe that love does, indeed, transcend the human experience, but for the reasons I have stated herein.

with some judicious use of equivocation, you can switch over to a different meaning of “love” (relationships) and argue that it “transcends” the individual in some sense – in the same sense that drinking coffee “transcends” the boundaries of me because it unites me with an “object” – but that’s not remotely supernatural or unexplainable.

Yes, as I stated above, human consciousness is also an expression of subject and object. These relationships “transcend” the individual. Once again, you are the one bringing up terms such as “supernatural” and “unexplainable”, not me. My position is that the existence of love cannot be proven by the scientific method. Or are you of the opinion that such a statement equates declaring the phenomenon to be supernatural and unexplainable?

Hatred equally prompts actions between a subject and an object, and it too fulfills itself in a relationship with another – a hate-filled relationship.)

Which is why it is insufficient to define love simply as a relationship. It is more than a relationship, and it is more than emotions, and it encompasses more than the individual.

If you’re simply claiming that emotions affect the ways that people act, then you’re not claiming anything special, and you’re certainly not making any claims that can only be explained with supernatural means.

You are obsessed with this “supernatural” stuff. If you look back along my posts you will see that I never “went there”. Anything I said connecting love and the supernatural was in the context of my comments to sadiebelle in Post #58, as well as a brief comment I initially made (that love transcends human experience). But in terms of my discourse with you I never claimed that love can only be explained by supernatural means. A person can accept my statements about the transcendent nature of love without having to likewise believe that it is supernatural. Proof of the transcendent nature of love is not proof of the existence of God. I will repeat myself yet again, my position is that the scientific method cannot be used to demonstrate the existence of love. Therefore, it is credible to believe in something whose existence is not proven by the scientific method. Yes, this includes the belief in God, but I never said that this means that no evidence is required. You are the one who, for some reason, equates “evidence-based inquiry” specifically with “the scientific method.”

 

[rick43235]

If you look at something and say, “I don’t know how that came to be,” then you cannot logically make the leap to “a supernatural intelligence created it.”

Yes, I can…someone smarter than you or I needed to do that, don’t you think?

This reminds me of the story of two goldfish talking to each other: “Of course there’s a god. Who do you think changes the water?”

 

[Marc_Anthony]

This reminds me of the story of two goldfish talking to each other: “Of course there’s a god. Who do you think changes the water?”

Good question. Here’s another: Who creates the person who changes the water? And who created them? And who created them? Et cetera ad nauseum…

 

[stephe1987]

I don’t think Atheists want to be converted.

For one thing, all ancient texts are automatically dismissed as “fairy tales.” They won’t let you explain about Jesus’s life, how people don’t die for a lie, the same hallucinations don’t happen to groups of people (even if they are on drugs, which they were not), etc. They don’t believe because they don’t want to believe.

As for the existence of God, no matter what evidence is presented, God is ALWAYS ruled out on principle because only the natural world can exist to the Atheist.

If an Atheists wants to find God, there are ways to find Him and many people are more than willing to help him or her find God. There are several books written by former Atheists–people who’ve been in their shoes and can relate to them better than a person who’s always believed in God–who have found Christ.

I don’t think that “ignorance” is an excuse anymore. This is 2010. The information is available on the Internet for those who seek it (unless of course you live in a cave or a 3rd world country that doesn’t have access to information).

There are sites dedicated to finding Bible contradictions, but those arguments are old and have been refuted a long time ago. And the Bible isn’t meant to be a book on science, nor is all of it meant to be taken literally.

I agree with the Atheists in that we should explore other religions before settling on one (in fact, part of my 7th grade world history class was learning about world religions, what people believe and why), but that doesn’t mean they are all correct or all incorrect just because more than one religion exists. That’s like saying we should fill in all or none of the bubbles on a multiple-choice test just because more than one answer is possible. Some of them might have some elements of truth or be partially correct, but there is only one best answer. I believe Christianity is the best answer.

 

[rpp]

Coming in late to this thread, sorry…

I am a former atheist. I described myself as a “foxhole atheist”. Not that I served in the military, I did not (disqualifying medical condition). No, I described that way because I was so certain there was no God. I was an atheist from age 19 until I was 42. Prior to that, I was a Fundamentalist Baptist. It was the all-or-nothing aspect of their interpretation the Bible that, to me, finally destroyed their intellectual credibility for me. Not knowing any other church, I fell directly into atheism.

