Do Atheists have a reasonable doubt?

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lelinator said:
Perhaps it’s because I can be more confrontational, which tends to make people more unwavering in their beliefs.
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I think you have a theory about things that makes sense to you, but not necessarily to everyone else. You have stated things that are clearly absurd in my mind, but they don’t seem to be absurd to you.

In my mind you are not being faithful to the principles of reason, or first principles, and it is my belief that you don’t think you have to, and it could also be true that you don’t really understand the method.
 
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Pattylt said:
One of the reasons I call myself agnostic rather than atheist is that I feel I am always agnostic but my atheism varies from day to day. I’ve even had moments where I felt I could almost believe…then it flys away upon further thought
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You have to want to believe.
 
PickyPicky said:
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Techno2000:
You have to want to believe
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Why should one want to believe?
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Because, that’s your will, God doesn’t force you to go to Heaven.
 
You should want to believe because your nature can only be fulfilled in God and the good of you comes from God, but that is not always easy to see. It’s all to easy to want to be your own God.
 
But you’d have to believe in order to believe that. Bit of a Catch 22. Odd business.
 
RATIONALISM

AND

UNBELIEF

– From The Mystical Revelations of Maria Valtorta –

†

INTRODUCTION
JESUS:

See, My soul: There are few things that I condemn as severely as this rationalism which rapes and desecrates and kills Faith – I say Faith with a capital, in order to say true Faith, absolute, regal Faith. I condemn it as My assassin. It is this very rationalism which kills Me in hearts and which prepares and has prepared very sad times for the Church and the world.

I have cursed other things. But none will I curse as this. It has been the seed from which have come other poisonous doctrines, and others, and still others. It has been the treachery which opens the door to the enemy. It has in fact opened the doors to Satan who has never reigned as much as now, since rationalism reigns.

But it is said: ‘When the Son of man will come, He will not find faith in hearts’. Therefore rationalism does its work. I will do Mine.

Blessed are those who, as they close the door to sin and the other passions, know how to close the doors of their secret temple in the face of the science which denies, and to live, alone with the Alone Who is All, to the very last.

Truly I say to you that I will clasp to My Heart the unfortunate man who has committed a human crime and repented of it, provided he has always admitted that I can do all. But I will turn the face of a Judge to those who, on the basis of a doctrinaire human science, deny the supernatural in the manifestations which the Father might want Me to give.

A man born deaf cannot hear. True? One who has his eardrums broken by a mishap has no sense of hearing. True? Only I can give them again their hearing with the touch of My Hands. But how can I give hearing to a deaf spirit if this spirit does not let itself be touched by Me?..

One of the greatest sorrows I have is that of seeing how rationalism has infiltrated into hearts, even into hearts that are said to be Mine. It would be useless to let the other priests share in such a gift [of His revelations to Valtorta --Trans.]. It is just among them that one finds those who, while preaching Me and My passed miracles, deny My Power, as if I could no longer be the Christ capable still of speaking to souls who languish from lack of My Word; as if they admit My present incapacity for a miracle and the power of grace in a heart.
continue-
http://www.bardstown.com/~brchrys/Ratunlsm.html
 
PickyPicky said:
But you’d have to believe in order to believe that. Bit of a Catch 22.
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Not really. I really wanted to believe because i realised that my nature and the object of my senses could not full-fill my dignity as a person. What ever value i did sense was fleeting because it wasn’t truly objective, it had no concrete standard. It was a fantasy, and the idea that my value was what ever the whim or desire of the minds around me did not represent to me a real objective dignity or value. But i had to have that experience of existential deprivation. I had to sense that lack of value that i knew couldn’t be fulfilled by people or nature. I had to be the kind of person that would care about this enough to seek a solution. But i was already somebody who was very interested in understanding the object of my experience and what it means to be a person rather than just indulging my experience. We can anaesthetise ourselves to the effects of that deprivation by seeking sensory or physical stimulus or natural goods that we find in nature, but it’s all fleeting and like a drug we will eventually become numb to the original effect. After that it’s just denial because man cannot live by bread alone. We are not just animals.

