I’m an atheist. My Catholic father thinks I’ll go to heaven

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A child of that kind of dysfunctional family as I have observed just never had any understanding of what or who God was. She had religious instruction in the first grade, but it did not make any real impression on her. God was just a story to her. In a challenging life situation she had more anxiety about whether or not people she loved would leave her. She just couldn’t imagine a real live God somewhere up there in the clouds.

It was truly a miracle that somehow God helped her find Him.
 
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WillPhillips said:
Again, I was really hoping to get some insight into my original question. But just as atheists can’t prove there is no god, neither can believers disprove other gods. We believe what we have evidence for (there’s not much choice in the matter). If you found evidence for Vishnu, you would believe. But you lack evidence, so you don’t. You do have evidence (ie sufficient justification) for Yahweh, so you believe.
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Arguments For God’s Existence:

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/gods-existence.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/design.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/first-cause.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/conscience.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/history.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/pascals-wager.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/christ-divinity.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/resurrection-evidence.htm
http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm
 
I’m amazed people still use pascal’s wager. It is a notoriously bad argument.
 
I’m getting through them but I dont know why you bothered with the pascals wager one because it just undermines the source credibility.

There are noted problems with all these arguments. I believe that there are no proofs of Gods existence, it is a matter of Faith.
 
William Lane Craig and Robert Spitzer look at proofs using cosmology as well as philosophy. Astronomy and cosmology have convinced some of the most brilliant physicists, if they weren’t already believers.
 
Very brief rapid fire, based on my own discussions on this matter and a simple objective look at the logical structure of the arguments, keeping in mind that I do ultimately believe in God.

Design: God is specific and complex and by this logic would need to be designed. Also argument from ignorance fallacy.
First cause: nothing says the first cause would need to be a person, and could therefore be some non-god state.
Conscience: argument from ignorance fallacy
History: the best argument in my opinion but has to compete with other religions who also have interesting historical facts, and the early church is unfortunately fairly clouded historically.
Desire: premise that everything we desire has some object in reality isn’t true. Humans are capable of abstraction.
Christ divinity aka liar lunatic lord: 4th option “legend” that a lot of what is said about him could be biased and innacurate. Essentially you’re saying that because people who thought he was God wrote about him as if he was God, that means he must be God.
 
Well, you are agnostic because agnostics say that we can’t know-they don’t have an opinion, really. Atheists say there is no God. Since you claim that you don’t reject any god, then you’re not atheist.
 
I have not been actually reading this thread. 😃 But it seems like it is far more reasonable to believe there is a God, and it takes more “faith” to assert that there is not. 🤔

Flying off for Mackerel, lads. May be back. (just to warn everyone)
 
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Oh and Pascals wager:
A) belief doesn’t work that way, you cant just choose to believe something is true in exchange for an award.
B) it applies just as much for any other religion.
 
WillPhillips said:
…Do you know any prominent Catholics who are sympathetic to, and write about, universalism?
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Read “Sacra Pagina: Revelation” by Irish theologian Rev. Father Wilfrid John Harrington, OP.
He studied Theology in Rome and Biblical studies in Jerusalem at the Ecole Biblique. He lectures in scripture at the Priory Institute, at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, and at the Church of Ireland Theological College, all of which are in Dublin. He also teaches in summer schools in the United States.
 
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Oh ok. I imagine there are some vile places on the internet with that title. I haven’t seen the red pill group you’re talking about, though I have seen internet sites with red pill in the title that are not vile .
It’s sad, yes, a lot of the red pill expressions today are coming from men who have been hurt by feminism and are lonely or angry. I guess we’re just getting a look at the damage feminism has left behind.

God bless.
 
The Red Pill Religion podcast is about the new atheism and Christianity. There are Catholic contributors, the gentleman who casts as “Max Kolbe” and well known author John C Wright are my two favorites.
 
I don’t understand how some people can be atheist, it’s so unlogical. Everything around you doesn’t show up without someone creating it, so why do you believe so about the whole world? Just looking at how the body of an animal or a human person works is so incredible and so amazing and complicated that all of this cannot be just a cosmic accident.

Anyhow, Jesus says, as I quote from the Bible from John 14,6: "Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Practically this means that anyone who doesn´t believe in Christ who have been given the possibility to do so, won´t be able to go to Heaven.

Your Catholic father cannot grant you any sort of salvation. I think he tried to do so out of love for you, but it´s not good that he tried to say so. Whether you choose to follow Christ in this life you are given or not is essential. Your choice during your life affects your whole eternity. This is why choosing Christ in our lives are so incredibly important for us as Christians.

God loves you and wants you. He wants to save all people, and He definitely wants to save you. He is constantly hoping for you to get to know Him and believe in Him.

I will pray for you tonight. If you may have any questions I could possibly help you with then just send me a message 🙂
 
William Lane Craig as well as Catholic priests are also at youtube.
 
Kima said:
I don’t understand how some people can be atheist, it’s so unlogical. Everything around you doesn’t show up without someone creating it, so why do you believe so about the whole world?
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I dont understand this line of reasoning. Based just on observation, the sun wasn’t created by a person, the trees and weather and ocean aren’t created by people. Everything in nature appears to arise naturally without a person making it so. So it is not a hard jump to make that the universe has some impersonal origin.
 
God isn’t a human person, except in the sense that Jesus came to Earth as a human but He was still God so the sun and all of creation were created not by a human but by a divine being. God is spirit. He is someone who is the first cause of every living thing.

Also, as Kima, was saying, everything is so ordered and in such perfect categories and systems someone way beyond our understanding had to create our world
 
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Order doesnt need to be created by a person, and wouldn’t God then also need to be created by a person? It’s not a logical conclusion, you should see why people can disbelieve it.

The problem is with the premise: “everything with the appearance of order was made that way by a person”. But there are many counterexamples. Crystals appear ordered but are so because of physical chemistry based in the properties of their molecules. The solar system appears ordered but is so because of gravity. Now you could say that gravity and physical properties are the way they are because of God but that is assuming your conclusion.

Just pointing out that the argument is problematic and why people dont believe it.
 
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So in every chain there has to be a beginning. Somewhere the “buck has to stop”. There is something that exists in and of itself, the necessary being. The first cause. That is God.
 
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