In order to draw me back to Him and to His true Church, the Lord gave me a supernatural and mystical experience that resulted in my virtual instantaneous conversion from atheism to the Catholic Church. When I say my conversion was “virtually instantaneous”, it was that literally when I inhaled I was a dedicated atheist and when I exhaled, I knew the Catholic Church was His One True Church.

I know that others have converted from atheism, but it is a difficult road.

 

[sadiebelle]

You’re free to believe what you want. Christianity offers a greater, deeper love and hope.

This answer feels really, really dismissive to me. I’m asking honest questions here. I am trying to figure this stuff out. If you don’t have an answer to my questions, saying “your free to believe what you want” sounds really snotty. Maybe you didn’t mean it that way, but it still doesn’t add to the conversation and it certainly doesn’t make those of us struggling with faith feel any closer to the Catholic Church.

 

[duffyk4]

Sadie, the problem here is that you’re looking for one of us to give you the answer you want to hear. But the truth is, there is no tangible, set in stone evidence for Christianity. There — I said it. But thats only concerning evidence that you see and feel in the material world. But if you open your heart, there is so much more to see. It’s faith, but not blind faith. It will be scary for awhile, hence leap of faith, but the longer you grow and mature with Christ the more comfortable you will grow with the reality of our God.

 

[rvilbig]

How would you go about converting an atheist to christianity in particular? What arguments could you use to show that Christianity is the truth?

Since most atheists are into evolution, I would say: “So, you believe in survival of the fittest, right? Well there are 2 billion Christians, so Christianity is obviously fit. Perhaps it’s fit because it’s true and corresponds to the deepest Truths about the universe.”

This idea can actually be found in the Bible, in the Acts of Apostles, by the Pharisee Gamaliel:

"“Fellow Israelites, be careful what you are about to do to these men. Some time ago, Theudas appeared, claiming to be someone important, and about four hundred men joined him, but he was killed, and all those who were loyal to him were disbanded and came to nothing. After him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census. He also drew people after him, but he too perished and all who were loyal to him were scattered. So now I tell you, have nothing to do with these men, and let them go. For if this endeavor or this activity is of human origin, it will destroy itself. But if it comes from God, you will not be able to destroy them; you may even find yourselves fighting against God.” (Acts 5:35-39)

Hope this helps,

-Ryan Vilbig
ryan.vilbig@gmail.com

 

[jam070406]

This answer feels really, really dismissive to me. I’m asking honest questions here. I am trying to figure this stuff out. If you don’t have an answer to my questions, saying “your free to believe what you want” sounds really snotty. Maybe you didn’t mean it that way, but it still doesn’t add to the conversation and it certainly doesn’t make those of us struggling with faith feel any closer to the Catholic Church.

Sorry, perhaps you are right. I admit I got alittle snotty. I just get tired of atheists that assert that people who have Faith can’t think for themselves and must have an inferior intellect to them because they can’t show any “proof”
And if you want to talk about dismissive, it’s that attitude that “ah you don’t know what you’re talking about …it’s just emotion”, that atheists often convey, that drives me nuts.

I’m happy you are searching and I did not mean to be a stumbling block for you. Have an open heart and mind and God will lead you to the Truth. And Pray! May God bless you on your journey.

Please forgive me.

 

[Angel7]

I don’t see how it is wrong. We all agree that God exists. We all agree that He does stuff everyday. Real stuff. Helps folks. He answers prayers. He acts in big ways. Why can’t that real stuff be measured? I’ve been struggling with this question. I keep asking it and no one can give me an answer.

How is that self-centered? I don’t think it is. I’m not asking for my prayers to be answered. Just that those prayers that He answers are measured. That the things that He does are measured.

Can’t we observe God? I think we can. We can see the difference that he makes in others lives. The point is not “what I can’t observe doesn’t exist”, but that I can observe God, we all can. Why can’t we also measure His effects? If God is real, just as real as anything else we can’t see, but can measure, like gravity, we should also be able to measure his effects. Just like gravity.