Most people are lying if they say that they do not prefer a state of affairs where their value is determined by their own will and that they wouldn’t rather it be the case that the world was whatever they made of it. They want to take the good of this world and be masters of it. They want to believe that they can full-fill their own existence. This is what we mean by being your own God; it is the act of determining your own sense of existential worth and living your life according to your own preferences as much as nature will allow, instead of yielding to a divine command or determiner of worth for our existence. This is basically Nietzsche’s superman theory. Anybody that truly doesn’t believe in God is in effect trying to be Nietzsche’s superman, unless they are delusional.
 
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Been there, did that. Tried for many years to regain my belief. Tried many others hoping one would stick. I just am incapable of believing. It’s me, not the particular faiths. Finally gave up and accepted it and I’m now happy and at peace with it.

I’m not sure why some believers think all atheists just outright rejected God belief. Many atheists I know went through great trauma when they began to lose belief in God. It is rarely an overnight process and I don’t wish it upon anyone. It was terrible, traumatic and accompanied by great sorrow and loss.
 
Pattylt said:
Been there, did that. Tried for many years to regain my belief. Tried many others hoping one would stick. I just am incapable of believing. It’s me, not the particular faiths. Finally gave up and accepted it and I’m now happy and at peace with it.
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Why did you want to believe?
 
IWantGod said:
Why did you want to believe?
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Because I very much was happy and content in my faith. I loved God. I loved faith and never wanted to lose it. To this day, I don’t know what happened. Nothing bad, no “mad at God” scenario. I just began questioning my belief and God and saw that I was losing those beliefs and I sure didn’t want to! It was about a four year process with much discussion, prayer, devotional readings, everything and anything I could do to hold on to a shred of belief. Then I began in ernest to figure out if I had the wrong God. Investigated many beliefs and just couldn’t believe them, either. I so wanted to believe again. I wanted that assurance of heaven, having God as my guide, all of it. Finally, began studying the historical critical method and secular books about religion. At that point I was agnostic and still am.

The one thing that could have brought me back in an instant was a personal experience of the divine and that never happened for me. It would still probably bring me back to faith.
 
Pattylt said:
Because I very much was happy and content in my faith. I loved God. I loved faith and never wanted to lose it. To this day, I don’t know what happened. Nothing bad, no “mad at God” scenario. I just began questioning my belief and God and saw that I was losing those beliefs and I sure didn’t want to! It was about a four year process with much discussion, prayer, devotional readings, everything and anything I could do to hold on to a shred of belief.
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That’s very odd. There must have been a cause. Something must have lead you to question it if you really did love God that much.
 
Pattylt said:
The one thing that could have brought me back in an instant was a personal experience of the divine and that never happened for me. It would still probably bring me back to faith.
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Yes…
My Story:

When I was about 15, I told my Dad one day, that no one should be forced to go to(Mass) Church (which he did force me to do) and that it should be ones free will, and I caused a big scene in front of my house about this one day, and he reluctantly agreed. From that point on, until I was about 27 (I’m 53 now) I didn’t go to Church anymore. Then one day while bored and kinda depressed I was laying on my bed flipping the TV channels, and I happen upon a TV preacher who was talking about Jesus.

For some reason I liked what he was saying, and agreed in my mind that what he was saying was true, then it …“Happen”… it’s hard to describe the feeling. It was like some kind of incredible g-force pinned me to the bed, and at the same time it seemed as if my spirit came out of my body and levitated a few feet above my flesh body and instantly… Love and Holiness rushed into me.

It felt like my spirit exploded into particles of love and Holiness and every little particle was saturated with Love and Holiness too, I was incinerated in God’s Love !!! This feeling slowly subsided, and I came back to my senses, and with the absolute knowledge that there is a God, and he loves sinners like me.

To make a long story short, a few month later after this experience I stumble upon my Dad’s Pieta prayer Book, I took to it like a fish to water, and have been going to Church ever since .
 
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Pattylt said:
The one thing that could have brought me back in an instant was a personal experience of the divine and that never happened for me. It would still probably bring me back to faith.
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Well i pray by the blood of Jesus Christ that your faith is restored and that he grants the gift of a miracle, a personal encounter with the love of God.

In Jesus name i pray. God bless.
 
Techno2000 said:
But, will you be that way on your deathbed ?
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Yes, I will. If God exists, He knows what I went through and why I am where I am. I accept all the conclusions I’ve reached as a fallible human being. I could do no other.
 
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