INSIGHTS ON ATHEISM

[Carl]

MONARCHY

*The only problem is which god do I believe in? Allah, Zeus, Cthullu, Ra, etc… Pascal assumed that Christianity was correct. What if the norse were correct? You can’t prove they are not.

Yet an ever ‘loving’ god will punish me will eternal torment for making the wrong decision.*

As for Zeus, Ra, Odin, Thor, etc., all those gods and their religions have faded from the historical scene. They were repudiated by their own cults.

*“The only problem …” *

In other words, you’re ready to choose? Well, that’s progress.

I don’t think there can be much doubt that the one we should choose is the one who practices what he preaches. I can’t think of any other “god” who preached all-consuming love and then was consumed by that love on a cross.

The remarks from George Carlin are sleazy cheap shots. If you want to keep a dialogue going with me, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave Carlin out of it.

 

[Carl]

S.J. and SQUIRT

Thank you both for your interesting follow-ups.

I long ago stopped trying to prove the existence of God to atheists simply because an atheist will find nothing compelling about any of the traditional arguments. Pascal’s argument always comes back to haunt them on their deathbeds, not because Pascal produced the argument so much as because the atheist finally begins to realize on his own that the game is up, and he’s not sure if, after all, he won’t be disqualified for having ignored the rules of the game and the One who made the rules…

Lately I have been thinking that God does not give compelling arguments for His existence for the simple reason that he wants our love to be freely given, much as any father wants his child to love him but knows he cannot coerce that love. He can only get love by being a loving parent himself. So the child is allowed to choose whether to love. Free will again. Some children choose not to love truly loving parents. We see that time and again. Some adults, for reasons of their own, choose to ignore a truly loving God.

I’ve said it before in a much earlier post: psychologist Paul Vitz’s book *Faith of the Fatherless * is a fascinating probe into the mind of the atheist.

 

[squirt]

Carl:

S.J. and SQUIRT

Lately I have been thinking that God does not give compelling arguments for His existence for the simple reason that he wants our love to be freely given, much as any father wants his child to love him but knows he cannot coerce that love. He can only get love by being a loving parent himself. So the child is allowed to choose whether to love. Free will again. Some children choose not to love truly loving parents. We see that time and again. Some adults, for reasons of their own, choose to ignore a truly loving God.

Hi Carl,

Nice to meet ya.

Hmmm … most fathers let you know that they are there. One of the main reasons that I was an atheist until I was in my 40s was that I had never had any perceptible sense of God being there. How are you supposed to love a God that you can’t even perceive? Especially in a world of competing gods from various religions?

Atheism does not necessarily stem from any sort of dislike or lack of love of God …

 

[Monarchy]

Carl:

MONARCHY

*The only problem is which god do I believe in? Allah, Zeus, Cthullu, Ra, etc… Pascal assumed that Christianity was correct. What if the norse were correct? You can’t prove they are not.

Yet an ever ‘loving’ god will punish me will eternal torment for making the wrong decision.*

As for Zeus, Ra, Odin, Thor, etc., all those gods and their religions have faded from the historical scene. They were repudiated by their own cults.

So What? That doesn’t prove they don’t exist. And if you are going to be that way, why not Islam, Judaism, Buddism, Hinduism, etc… Agian they have as much proof as xianity

“The only problem …”

In other words, you’re ready to choose? Well, that’s progress.*
I’ll choose one once it’s been proven they exist

I don’t think there can be much doubt that the one we should choose is the one who practices what he preaches. I can’t think of any other “god” who preached all-consuming love and then was consumed by that love on a cross.

That still doesn’t prove he exists, it just says that he is the ‘god’ you find to be the best for you. Also the god of xianity has done such loving things as:

Genocide God murdered every man, woman, and child on earth with the flood, exept for a small handful.

MurderGod killed all the firstborn in egypt. Their crime? Not having lambs blood on the door. Also, god sent two bears to slay 42 children. Their crime? They made fun of Elisha’s bald head.

I’ll bring more later. I have got to go.

The remarks from George Carlin are sleazy cheap shots. If you want to keep a dialogue going with me, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave Carlin out of it.

Fair enough. No more Carlin quotes.