I keep asking these questions and all I seem to get back in real life and here is that it’s wrong to measure God. No reason, it’s just wrong. Or that I don’t have enough faith. Or that I’m not trying hard enough. Or that God doesn’t want me to use the reasoning that He gave me. He just wants my faith. Or that it’s wrong to even ask these questions. That it is self-centered. It’s not. I struggle with this stuff and so I know that other people do, too. If I could get the answers to these questions, I could help others like myself to hold onto their faith.

I wish I knew the answer. But I know someone out there does.

 

[AntiTheist]

Love obviously transcends both the concept of emotions and the individual for the simple fact that it can only be expressed in terms of a relationship. In this discussion I never used the human experience of love as a proof of the supernatural, only that love is an example of something whose existence cannot be proven via the scientific method.

And, obviously, we’ve already agreed that we can demonstrate its existence through evidence, though not exclusively scientific evidence.

You were, however, making the implication that since we can demonstrate the existence of love without scientific evidence, we can also demonstrate the existence of god without scientific evidence. This is false, as I have demonstrated, since the nature of the claims is totally different (as one is a claim about the world inside a person’s head – which may inspire relationships or not – and the other is a claim about the world outside of a person’s head).

Just as love involves an object and a subject, it is both internal and external.

There’s some serious equivocation going on here. The word “love” can refer to a lot of things: various emotions, kinds of relationship, and the entire concept of emotions leading to relationships that feed back into the emotions.

What exactly do you mean by “love” when you claim that “love exists”? If you mean that people get emotions that make them want to have relationships with others, I agree that such a phenomenon exists, but I’m baffled that you think that this claim is in any way comparable to the claim that a being exists outside of and independent of our consciousness.

If you’re trying to say that god exists in the same way that love exists (as a bunch of thoughts in our head that may influence our actions), then I’m in total agreement. I agree that god is a thought in people’s heads.

The question here is whether god exists as an entity outside of people’s heads, and for that claim, we need evidence of a different sort than the evidence for demonstrating to ourselves that we feel a particular emotion.

EDIT: For the sake of completeness, I concede that the claim, “People form relationships with others based on emotion” is a claim that requires evidence drawn from the world outside of our heads, but we have a ton of evidence that this is true. Take, for example, the fact that people in the real world do form such relationships, all the time…we can observe them!

The claim, “A supernatural intelligence exists without a body” is of an entirely different order of claim. There’s no observing that one. What we need to do is to determine exactly how it affects the universe (which is what it means to exist) and detect it.

 

[Shannon9791]

I don’t see how it is wrong. We all agree that God exists. We all agree that He does stuff everyday. Real stuff. Helps folks. He answers prayers. He acts in big ways. Why can’t that real stuff be measured? I’ve been struggling with this question. I keep asking it and no one can give me an answer.

How is that self-centered? I don’t think it is. I’m not asking for my prayers to be answered. Just that those prayers that He answers are measured. That the things that He does are measured.

Can’t we observe God? I think we can. We can see the difference that he makes in others lives. The point is not “what I can’t observe doesn’t exist”, but that I can observe God, we all can. Why can’t we also measure His effects? If God is real, just as real as anything else we can’t see, but can measure, like gravity, we should also be able to measure his effects. Just like gravity.

I keep asking these questions and all I seem to get back in real life and here is that it’s wrong to measure God. No reason, it’s just wrong. Or that I don’t have enough faith. Or that I’m not trying hard enough. Or that God doesn’t want me to use the reasoning that He gave me. He just wants my faith. Or that it’s wrong to even ask these questions. That it is self-centered. It’s not. I struggle with this stuff and so I know that other people do, too. If I could get the answers to these questions, I could help others like myself to hold onto their faith.

I think the wall you’re running into is that you’re trying to measure the immeasurable. You site the studies that try to see if prayer works or not and in some cases it says prayer does work and sometimes it doesn’t. How can you tell that it’s the prayers that are being answered, and how can you tell that the prayers that aren’t being answered aren’t heard by God? As the song says “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

Also, something you may not have thought about is how do you measure if a prayer actually “worked” or not? When I was 8, I prayed for a certain Christmas gift. Was it God answering my prayers that got me the present, or was it my constant talking about it to my parents? Being a little over 20 years removed from that situation, I pray for different things; that God makes me the best husband and father I can be, that He instill in me the values that were taught to me over the years, that I am able to follow His will to the best of my ability. How can one measure those things? God does answer prayers, I believe that to the utmost, but I think you’ll find yourself on a slippery slope if you try to measure the amount or to what extent of prayers He answers.

