Atheists - a question

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Irish_Becca

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What do you say to atheists who believe God is a human invention? Thank you so much.
 
I would say that it is much more parisimonous to believe in that than to say that God exists. Suffering exists in the world, and Christianity has evolved to exploit that by offering comfort and eternal salvation to palliate humanity. Of course, some realize that their is no basis in reality for this comfort, and conclude that Christianity is merely a human construction.
 
I just ask them questions until their heads explode.

Your example, I would start asking them “which human invented the Catholic God?” With any luck they would conceed that it was no single human, but a group of people. No group of people but a nation. No nation but a series of nations. No series of nations but something that transends time and nationality (i.e. several nations simultaniously throughout history.) Then i’d ask them what that “something” could be. :angel1:

Sure there are plenty of (non-super)natural explanations but none of them are as smugly jingoistic as “religion is a human invention.”

Or perhaps they’ll teach me something, and then I’ll Sunday morning free. 😉
 
Read “Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Tacelli. Very good logic based arguments for the existence of God. Also, atheists can say that, and even make a case for it, but they will never ever be able to prove it. God bless the limits of science.🙂
 
Steadfast_love said:
Sure there are plenty of (non-super)natural explanations but none of them are as smugly jingoistic as “religion is a human invention.”
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I’m not sure what do you mean by “smugly jingoistic” in this context. I’d be grateful if you would explain in other words, because I can’t relate to it at all.

Religion (and specifically God) as human invention may be a simplification but it is essentially what I believe as an atheist.

Thanks in advance.🙂
 
celluloid

*Religion (and specifically God) as human invention may be a simplification but it is essentially what I believe as an atheist.
*
I’m glad you qualified that as “believe,” since you cannot know it for a fact. By your own logic, Nogod is also a human invention.
 
Its the simple things that point well to a kind Creator.
Like why is it that the two most essential things that we must consume constantly are designed to be almost unnoticable.
Air and water, odourless, tasteless and colourless.
Picture yourself with your low threshold for patience becoming so easily bored with breathing banana flavoured air and drinking raspberry ice-cream flavoured water for the rest of your long long life…
 
I_Leatherman said:
Its the simple things that point well to a kind Creator.
Like why is it that the two most essential things that we must consume constantly are designed to be almost unnoticable.
Air and water, odourless, tasteless and colourless.
Picture yourself with your low threshold for patience becoming so easily bored with breathing banana flavoured air and drinking raspberry ice-cream flavoured water for the rest of your long long life…
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Remember that our perspection of taste and smell is a product of evolution; not an accurate reflection on the properties of molecules.

I could also point out things that are most certainly not the product of a “kind Creator” (e.g. Down syndrome, HIV, etc.)
 
celluloid, I have a question for you but first some background information. A member of my family is about to “marry” an atheist. I put that word in quotes because they are going to go to a courthouse and sign a paper stating that they are married. At any rate, for the sake of this question, please pretend that you are the atheist who has come onto my scene. Suppose that I asked you to dinner. What if after the dinner when you were preparing to leave you thanked me for the dinner? Another “what if” what if I said “oh don’t thank me, the dinner just popped onto the table not too long before you arrived.” What if I began to explain that there was some dust on the tablecloth a few years ago and we decided not to wash it but just watch to see what the dust would turn into and lo and behold, it turned into dinner. What would you say to that celluloid?

Donna
 
ribozyme said:
Remember that our perspection of taste and smell is a product of evolution; not an accurate reflection on the properties of molecules.

.)
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You cannot prove that we “evolved” taste and smell as advantageous attributes. I’ll thank you to remember that evolution is still a theory and one with many holes. For example, do species evolve necessarily? If so, why is the coelocanth today essentially the same as its 4 million year old ancestor we have preserved in fossils?
The problem with atheists is they have no more proof than theists, but act like they do.
Anyway, what is your point, that hydrogen may in fact taste like banana, but we evolved in such a way as to make it seem neutral?
 
Originally I wrote this message to celluloid but I would be interested in a reply from any or all atheists.

I have a question for you but first some background information. A member of my family is about to “marry” an atheist. I put that word in quotes because they are going to go to a courthouse and sign a paper stating that they are married. At any rate, for the sake of this question, please pretend that you are the atheist who has come onto my scene. Suppose that I asked you to dinner. What if after the dinner when you were preparing to leave you thanked me for the dinner? Another “what if” what if I said “oh don’t thank me, the dinner just popped onto the table not too long before you arrived.” What if I began to explain that there was some dust on the tablecloth a few years ago and we decided not to wash it but just watch to see what the dust would turn into and lo and behold, it turned into dinner. What would you say to that celluloid?

Donna
 
dafalax said:
You cannot prove that we “evolved” taste and smell as advantageous attributes. I’ll thank you to remember that evolution is still a theory and one with many holes. For example, do species evolve necessarily? If so, why is the coelocanth today essentially the same as its 4 million year old ancestor we have preserved in fossils?
The problem with atheists is they have no more proof than theists, but act like they do.
Anyway, what is your point, that hydrogen may in fact taste like banana, but we evolved in such a way as to make it seem neutral?
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Well, yes, I do not see anything advantageous (in the context of Darwinian evolution) in making every breathe we take smells pleasant.

I do not know much about paleontology, maybe the coelocanth was well adapted its niche for millions of years.
 
