Faith X Intellectual Honesty

[lylebr]

I was talking to my agnostic friend about his visions on atheism, and he said: “There is no Evidence for God, therefore I am an agnostic, it is a matter of intellectual honesty and i shouldnt believe in something that would comfort me without evidence, therefore I have no guilty, and if someday I met god, i would say that i didnt believe on him, because I was thinking to be honest the whole time”.

How do I solve this problem? How do I show that Faith can be conciliated with Intellectual Honesty? How do I show that Christians are not being Intellectualy Dishonests and faith is coherent?

 

[Bravo_6]

This simple link should help?It’s not too much in depth and has been broken down to it’s simpler form in order for everyone and anyone to understand.

catholicpamphlets.net/pamphlets/THE%20EXISTENCE%20OF%20GOD.pdf

 

[InJesusItrust]

Here a problem: to believe in God you must experience the divine. To experience the divine you most likely have to pray. To pray you must take a leap of faith, allowing yourself to have hope is something than cannot be rationally justified or proven. If you are too concerned about never being made a fool of you will never pray. You have to risk being a fool for the sake of discovering the truth. What does it matter being a fool if you have the truth? It’s just self-pride or pride for what other people will think.

One cannot be a disinterested skeptic in matters such as the meaning of life. Many people read or here testimonies of Christians who pray, seek, and find that God is real. If the only way to find the truth is to actively seek it rather than expect it to come to you and make itself apparent, it is true intellectual honesty to take a leap of faith. God is no respecter of men.

 

[R_C]

There is plenty of evidence, so much that the Church teaches that it is fully possible to know God through reason. Many atheists and agnostics have.

The great Galileo Galilei, whose intellectual honesty has always been recognized, wrote in the 17th Century:

The material and the spiritual world have the same origin from the Creator. The values of science cannot in any way substitute those of revealed truth. If we truly lived in the age of science, this truth would be available to all.

Euclides, the great mathematician, wrote around the 300 b.C.:

The natural laws are nothing other than God’s mathematical thoughts.

Louis Pasteur, one of the greatest minds of the 19th Century, said:

A little bit of science drives away from God. A lot of science draws us right back to Him.

Intellectual honesty is a wonderful thing, but humbleness would also be nice before those who have demonstrated that having a great mind and believing in God was fully possible.

By some estimates, there are between 2 and 2.2 billion Christians in the world. That is without counting the other religions, which would bring the total amount of humans who believe in the existence of God to 5.8 billion over an approximate total of 6.9 billion. Someone who truly searches for the truth will have to acknowledge that there must be some evidence, some pretty good evidence, if 85% of the human population believes in God, though in different ways.

 

[Cor_Ignis]

Interesting. At this point of my life, if I stopped believing in God I would actually feel intellectually dishonest. I’m not saying that I want to, but I can’t stop believing in God by now, considering all the blessings and stuff He has done for me. Yeah, I could easily go with skeptic explanations for all the times I’ve experienced the hand of God in my life (some of them I would call miracles), but deep in myself I would not feel comfortable in the very least with my way of thinking.

Also, there actually IS evidence for the existence of God. The best evidence for God you can give to an skeptic is your own life (and your prayers; pray for his conversion). I used to be as agnostic as your friend, but by experimenting the good testimony of a friend, and seeing how coherent his believes were with his way of living, I ended accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Also, he almost never argued with me over religious stuff, he was never good a it, he instead lived as a good Christian to get me convinced about the truth.

 

[Julian0404]

Have your friend listen to the discussion by Peter Kreeft on YOU TUBE entitled “Rationality for Reason” and just request he provide an honest defense against each of the proofs of GOD that Mr Kreeft expounds upon within his presentation. Being a comfortably honest atheist, I am sure he will have no difficulty in so doing. But then ask him, of all the proofs, which “one” was the most difficult to explain away with “honesty”, and for the one he provides, then in constant prayer ask GOD to place into his heart the undeniable truth for the proof which most troubled your friends honesty and thus turn him over to GOD.

 

[Bobby_Jim]

People get very caught up in wanting evidence or reasons to believe in God, or to have faith. This will sound very touchy-feely, but at its heart, faith in God is about having a relationship. No relationship - human or divine - will go very far if one party is always stuck looking for evidence of the others’ feelings (or existence). When a relationship is stuck at that point, it will never progress. No evidence is ever good enough. This is the tragedy of King Lear.

Relationships are ultimately not rational. That is not to say “irrational”. But at some level having a relationship requires faith in the other. Reason alone doesn’t lead you to love someone.

 

[lylebr]

I mean, some people i know often ask to me: “Do u really believe the body of christ turn into bread at the holy mass?”
“You are catholic? Do you mean that you believe in miracles, and exorcism and in the devil? Wtf?”

I only have to say: “Yes, i belive by faith”

And it sounds to the others like i am dumb, and my faith is blind. I dont know why God made his religion so hard to defend to the others. In the Bible, on 1 Peter 3:15 says that we must be prepared to give the reason of our hope to the others, but how can i do that if it is always too hard?

 

[thistle]

I was talking to my agnostic friend about his visions on atheism, and he said: “There is no Evidence for God, therefore I am an agnostic, it is a matter of intellectual honesty and i shouldnt believe in something that would comfort me without evidence, therefore I have no guilty, and if someday I met god, i would say that i didnt believe on him, because I was thinking to be honest the whole time”.