I want you to know that if anyone tells you questioning God is wrong, that it’s not you, it’s them. Why is questioning wrong? God gave us brains to reason with, and to consider every possibility (even the one that He does not exist) is one of the best things about being human. I am a diehard Catholic, and I challenge myself all the time by questioning whether or not I really believe what I say I do. I haven’t come up with any other logical conclusion. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that at all, because it reaffirms my faith conintually. I say keep asking til someone tells you what you need to hear to get you on your path. Just know that you’re not going to want to hear everyone’s answer, and there will be people who tell you wrong things out of ignorance or any number of other reasons. Personally, I think it takes more faith to ask question and challenge yourself than to just accept what someone tells you blindly.

I hope this helps in your search.
Shannon

 

[AntiTheist]

Well, for starters, we certainly know that it had to be someone smarter than you or I…correct?

Incorrect. You’re starting from the assumption that it had to be a “someone” – a person, rather than a natural force. Natural forces can and do produce order – gravity, for example, is a blind unintelligent natural force, and yet it produces the orderly movement of the planets in our solar system
.
The problem here is that you have never questioned any of your assumptions. And hey, that’s your choice to do that. But if you’re going to have discussions in public with people who have questioned their assumptions, this is the sort of thing you have to expect will happen.

jam:

no ammount of well written, articulate responses by you is gonna change that.

Well, if you concede that my posts are well-written and articulate, then you must have some sort of logical response to them.

So far you’ve just plugged up your ears and chanted “la la la la la” to everything I’ve said. I point out that testimony of subjective experiences can never be evidence for objective phenomena; your response is to say, “no, you’re wrong” without any explanation.

Can you give me one example (just one) of a person’s subjective feelings being consistently reliable evidence for objective phenomena? [Please note that I said “consistently reliable” – don’t give me an anecdote where someone’s random guess accidentally turned out to be correct or something]

Stephe1987:

For one thing, all ancient texts are automatically dismissed as “fairy tales.”

Old stories that involve supernatural events aren’t evidence for anything supernatural.

God is ALWAYS ruled out on principle

No. Not on principle. God is ruled out because there’s no evidence that there is a god.

There are sites dedicated to finding Bible contradictions

These are almost always poor reasons for not believing in god. Personally, I don’t care how many contradictions are in the Bible or how many ways they can be explained away – the fact is that there’s no reason to think that the events described in the Bible actually happened in the way that they are said to have happened.

that doesn’t mean they are all correct or all incorrect just because more than one religion exists. That’s like saying we should fill in all or none of the bubbles on a multiple-choice test just because more than one answer is possible.

Tests frequently have a “none of the above” space, and in the absence of compelling reason to choose one of the above answers, that is the correct answer.

rvilbig:

Since most atheists are into evolution, I would say: “So, you believe in survival of the fittest, right? Well there are 2 billion Christians, so Christianity is obviously fit. Perhaps it’s fit because it’s true and corresponds to the deepest Truths about the universe.”

Well, assuming we treat evolution as a metaphorical term and apply it to ideas, yes, Christianity – and religion in general – is a very effective meme that succeeds in self-propogating.

But the question of whether an idea can survive in an environment is a different question than whether or not an idea is true. Anti-Semitism existed (and still exists) for a very long time among widely diverse groups of people…that’s not an indication that it is true.

 

[AntiTheist]

In order to draw me back to Him and to His true Church, the Lord gave me a supernatural and mystical experience that resulted in my virtual instantaneous conversion from atheism to the Catholic Church

As a matter of curiosity, do you think that atheists who have not be given a mystical experience have any valid reason to believe in Christianity?

Why do you think that “the Lord” gave this experience to you and not to all of the other atheists in the world? Or everyone in the world, for that matter? Why were you in particular singled out? At the very least, why would “The Lord” not give the experience to Richard Dawkins? Having Dr. Dawkins write a book called “Why I Now Believe” would be a stunning event that I’m sure would result in some more “atheist conversion.”