 

[Carl]

SQUIRT

*How are you supposed to love a God that you can’t even perceive? *

Perceive in what sense? In the sense that you and I would perceive each other if we met on the street? This is not how God perceives us, nor is it how we are expected to perceive Him. We simply open our hearts to His love. The more we open our hearts, the more we experience God rather than *perceive * Him. This cannot be explained to an atheist because the atheist closes his heart to God and will not open it, even though God is forever knocking on the door to his heart. There is an old painting, I can’t remember by whom, that depicts Jesus knocking on the door to a man’s house. But there is no latch on the outside. He cannot enter of His own accord. The door must be opened from within. And although God can do all things, He cannot break down the door to a man’s heart.

More free will.

Especially in a world of competing gods from various religions?

Well, all you have to do is shop around. Find the God who preached love above all and proved himself the most loving. That is likely to be the true God.

 

[squirt]

Hi Carl,

In what sense? How about in ‘any’ sense. He gave me one of those ‘skeptical’ brains. For decades, nothing jumped out at me and said anything of what you’re sensing via any means is a loving, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God.

Maybe part of it was my fault. Maybe not. He knew what I would take as being sensed as ‘God.’

I have no idea how God perceives me. He doesn’t have to rely on senses and a finite intellect. I do.

Most atheists that I know have good, loving hearts. And many of them have moral characters that I only dream of having … so I’m not so sure that it’s a matter of having a closed heart. But, I could be wrong.

As for the most likely god, your advice assumes that the searcher is looking for a God who is loving … (yes, I believe it’s true, but it isn’t always all that obvious from the information we have to work with … )

 

[Carl]

*Genocide: God murdered every man, woman, and child on earth with the flood, exept for a small handful.

Murder: God killed all the firstborn in egypt. Their crime? Not having lambs blood on the door. Also, god sent two bears to slay 42 children. Their crime? They made fun of Elisha’s bald head.*

Murderer is not a proper term to apply to God.

Since God takes all our lives sooner or later, by your logic you would have to take the next step and call God the murderer of the human race. But what God has given, it is for God to take away.

Murder is a term proper only to those who kill against God’s will, as Cain murdered Abel out of envy.

If the rest of your arguments are going to be of this type, I think you are moving away from the subject of this thread. You might want to start a thread of your own, maybe something called The Problem of Evil. Such a thread might attract more people to this topic than you will get in this thread. If you decide to do that, let us know. I’ll get over there as fast as I can.

This is my last post today. Will check in with you Sunday night.

Pax vobis cum.
Carl

 

[chemcatholic]

squirt:

Lots of things can be contemplated. That doesn’t necessarily make them so.

Poor word selection on my part I wasn’t trying to describe it as a merely intellectual idea, but instead as an inner unfulfillment that drives us to find “something more” in life. Some people search for it in wealth, some people search for it in helping others, and some people search for it in religion, though these aren’t necessarily the only areas people search. When people search in wealth, they always want more because this fulfillment is not found in wealth. When people search by helping others, they do find part of this fulfillment because God is a loving God that wants us to help those less fortunate than ourselves. And finally, the most fulfillment is to be found in religion, though this still isn’t complete fulfillment since we are created for the purpose of being in God’s presence in heaven.

Do all people acknowledge this inner unfulfillment? No. Do people resist it? Yes. Do people convince themselves that they lead a fulfilling life when deep down they know they don’t? Yes. That’s the result of free will. My $0.02 on that topic.

Peace

 

[chemcatholic]

Monarchy:

And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do

I hate to acknowledge something from George Carlin, but I also hate to let this concept slip away. One of the biggest misconceptions about God that I have found among the few atheists / agnostics that I personally know is that God’s will is arbitrary, when in fact it is not. I don’t know what the thoughts of the atheists / agnostics on this thread are, but I’m fairly confident that at least one of you feels similarly. So, let’s look at the ten commandments, though not in numerical order:

“You shall not kill”
“You shall not commit adultery”
“You shall not steal”
“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”

It should be pretty obvious why these are for our own benefit, especially since three of them are against the law in our country (false witness while under oath, anyway). And while adultery is not illegal in our country, I find it hard to believe that anybody would want to find out their spouse is cheating on them (though some people do appear to be indifferent about it )

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ***, nor anything else that belongs to him.”