How do I solve this problem? How do I show that Faith can be conciliated with Intellectual Honesty? How do I show that Christians are not being Intellectualy Dishonests and faith is coherent?

peterkreeft.com/topics/gods-existence.htm
peterkreeft.com/topics/design.htm
peterkreeft.com/topics/first-cause.htm
peterkreeft.com/topics/conscience.htm
peterkreeft.com/topics/history.htm
peterkreeft.com/topics/pascals-wager.htm
peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm

 

[NonServiam]

Intellectual honesty is a wonderful thing, but humbleness would also be nice before those who have demonstrated that having a great mind and believing in God was fully possible.

Argument from authority. The fact that most intelligent people in history have been theists – especially during times when practically everyone publicly professed to be a theist – tells us nothing about whether their beliefs were correct or not. The claims about the existence of gods stand or fall on their own merits.

Someone who truly searches for the truth will have to acknowledge that there must be some evidence, some pretty good evidence, if 85% of the human population believes in God, though in different ways.

This is a dangerous assumption, bordering on an argumentum ad populum. That most people believe a claim tells us nothing about whether the claim is true. It definitely wouldn’t be the first time that most people are wrong about something.

And by the way, those 85% don’t believe in the same god, not by a long shot. You might try to claim it’s all the same “God, though in different ways,” but a great deal of that 85% would object to that idea.

This 85% is comprised of people who believe in vastly different gods, defined in vastly different ways, so it’s not even the consensus you seem to think it is.

 

[NonServiam]

Yeah, I could easily go with skeptic explanations for all the times I’ve experienced the hand of God in my life (some of them I would call miracles), but deep in myself I would not feel comfortable in the very least with my way of thinking.

How comfortable you feel with a line of thinking is in no way an indication of how accurate it is.

The best evidence for God you can give to an skeptic is your own life (and your prayers; pray for his conversion).

And I assume you consider Muslims and Hindus who lead good lives to be equally good evidence for the Islamic and Hindu religions?

I used to be as agnostic as your friend, but by experimenting the good testimony of a friend, and seeing how coherent his believes were with his way of living, I ended accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

That someone’s beliefs match the way he lives tells you nothing about whether the beliefs are true.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

St. Thomas Aquinas’ 5 proofs for God helped me be intellectually honest. Same with Jesus (he’s either a liar, lunatic, or God, or simply not real). But since there is so much evidence Jesus is real and of all the good he did, it’s hard to say he wasn’t God. Not to mention the Resurrection. And God’s love is important too.

 

[fnr]

To be faithful requires intellectual honesty. Plain and simple. “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth” is the title of a 1996 article from Pope John Paul II.

You can’t prove the existence of God in Epicurean terms, but that doesn’t mean you can prove the nonexistence of God (that’s a logical error). The scientific method is not applicable to once-only events, which is what miracles are. The soul is not a physical thing, so it’s not detectable by physical measurements

I won’t dispute any observation of the world or any theory that explains those observations.

 

[Nita]

I was talking to my agnostic friend about his visions on atheism, and he said: “There is no Evidence for God, therefore I am an agnostic, it is a matter of intellectual honesty and i shouldnt believe in something that would comfort me without evidence, therefore I have no guilty, and if someday I met god, i would say that i didnt believe on him, because I was thinking to be honest the whole time”.

I think there’s way less “evidence” for the non-existence of God!

Ask your friend to define “evidence”. Then ask him to provide that kind of evidence to prove there is no God.

 

[Nita]

I mean, some people i know often ask to me: “Do u really believe the body of christ turn into bread at the holy mass?”

First, a correction here. We don’t believe Jesus’ body is turned into bread; rather, it’s the opposite. We believe the bread (“substance” but not the “accidents”) is turned into the “substance” His body. (Thus “transubstantiation”)

“You are catholic? Do you mean that you believe in miracles, and exorcism and in the devil? Wtf?”

I only have to say: “Yes, i belive by faith”

And it sounds to the others like i am dumb, and my faith is blind. I dont know why God made his religion so hard to defend to the others. In the Bible, on 1 Peter 3:15 says that we must be prepared to give the reason of our hope to the others, but how can i do that if it is always too hard?

Defending and explaining one’s faith is a little different from accepting it on faith. To explain and defend it when challenged requires more than just knowing what the doctrine/s is. It involves learning the reasoning behind the doctrine, the scriptural support, and support from early Church teaching. Sometimes it involves learning the history of why and how the doctrine came to be defined – eg. heresies that arose and thus forced the Church to officially define a dogma. It involves understanding the terminology used in the definition (the Church’s definition of the particular terms). Etc.

Now, you don’t have to wait until you have completed a study of all that before you can start! But you should equip yourself with some resources so you can study up on a doctrine someone is challenging. And you don’t have to answer them immediately if you don’t know the answer. Tell them you’ll check it out and get back to them later.

If you haven’t read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, you should read that. (Anyone who wants to share Catholic teaching with others should.)
An excellent resource book, often mentioned on this forum, is “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma” by Dr. Ludwig Ott. As noted, this is a resource book - not one you’d need to sit down and read from cover to cover.