 

[Shannon9791]

As a matter of curiosity, do you think that atheists who have not be given a mystical experience have any valid reason to believe in Christianity?

Why do you think that “the Lord” gave this experience to you and not to all of the other atheists in the world? Or everyone in the world, for that matter? Why were you in particular singled out? At the very least, why would “The Lord” not give the experience to Richard Dawkins? Having Dr. Dawkins write a book called “Why I Now Believe” would be a stunning event that I’m sure would result in some more “atheist conversion.”

I think the more important question would be has Mr. Dawkins already had this experience and just blew it off because it couldn’t be explained? That also begs the question as to what it would take for Mr. Dawkins to have that type of conversion experience.

 

[jam070406]

I point out that testimony of subjective experiences can never be evidence for objective phenomena;

Uuuh, yours is a subjective experience too?
So it comes down to what you want to put faith in. You put faith in your own understanding that what we believe is wrong and is not super natural in nature. We put Faith in the witness of those that came before us and impact of change that the super natural has played out in our lives, which, I agree cannot be explained to those that haven’t experienced it.
But when people tell you, based on their experience, that it’s more then emotion and feeling and you out right dismiss it because it’s not something you can experience (right now anyway) I think you are being dishonest. Perhaps you need to do less talking and more listening.
There is something there that you can’t explain and it doesn’t make it go away by assuming or trying to rationalize it away. You need to figure it out because people are telling you that your opinion is wrong based on their experience. Your opinion is just as subjective as the people you point the finger at.

 

[EricFilmer]

And, obviously, we’ve already agreed that we can demonstrate its existence through evidence, though not exclusively scientific evidence.

You were, however, making the implication that since we can demonstrate the existence of love without scientific evidence, we can also demonstrate the existence of god without scientific evidence.

Where did I imply this? I stated the opposite. This is what I actually said yesterday (in Post #82):
“A person can accept my statements about the transcendent nature of love without having to likewise believe that it is supernatural. Proof of the transcendent nature of love is not proof of the existence of God.”
I’m a bit confused how you could have read that and conclude that I was implying “that since we can demonstrate the existence of love without scientific evidence, we can also demonstrate the existence of god without scientific evidence."

As I have repeatedly stated, there are things within our reality whose existence cannot be proven through the scientific method. Therefore, the scientific method cannot be the sole means for discerning truth. Do things that exist provide evidence? Yes. Can all evidence be measured, quantified and subjected to repeated experimentation, which is what the scientific method entails? No. And in terms of empirical evidence, does its presence always clearly reveal the origins of the evidence? No. And even if the scientific method can tell us what something is, can it always tell us what something is for? No. So once again, as great as the scientific method is, it has its limitations.

There’s some serious equivocation going on here. The word “love” can refer to a lot of things: various emotions, kinds of relationship, and the entire concept of emotions leading to relationships that feed back into the emotions.

I agree that it encompasses a lot of things. But any “equivocating” I’m doing is in conjunction with western philosophical thought and modern humanistic psychology. Love is more than chemical impulses in the brain triggering emotions. It involves things that can’t be put into a test tube.

What exactly do you mean by “love” when you claim that “love exists”? If you mean that people get emotions that make them want to have relationships with others, I agree that such a phenomenon exists, but I’m baffled that you think that this claim is in any way comparable to the claim that a being exists outside of and independent of our consciousness.

One aspect of love is that it involves emotions that motivate people to form relationships with others. But that is only an aspect of love, not the definition of it. Nor is it the only aspect. Ultimately love is not the desire to have a relationship, rather it is the relationship.

The question here is whether god exists as an entity outside of people’s heads, and for that claim, we need evidence of a different sort than the evidence for demonstrating to ourselves that we feel a particular emotion.

In Post #86 rpp spoke of his evidence for the existence of God. Does his description of a mystical experience count as credible evidence for others to believe in the existence of God? Obviously not. After all, you’re not convinced are you? And if I were an atheist it would not convince me either. I am not saying that the concept of personal testimony lacks any value (so I appreciate rpp’s comments and therefore I am not criticizing him). However, I will say that rpp has a credible reason for believing in God, even if his experience does not provide evidence that can be credibly shared with others.

