Catholics and William Lane Craig

[Charlemagne_II]

Spock

*And don’t say that I did not pray long enough or hard enough or honestly enough. *

You did not.

A real relationship with God never fails. You merely conned yourself into thinking you had a relationship. A con always fails, sooner or later.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ronnie
*
You want so bad to be seen as an intellectual here that your arguments sometimes seem to just wander. If you ARE a Catholic then you should know that when people have a pang of conscience for having done wrong and they attribute that feeling of guilt to having betrayed God’s moral order, that they are correct, not that they are some automaton conditioned by philosophy or sacred writings. That’s more how an atheist would explain the feeling of conscience. But a religious person, if he did something like con a little old lady out of her savings, he would then feel the guilt associated with that action as having betrayed God’s moral code, it would be one of the many different ways men experience God, and if you’re a Catholic you might say it’s a better knowledge of the existence of God than some dry Kalam Argument or Cosmological Argument. *

Good point.

I have begun to think there are some people in this thread who call themselves Catholic, but are really not. This is dishonesty of the first order. These same people routinely attack Catholics for presenting traditional Catholic philosophy and theology. At this point I am not willing to say who they are, but I think Catholic posters here might begin to look for a pattern of being aggressively attacked by supposedly fellow Catholics. That doesn’t mean Catholics can’t disagree, but when traditional Catholic thought is aggressively attacked, the radar screen should be turned on.

 

[Spock]

You did not.

The word which would describe my answer would be filtered out by the system. It starts with “bull”.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Spock

*The word which would describe my answer would be filtered out by the system. It starts with “bull”. *

And what it ends with is still in your mouth?

 

[Betterave]

I have begun to think there are some people in this thread who call themselves Catholic, but are really not. This is dishonesty of the first order. These same people routinely attack Catholics for presenting traditional Catholic philosophy and theology. At this point I am not willing to say who they are, but I think Catholic posters here might begin to look for a pattern of being aggressively attacked by supposedly fellow Catholics. That doesn’t mean Catholics can’t disagree, but when traditional Catholic thought is aggressively attacked, the radar screen should be turned on.

Of course that’s true, there are plenty of Catholics that are stupid and don’t care about the truth or about being reasonable, and who in fact hate and persecute the Church. But MOM2’s argument was hardly absurd or even unreasonable. He deserves a real reply. I would think that Aquinas himself would disagree with Plantinga’s (ronnie’s) argument.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Betterave
*
I would think that Aquinas himself would disagree with Plantinga’s (ronnie’s) argument. *

On what grounds would he disagree?

 

[Betterave]

Betterave
*
I would think that Aquinas himself would disagree with Plantinga’s (ronnie’s) argument. *

On what grounds would he disagree?

See ST I, qu. 2. art. 1: Whether the existence of God is self-evident?

newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm

Therefore I say that this proposition, “God exists,” of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject, because God is His own existence as will be hereafter shown (3, 4). Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature — namely, by effects.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Dawkins has refuse to debate Craig for the following reason:

youtube.com/watch?v=JFamS4RGE_A&feature=related

Reason sounds lame to me. Craig has soundly defeated nearly every atheist he has debated, including Christopher Hitchens. We know what Dawkins is really afraid of … that a professional philosopher will show him up for a shallow thinker?

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Of course that’s true, there are plenty of Catholics that are stupid and don’t care about the truth or about being reasonable, and who in fact hate and persecute the Church. But MOM2’s argument was hardly absurd or even unreasonable. He deserves a real reply. I would think that Aquinas himself would disagree with Plantinga’s (ronnie’s) argument.

I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to assume what Aquinas would think, but it actually may be a fairly good bet he’d agree with me (and the thousands of saints who had never even heard of a cosmological or teleological argument yet ***knew *God). As many know Aquinas never did finish his Summa Theologica, and on December 6, 1273 while attending Mass Aquinas fell into a profound mystical rapture. Later when urged by Chrurch officials on continue his work on the Summa, Aquinas responded back while referencing his recent mystical experience “I can do no more; such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems as straw”

sounds like a pretty powerful affirmation of the power of direct experience over abstract philosophical arguments.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Dawkins has refuse to debate Craig for the following reason:

youtube.com/watch?v=JFamS4RGE_A&feature=related

Reason sounds lame to me. Craig has soundly defeated nearly every atheist he has debated, including Christopher Hitchens. We know what Dawkins is really afraid of … that a professional philosopher will show him up for a shallow thinker?

That is one thing I do LOVE about Craig, he’s shown Dawkins for the chicken he really is.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Ronnie
*
That is one thing I do LOVE about Craig, he’s shown Dawkins for the chicken he really is.*

The one thing I really admire about Hitchens is that he will take on anybody. That he took on Craig showed that he was not a chicken. The man accepted defeat graciously, so far as I could tell. I hope he defeats the cancer!

 

[Pieman333272]

You say that billions of people “experience” God. In my eyes, they think that they experience God. They cannot give me a method how to emulate their experiences. I am open to the experiment, I am willing to try.

