Has anyone ever been convinced by the 'proofs' of God's existence?

[tonyrey]

tonyrey

**There is no valid reason to believe an atheist is necessarily evil… **

Ah … but …

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Their deeds are loathsome and corrupt;
not one does what is good.The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
To see if even one is wise, if even one seeks God. All have gone astray; all alike are perverse. Not one does what is good, not even one. Will these evildoers never learn?
They devour my people as they devour bread; they do not call upon the LORD. They have good reason, then, to fear; God is with the company of the just. They would crush the hopes of the poor, but the poor have the LORD as their refuge. Psalm 14

A sincere atheist need not be a fool! In our secular society dominated by materialistic propaganda even people with moral integrity are led astray. Some atheists put so-called Christians to shame…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

tonyrey

Some atheists put so-called Christians to shame…

No doubt, some Christians will go to hell along with atheists. But what is there in atheism that will save an atheist?

“Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” Matthew 10:32-33

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned.” Mark 16:16

We all do good things from time to time. We all do bad things from time to time.

But atheism is a bad thing that a man does all the time … unless he repents, along with the Christian, of his sins. How do you get to heaven without repenting of your sins? And how do you repent of your sins if you refuse to acknowledge Him?

 

[tonyrey]

Some atheists put so-called Christians to shame…

No doubt, some Christians will go to hell along with atheists. But what is there in atheism that will save an atheist?

Sincerity! In this life unbelief is not always culpable because we are not infallible!

“Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.” Matthew 10:32-33

“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned.” Mark 16:16

If their disbelief is wilful…

We all do good things from time to time. We all do bad things from time to time.

But atheism is a bad thing that a man does all the time … unless he repents, along with the Christian, of his sins.

Atheism is a state of mind which is very often accompanied by a virtuous life and love for others.

How do you get to heaven without repenting of your sins?

You don’t! But we all have that opportunity after we die - when **everyone **knows the truth.

And how do you repent of your sins if you refuse to acknowledge Him?

You don’t - if you recognise Him!

 

[Arizona_Mike]

There is no valid reason to believe an atheist is necessarily evil…

No, but according to a study (by an atheist, no less) that was released yesterday, the majority of people polled (religious people that is, i.e., a majority of all people) rate atheists as just about as trustworthy as rapists, and said atheists are the group that least agrees with their vision for the country and the group they’d most disapprove of their child marrying:

life.nationalpost.com/2011/11/30/religious-people-do-not-believe-in-atheists-study/

Religious people asked to rate an atheist or a gay men on trustworthiness found the typical gay man to be far more trustworthy than an atheist.

Interestingly, this visceral distrust of atheists is found even in less religious and more liberal countries:

*The second study recruited 105 UBC undergrads —they purposely targeted a more liberal sample from a less-religious nation — to test whether distrust of atheists is more pronounced than distrust of other groups, including Muslims. The students read a description of an untrustworthy man who pretended to leave insurance information after backing his car into a parked vehicle and were asked to say whether it was more likely the man was either a Christian, Muslim, rapist or an atheist. People were far more likely to say he was either an atheist or a rapist and not part of a religious group. They did not significantly differentiate atheists from rapists, something Mr. Gervais found disconcerting.

“It’s pretty shocking that we get the same magnitude of distrust towards atheists simply because they don’t believe [in God],” said the researcher, who is himself an atheist. “With rapists, they’re distrusted because they rape people. Atheists are viewed as sort of a moral wild card.”*

This is in line with earlier studies, that found that people would vote for a wide variety of minorities before they would vote for an atheist for president.

I know that many atheists can act in a moral and ethical manner and are not de facto evil people, and there are people who self-identify as Christian people who can be pretty dang evil. You and I may be in a minority in believing that, however, tony rey.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Thanks for the warm hellos everyone.
tonyrey, I don’t think PermanentMarker was saying all atheists are evil, just the “New Atheist” variety. I agree with this in the limited sense that they make no attempt to take on serious arguments for theism, using fanatical sects and third-rate thinkers as their strawmen. In this way, they mislead those looking for compelling reasons to believe or disbelieve. I’m not sure he’s putting sincere atheist thinkers like Quentin Smith or your average Joe atheists in that camp.