This seems sort of random, right? Well, if you think about it, covetous inclinations can lead you to steal, commit adultery, or even kill in order to obtain that which you desire. Think of these commandments as a preemptive strike.

“Honor your father and your mother, that you may have a long life in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you.”

This is teaching the importance of the family and the respect we as people should have for our parents, who raise us and provide for us. Unfortunately, not all parents live up to their end of the bargain. However, when that happens, we should be the better person.

“Remember to keep holy the sabbath day…In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord has blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”

Would you honestly like it if we had seven day work weeks? The sabbath is intended as a day of rest for us so we can be rejuvenated and prepare ourselves for another six days of work. The Jews eventually distorted this and took it to the extreme with laws that did things like limit the number of steps you could take away from your house, etc. But just because it has been distorted before doesn’t invalidate the original intention.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished him who takes his name in vain.”

Is it really that absurd that our Creator would want us to respect his name?

“I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, inflicting punishment for their fathers’ wickedness on the children of those who hate me, down to the third and fourth generation; but bestowing mercy down to the thousandth generation, on the children of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

I can see where this one is hard to accept. The concept of a loving but jealous God is confusing. Consider marriage. Each spouse loves the other and (theoretically) wants what is best for the other. But, if one spouse cheats, then the other one feels wronged and becomes jealous. Remember in the creation story how Adam was created in the image of God? Just as we desire the faithful love of a spouse, so God desires our faithful love for Him.

I’m not expecting this to convince anybody of God’s existance, but I do hope it helps some of you to think about God’s commands in a different way.

Peace

 

[trogiah]

Carl:

This subject has interested me for many years. I believe that at the heart of modern paganism and our present moral malaise is the worship of Nogod.

Let’s hear your favorite quotes or original thoughts on the subject.
Hear are two of my favorites followed by one of my own.

After following this thread for some time I would like to present the following for consideration:

I believe there is a different god that contributes significantly to modern paganism. That god is Reason.

Rene Decarte (A contemporary of Pascal) once said "Cogito Ergo Sum. (I think, therefore I am) and there provided those who worship reason with a clear and simple creed.

Compare Decarte’s words with Moses heard coming from the burning bush. God didn’t need to think in order to be. He simply was.

None of this is a "Proof "of God’s existence. But let my suggest a question in place of “Does God exist?”

Does existence exist? Is reality real? Most of us would have to
take those for granted or we would forget to breath.

Now look at Scripture as a long series of individuals and groups of people seeking to come to grips with reality. Reality is what Moses heard speaking from the burning bush and what all the people of Israel heard give the ten commandments. (At which point they all had enough and told Moses to do the rest of the listening for them.)

Reality is what the prophets heard in whispers and dreams as they tried to deal with their own times.

Reality is what Jesus knew, the way an only and most beloved son knows his own father.

In following Jesus’s example and listening to his words we can learn to know Reality in the same way.

Getting back to my orginal point, proofs of God’s existence are no longer meaningful to me. “God” is the name I give to existence and I believe that is how the authors of Scripture used God’s name.

Rational “proofs” of God’s existence do more to contribute to the worship of Reason than they do the worship of God.

The choice before us is not either to live by Faith or by Reason. Rather, Reason is simply one more thing we may choose to put our faith in.

Hope this wasn’t to far off the thread

-Jim

 

[squirt]

Hi Jim,

Interesting post. ‘Reason’ is important. Obsession with one model of reasoning as found in Descartes’ obsession with a mechanical explanation of everything can sure take things off track.

It’s funny how Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” phrase seems to be often quoted in terms of a ‘turning point’ in the obsession with reason. He definitely had a big impact on philosophical thought, but he sure wasn’t the first Christian to say anything along those lines.

Anybody wanna guess who originally wrote this? (It was pointed out to Descartes by one of his contemporaries, Arnaud. And it wasn’t originally written in English.)):

-You, who wish to know yourself, do you know at least that you are?

• I know it.

• How do you know it?

• I don’t know.

• Are you a thing that is simple, or that is composed?

• I don’t know.

• Do you know whether you are moving or not?

• I don’t know.

-But do you know that you think?

• Yes, I know that.

-Consequently, that you think at least is true.

• It is true.