We Catholics cannot give you a method to copy their experiences because they are completely personal. Can I give you a method to emulate my friendship with my friends, or my attraction to a particular girl? No, and you can’t do it either. Mysticism and spirituality are along those lines.

That path has been tried and it was unsuccessful. And don’t say that I did not pray long enough or hard enough or honestly enough.

Were you a theist then or still an atheist just using prayer as a test? I can comment more after you answer this.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

ronnie
*
You want so bad to be seen as an intellectual here that your arguments sometimes seem to just wander. If you ARE a Catholic then you should know that when people have a pang of conscience for having done wrong and they attribute that feeling of guilt to having betrayed God’s moral order, that they are correct, not that they are some automaton conditioned by philosophy or sacred writings. That’s more how an atheist would explain the feeling of conscience. But a religious person, if he did something like con a little old lady out of her savings, he would then feel the guilt associated with that action as having betrayed God’s moral code, it would be one of the many different ways men experience God, and if you’re a Catholic you might say it’s a better knowledge of the existence of God than some dry Kalam Argument or Cosmological Argument. *

Good point.

I have begun to think there are some people in this thread who call themselves Catholic, but are really not. This is dishonesty of the first order. These same people routinely attack Catholics for presenting traditional Catholic philosophy and theology. At this point I am not willing to say who they are, but I think Catholic posters here might begin to look for a pattern of being aggressively attacked by supposedly fellow Catholics. That doesn’t mean Catholics can’t disagree, but when traditional Catholic thought is aggressively attacked, the radar screen should be turned on.

I certainly didn’t think that you would be unwise enough to participate in an undeserved ad-hominem attack toward myself. Making a conspiracy against somebody just because they made a philosophical argument that cannot be reasonably refuted, is dishonest. People should be honest enough to answer my argument directly or admit that they are in error or do not know; better that than make weak arguments from authority or tradition and then claim that I am not a Catholic just because I blew those arguments out of the sky. My Catholicity is besides the point.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

and then claim that I am not a Catholic just because I blew those arguments out of the sky. My Catholicity is besides the point.

Lol, I have to say, with every week here you continue to destroy the stereotype that ONLY athiest are arrogant with an overinflated opinion of themselves

I keep thinking of those insolently proud words of the Road Runner’s nemisis; “Wile E Coyote . . . Suuuuper Genious!”

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

An odd turn of events here. I started off this this thread somewhat critical of William Lane Craig and the analytical approach to “proving” God exist.

So I remembered I had a little booklet written by Craig laying around in the basement titled “God Are You There? Five Reasons God Exist” and I figured I’d thumb through it. Well what do know! After going through all the cosmological arguments and kalam arguments and the rest that I think are overrated, Craig comes to the “Fifth Reason” we know there is a God, and he ends making the same points I was making in this thread. Part of Craig’s “Fifth Reason” below;

FIFTH REASON
God Can Be Immediately Known and Experienced
This isn’t really an argument for God’s existence; rather it’s the claim
that we can know that God exists wholly apart from arguments simply
by immediately experiencing Him. This was the way people described
in the Bible knew God, as Professor John Hick explains:

God was known to them as a dynamic will interacting with their own
wills, a sheer given reality, as inescapably to be reckoned with as destructive
storm and life-giving sunshine. . . . They did not think of God
as an inferred entity but as an experienced reality. . . . To them God
was not a proposition completing a syllogism, or an idea adopted by the
mind, but the experiential reality which gave significance to their lives

For these people, God was not inferred to be the best explanation
of their religious experience and so they believed in Him; rather in
their religious experience they came to know God directly.

Philosophers call beliefs like this “properly basic beliefs.” They
aren’t based on some other beliefs; rather they are part of the foundation
of a person’s system of beliefs. Other properly basic beliefs
would be the belief in the reality of the past, the existence of the
external world, and the presence of other minds like your own. When
you think about it, none of these beliefs can be proved. How could
you prove that the world was not created five minutes ago with builtin
appearances of age, such as food in our stomachs from the breakfasts
we never really ate and memory traces in our brains of events
we never really experienced? How could you prove that you are not
a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated with electrodes by
some mad scientist and made to believe that you are now reading
this book? How could you prove that other people are not really automata
who exhibit all the external behavior of persons with minds,
when in reality they are soulless, robot-like entities?​

In the same way, belief in God is for those who seek Him a properly
basic belief grounded in our experience of God, as we discern
Him in nature, conscience, and other means.
and then at the end he adds

Now if, through experiencing God, we can know in a properly basic
way that God exists, then there’s a real danger that proofs for
God could actually distract one’s attention from God Himself. If
you’re sincerely seeking God, God will make His existence evident
to you. The Bible promises, “Draw near to God and He will draw
near to you” (James 4.8). We mustn’t so concentrate on the proofs
for God that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our
own heart. For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality
in their lives.