I’d never thought of it this way. Thank you for clarifying a concept that’s always been somewhat nebulous in my mind. And thank you for the welcome to the Church.
I’m not sure I qualified as a “new atheist”. After all, I was an atheist for about 13 years, long before Dawkins started “philosophizing”. But let’s define our terms. As Feser, John Haught (God and the New Atheism), and Keith Ward (Is Religion Dangerous?) point out, the NA’s are just the Old Atheists with worse arguments and an absurd predilection for arguments of the following type:

1. If evolution is true, there is no God.
2. Evolution is true.
   :. There is no God.
   Obviously, premise one is a bit debatable, but you won’t find many arguments for it by the NA’s. Another defining feature of the NA’s: they don’t tend to take their arguments to logical conclusions. I’ll let John Haught argue this point for me:
   What are the consequences of the end of religion? Dawkins, et. al, think things would be about the same as they are now, just with fewer suicide bombings and crusades. Sartre and Nietzsche knew that the upheaval of the metaphysical foundation that has sustained every culture that has ever existed would be drastic, maybe disastrous. They just thought it was intellectually honest.
   So no, I’ve never put much stock in the Dawkins crowd. If you have friends who are in the thrall of these folks, I’d recommend the books I mentioned above. Alvin Plantinga is good too, and a lot of his responses to atheistic naturalism are available online. If they aren’t yet willing/ready to read the opposition, encourage them to at least read stuff by smarter atheists. Nietzsche was a better philosopher than Dawkins, and I doubt your friend will want to follow his atheist premises to Nietzsche’s logical and evil conclusions. Remember: your friend thinks he is just being reasonable. His worldview is just yours, without all the hocus pocus. He is wrong. If he’s in the NA camp, he is, philosophically speaking, a scientific materialist (or naturalist). Remind him that he actually embraces (however reflexively) a well-formed philosophy that has counterarguments and internal difficulties to account for.
   Once your friend has seen that there are serious theists poking serious holes in his naturalist worldview, he needs an answer to the following question: why would any thinking person believe in God? This makes no sense to him. He’s not in denial about God’s existence. He’s not willfully ignorant, just ignorant. Now’s the time to hit him with something like Keith Ward’s God, A Guide for the Perplexed, N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian, Mere Christianity (I have to say, this one didn’t “take” for me at this stage in the journey. It has taken for countless others though), and of course, Chesterton.
   Your friend thinks that the history of the Church is a horror-show of oppression, crusading, and superstition. His views are influenced by simple narratives concocted by Protestants and anti-religion Enlightenment thinkers trying to rally the masses. No serious historian thinks in these terms. Thomas Woods would be a good antidote. Christopher Dawson is great too. Fr. John McCloskey highly recommends Warren Carroll’s four-volume Christendom series, though I haven’t had a chance to look at it. Your friend has a “science uber alles” mentality, so point out all the Jesuit contributions to science and the fact that Georges LeMaitre, who proposed the expansion of the universe and the big bang theory and was a peer of Einstein’s, was a Monsignor.
   Top it off with some real-life accounts by some real-life Catholics. Let them see that the faith is a living thing. I’m a lit nerd, so I’d give him essays, letters, and occasional writings by Flannery O’Connor (my favorite, but then I’m also a Southern boy), Evelyn Waugh, and Shusaku Endo. John Zmirak over at CrisisMag is one of my personal favorites.
   Most of these are popular works. Your friend is reading pop-atheism, so I assume these books are on par with his desired reading level, but if he’s an academic type, you could go with stuff like Thomas Molnar’s Theists and Atheists: a Typology of Non-Belief for philosophy or any Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. To end, I’ll mention one of my absolute favorites that is only tangentially related, but sure helped me- Thomas Fleming’s The Morality of Everyday Life. Sorry for being so long-winded, but I think you can safely say you’ve done your part to sew the seeds if you follow this game plan. Hope this helps.

Good post, thanks!

 

[Trevor_Stamm]

Sincerity! In this life unbelief is not always culpable because we are not infallible!

The Church has infallibly declared that no one outside the Church is saved. Pretaining to invincibly ignorant people, they can be saved as long as they meet three conditions. One of which is automatically violated by acknowledging one’s self as an atheist. “…but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart…”

Why is this issue popping up all around the forum lately?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

If I were an atheist now, I don’t think any of the traditional proofs would convince me, because they are not airtight arguments for an atheist, who can poke holes in every one of them to suit himself.

It’s not a proof, but I think that Pascal’s Wager Argument is the only** logical **argument that should have any appeal at all to the atheist. That is why so many atheists (and theists who have been great sinners) do have deathbed conversions. The logic of Pascal’s argument, so far as it concerns our own immortal destiny, is unassailable by all except the most obtuse and suicidal. Jean Paul Sartre and Antony Flew are the most notable examples of atheists who turned toward God not long before they died. We will never know how many other famous atheists also turned toward God, but it was never made public by them or their survivors.