(continued)

 

[EricFilmer]

(continued from my last post)

EDIT: For the sake of completeness, I concede that the claim, “People form relationships with others based on emotion” is a claim that requires evidence drawn from the world outside of our heads, but we have a ton of evidence that this is true. Take, for example, the fact that people in the real world do form such relationships, all the time…we can observe them!

The claim, “A supernatural intelligence exists without a body” is of an entirely different order of claim. There’s no observing that one. What we need to do is to determine exactly how it affects the universe (which is what it means to exist) and detect it.

I believe that God affects the universe in ways that are measurable and immeasurable. But the mere presence of evidence is not enough to conclude his existence. For example, let us say that there is a drought and a farmer prays for rain. After he prays, a thunderstorm happens and his crops are saved. So the farmer says, “It was God”, and the fact that the storm happened after his prayer gives him a belief based on the simple principle of cause and effect. But the meteorologist on TV says, “It was weather patterns”, and the meteorologist can likewise cite cause and effect, but from a scientific viewpoint. If God exists and if he, indeed, created the thunderstorm in response to the prayer, then he impacted the physical universe in a measurable way (because the formation of a thunderstorm is measurable). But the explanations of the cause of the thunderstorm are open to debate. If a skeptic wants to go with the meteorologist’s account then obviously he has a rational reason for doing so. But if the farmer wants to keep praying to God then he has a rational reason for doing so as well.

But my point here is that God can be affecting the universe in measurable ways but that does not mean that scientific tools are capable of discerning his involvement. Going back to my example, God could have created the thunderstorm simply by manipulating the weather patterns, so God does not have to miraculously create a thunderstorm under circumstances that science cannot explain.

And let me be clear, I’m not saying that this makes a credible argument for the existence of God, so I am not using it as such. After all, I fully admit that it makes a very weak argument to say, “God’s hand is at work, you just can’t see it.” Even if it is true (and I think that it is), it cannot realistically be demonstrated as a way of convincing a skeptic. If I were an atheist, I certainly would not accept an argument like that.

And with that, I think that it is good to keep in mind that all I’ve been saying in this discussion is to recommend that people accept the limitations of what the scientific method can do. I am not anti-science, but rather someone who believes that both science and philosophy have their place in the quest to know truth. Each can provide answers to certain questions that the others can’t. And that is really all that I have been saying in this discussion.

You seem to be thinking that I am building up to present some sort of proof of God’s existence based on my statements of love. That is not nor has been my plan. Even though the title of this thread is “Atheist conversion”, if you look back, you’ll notice that the only advice I posted in direct response to the thread’s initial topic was to recommend that atheists read C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” (or at least the first part of it). That’s it, and if an atheist does not want to then I have no problem with that. Nor do I think that reading this book is guaranteed to convince anybody of anything. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

I have met atheists who are interested in why Christians believe in an invisible God and claim that a historical person, Jesus, was this God in the flesh. Objectively speaking, those are perfectly valid questions. C.S. Lewis was an atheist who came to believe in the Christian Faith through a rational thought process (which is outlined in the book). Therefore, if an atheist is interested in the Christian perspective, reading this book would not be a waste of his time even if he ends up disagreeing with Lewis’ deductions. In the very least he will understand why a Christian, C.S. Lewis, believed in Christianity.

Everything else I’ve discussed is simply an expression of my opinion that a person who truly wants to discern truth must be open to the various means humans utilize for attaining knowledge, and not simply rely on one or two. And if someone takes my advice on this, I make no predictions as to where their journey for truth will take him.

 

[rpp]

As a matter of curiosity, do you think that atheists who have not be given a mystical experience have any valid reason to believe in Christianity?

Of course. We all have different reasons for finding and ultimately believing the Truth.

Why do you think that “the Lord” gave this experience to you and not to all of the other atheists in the world? Or everyone in the world, for that matter? Why were you in particular singled out? At the very least, why would “The Lord” not give the experience to Richard Dawkins? Having Dr. Dawkins write a book called “Why I Now Believe” would be a stunning event that I’m sure would result in some more “atheist conversion.”

I cannot answer these questions as I cannot see into the Mind of God, nor would I presume to do so. I only know that that is what happened to me. As to how others may view, relate or admit to personal experiences, I am equally unable to address.