SteakNPotatoes

As in, “I believe I’ll have another beer.” I know that for a fact.

You’re not the only one.
 
Irish_Becca said:
What do you say to atheists who believe God is a human invention? Thank you so much.
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It very much depends on your atheist. Virtually all of them beleve that God was a human invention, but the sophistication of the belief varies a lot.

Generally you find that, attendant on the belief that God was a human invention, the athiest believes all sots of nonsense. Such as that the Church is an evil organisation that represses women and gays - sometimes replace with workers and black people. Or that the whole thing was based on Mithras. Or that the Da Vnci code is a work of serious scholarship.

That’s not true of all atheists. You’d have to be pretty lucky to meet a really philosophically-educated atheist, but such do exist. With the rustic type of atheist, the best approach is to let him spout his nonsense, until it become obvious to any intellignet observer that he is spouting utter nonsense. With the cleverer sort, you can show that whilst non-Christian relgions are usually quite easily refuted, Christianity is different. When scholarship brngs its razor to bear, Christianty alone survves with all its primary claims intact. That is why the academy s currently split, between atheists and Christians.

Unless you yourself are a great phlosopher you are unlikely to come up wth a knockdown arguement to settle the issue one way or another, so leave the atheist agreeing that his position is maybe tenable, but isn’t overwhelmingly strong.

If you want more on answers to common atheist arguments, download my book.
 
Malcolm_McLean said:
It very much depends on your atheist. Virtually all of them beleve that God was a human invention, but the sophistication of the belief varies a lot.

Generally you find that, attendant on the belief that God was a human invention, the athiest believes all sots of nonsense. Such as that the Church is an evil organisation that represses women and gays - sometimes replace with workers and black people. Or that the whole thing was based on Mithras. Or that the Da Vnci code is a work of serious scholarship.

That’s not true of all atheists. You’d have to be pretty lucky to meet a really philosophically-educated atheist, but such do exist. With the rustic type of atheist, the best approach is to let him spout his nonsense, until it become obvious to any intellignet observer that he is spouting utter nonsense. With the cleverer sort, you can show that whilst non-Christian relgions are usually quite easily refuted, Christianity is different. When scholarship brngs its razor to bear, Christianty alone survves with all its primary claims intact. That is why the academy s currently split, between atheists and Christians.

Unless you yourself are a great phlosopher you are unlikely to come up wth a knockdown arguement to settle the issue one way or another, so leave the atheist agreeing that his position is maybe tenable, but isn’t overwhelmingly strong.

If you want more on answers to common atheist arguments, download my book.
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Remember, that a lot of people are atheists because they want to be, and whatever they believe is likely to have an irrational grounding, if any grounding at all. A friend of mine, constantly reminds me that she doesn’t believe in the afterlife, but as soon as I reply with something like, “Do you believe in justice?” then she ends the conversation.
 
Gilbert_Keith said:
celluloid

*Religion (and specifically God) as human invention may be a simplification but it is essentially what I believe as an atheist.
*
I’m glad you qualified that as “believe,” since you cannot know it for a fact. By your own logic, Nogod is also a human invention.
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Actually, the general principle of “nogod” did not require invention, just discovery of a contradiction.

We know that when two people genuinely and profoundly disagree, there’s at least one of them that is mistaken or deluded in some way. From that, we know for a fact that people may believe things that aren’t true.

Atheists need only to apply the above off-the-shelf concept to the question theistic beliefs origins.

That people mistakenly believe in something that does not exist is something, in principle, that we have all experienced. We have numerous examples of false beliefs in everyday life. So atheism does not require anything beyond our own experience to be true.

This doesn’t prove atheism is true at all, only that atheism’s concept requirements consist of bare skepticism. Even before the theory of evolution came along, there were atheists and skeptics.

But there are no proven gods by which the Christian can compare the Christian God and be able to say, "here’s an example of some real existing gods and my Christian God is a lot like a typical god. Theism requires the proven, undeniable existence of at least one god to establish it as a conservative view.

Yet the atheist can say “here are some examples of false beliefs and imaginary creatures and I think that the Christian God is one of them.”

See the difference?

I think it also shows that in this sense, atheism is a positive belief (but a conservative belief) and not simply a denial. If you ask the question “What is God?” instead of “Does God exist?”
you have atheists applying the “imaginary being theory” while theists use the “powerful being theory” as their respective answers to the question.
 
celluloid

It’s true that religions present different concepts of God. Some of them are wildly contradictory. There have also been several wildly contradictory theories of evolution. Would you say for that reason that God does not exist and evolution didn’t happen?

How do you know one of those Gods does not exist? You don’t. There isn’t any way to prove atheism true. That’s why it’s a belief sytem, rather than a fact. Generally speaking, people believe what it suits them to believe. Most people believe in God. Some people do not. Given the relative rarity of atheism, I think the more democratic idea is the more superior idea. The mass of mankind want God to exist. Possibly that is because God created us to **want **Him. The few who do not want God to exist seem to have issues, if that’s the case. Knowledge of, and resolution of those issues might turn such people back toward God. It’s happened many times. In my own case, I had issues and denied God for many years. Once those issues were resolved, I found God again.

So it becomes the lifelong task of atheists to visit places like Catholic Answers and keep looking for the God they deep down want, even though they still have issues with Him.
 
Question: Did man invent God?

Answer: No, God invented Man.
 
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