I guess I was wrong, I agree with Craig, especially on reason number five

 

[MindOverMatter2]

way that God exists, then there’s a real danger that proofs for
God could actually distract one’s attention from God Himself. If
you’re sincerely seeking God, God will make His existence evident
to you. The Bible promises, “Draw near to God and He will draw
near to you” (James 4.8). We mustn’t so concentrate on the proofs
for God that we fail to hear the inner voice of God speaking to our
own heart. For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality
in their lives.

I guess I was wrong, I agree with Craig, especially on reason number five

The above assumes that philosophical argument is not one of the means by which God draws near to human beings.

There are plenty of other people from other religions who make the same claim about religious experience; they claim some kind of mystical knowledge. If you are to tell the difference between mere impulse emotion & deception, and a genuine experience of God, one requires reason.

 

[Spock]

Were you a theist then or still an atheist just using prayer as a test? I can comment more after you answer this.

I was a believer as a child, as honest as only a child can be. I engaged in sincere and honest prayers. Nothing ever happened. Later I became a “lukewarm” believer, and prayed. There were no results.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

The above assumes that philosophical argument is not one of the means by which God draws near to human beings.

There are plenty of other people from other religions who make the same claim about religious experience; they claim some kind of mystical knowledge. If you are to tell the difference between mere impulse emotion & deception, and a genuine experience of God, one requires reason.

OK, I asked you this earlier in the thread and you dodged answering it by insulting me and then running away, but since you’ve brought it up a second time I’m going to ask you again. You say “plenty of other people from other religions who make the same claim about religious experience”. So why don’t you tell us which of your vaunted philosophical arguments doesn’t fall under that same paradigm. Do any of those arguments you’re so fond of (the cosmological, teleological, kalam, ontological, and all the rest) verify that Christianity is true while showing Islam, Deism, or New Age religion are not?

We’ll cue the music from Double Jeopardy while we wait

 

[Pieman333272]

I was a believer as a child, as honest as only a child can be. I engaged in sincere and honest prayers. Nothing ever happened. Later I became a “lukewarm” believer, and prayed. There were no results.

Honestly, I’m the same way - not once as a mystical or supernatural phenomena occurred to me even when I pray. I still do it, because I believe in God and all, but I’ve never had any of that stuff happen to me.

So, I’ve come to think that God makes our souls each “spiritual” in different ways. For some of them, its effortless to meditate until you see a vision of Christ. For me, I think feeling God is just the peace of mind I get, and my interest in reading and studying scriptures and theology and religion.

The only explanation I can offer, and I mean absolutely no offence to you when I say this, is that you were asking for a type of thing which God didn’t plan to give you - perhaps he decided to show himself in a different, (seemingly) non-supernatural way, and you rejected that. Or perhaps he would all in due time, but you weren’t patient enough. Just my thoughts. It could be some other reason, or maybe you’re right, or maybe there is a God but we can’t understand his reasons for not answering you.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

OK, I asked you this earlier in the thread and you dodged answering it by insulting me and then running away, but since you’ve brought it up a second time I’m going to ask you again. You say “plenty of other people from other religions who make the same claim about religious experience”. So why don’t you tell us which of your vaunted philosophical arguments doesn’t fall under that same paradigm. Do any of those arguments you’re so fond of (the cosmological, teleological, kalam, ontological, and all the rest) verify that Christianity is true while showing Islam, Deism, or New Age religion are not?

We’ll cue the music from Double Jeopardy while we wait

First of all deism usually is a positive claim about Gods involvement with his creation. But it does not follow from a first cause argument that God does not communicate with his creation. There is an epistemological form of deism that claims that while we can know that some kind of intelligent being created the universe, we cannot know whether or not that such a being cares about its creation. I disagree. However I already admitted that I cannot prove that Jesus is God; at least I don’t know how to with absolute certainty. However, Islam, Judaism and Christianity worship the same God, at least in terms of Gods attributes; what God is as opposed what God is not. The role of cosmological arguments is not to prove specific religious practices, but rather its about proving the existence of a being whose “ontological attributes” are known by Christianity Islam and Judaism through tradition and scripture. Now while, I haven’t proven that Christianity is true revelation, it can be proven that the general ontological attributes of God as understood by those three religions exist. This is very important to Christianity and Christian intellectuals who believe that God gave them a brain for a reason. That other religions may claim God as there own is irrelevant. It follows quite obviously that once you prove that such attributes exist, there are certain religions or revelations that are more likely to be true than others. More importantly, the Abraham religion from which Christianity and Islam branch out are more likely to be true than other religions once you analyse properly the ontological nature of God. Also no argument is meant to be taken singularly. Arguments for the historicity of Jesus and how his true nature is revealed and is consistent with revelation in scripture is also important. Once you add it all up, you end up with picture that looks very Christian.

But you wouldn’t want anybody with a weak faith to know about that, its absurd; and true Christians just know with out any evidence, and thus they are more better and more moral than beings who require rational insight!

The devil is laughing at us.