• You know therefore that you are, that you live and that you think.

 

[S.J]

Squirt,

Please share how you went from being an atheist to a beleiver. Would love to hear about it.

Also, not to give Carlin too much publicity, I still feel compelled to comment on some of his perceptions of religion.

As I posted earlier, God is Spirirt - not the little old man with the gray beard Carlin thinks we believe in.

Secondly, I get so tired of the “all they want is our money” diatribe. We have free will - we do not give at gunpoint. It is our duty to give to the Church, however. Our parish has costs - utilities, salaries, insurance, etc. Also, we give so that God’s will can be done on earth. The millions of Catholics in this world give generously in terms of charity and alleviating suffering around the world. Huminatarian atheists should understand this well.

 

[squirt]

S.J.:

Squirt,

Please share how you went from being an atheist to a beleiver. Would love to hear about it.

Once somebody identifies the Christian thinker who did the “cogito ergo sum” thing before Descartes did, maybe I’ll say something about it.

(Stalling tactic … trying to decide how much if anything I want to divulge about my personal journey … )

 

[S.J]

squirt:

Once somebody identifies the Christian thinker who did the “cogito ergo sum” thing before Descartes did, maybe I’ll say something about it.

(Stalling tactic … trying to decide how much if anything I want to divulge about my personal journey … )

We don’t know you

You don’t know us

Hope you change your mind at some point - I have a gut feeling it will be edge of the seat type stuff.

 

[Carl]

Many atheists ask what caused God to exist. As if God was a part of the chain of causality He had created.

Atheists freely admit that we cannot know why the universe exists. This can be a fatal admission. If it is reasonable for an inscrutable universe to exist, why can it not be reasonable for an inscrutable God to exist?

The atheist will never admit that the universe has any meaning to it. He might find meaning everywhere in the daily flow of his activities, but for some odd reason the universe itself is exempt from the search for meaning. Now the inherent contradiction of this view is that if the universe is meaningless, everything in it must be meaningless.

Such a drab view of existence Sartre and other atheists of the twentieth century were quick to exploit. They were not fooled by the false optimism of Bertrand Russell and other notable atheists of the Victorian era who thought that science and technology would do more for the world than religion had ever done. In this, Sartre was the most honest of atheists for freely admitting that a life without God makes of life itself a hell with No Exit.

 

[squirt]

Carl:

Many atheists ask what caused God to exist. As if God was a part of the chain of causality He had created.

Actually, if we’re looking at a first cause argument, they ask why it makes more sense to posit ‘God’ as the ‘uncaused cause.’ Why does the ‘uncaused cause’ have to have a personality and a plan and love of any sort?

Atheists freely admit that we cannot know why the universe exists.

In some sense, so do many theists. Kant, for example. At least in terms of knowledge obtained via ‘pure reason.’

The atheist will never admit that the universe has any meaning to it. He might find meaning everywhere in the daily flow of his activities, but for some odd reason the universe itself is exempt from the search for meaning. Now the inherent contradiction of this view is that if the universe is meaningless, everything in it must be meaningless.

That depends on from/out of what ‘meaning’ and ‘meaninglessness’ flow. From a materialist (philosophically speaking, not ‘consumerisn’ point of view), that isn’t necessarily so. “Unweaving the Rainbow” by Dawkins provides a nice, modern (but not espcecially philosophical) perspective.

Such a drab view of existence Sartre and other atheists of the twentieth century were quick to exploit. They were not fooled by the false optimism of Bertrand Russell and other notable atheists of the Victorian era who thought that science and technology would do more for the world than religion had ever done. In this, Sartre was the most honest of atheists for freely admitting that a life without God makes of life itself a hell with No Exit.

A happy atheist ain’t gonna buy into Sartre.

 

[AnAtheist]

Smack Daddy:

I think deep,deep,deep,deep down all atheists do believe in God. After all, believing in a higher being is part of being human. It’s convenient to not believe in God and all the consequences that go with that belief.

I can assure you, deep,deep,deep,deep down I do NOT believe in gods. Really, despite of what is written in Romans.

 

[AnAtheist]

Carl:

Hitler was an atheist. So was Stalin. So was Mao. These men were shameless bigots against all religions.

And that prooves what? All atheists are psychopathic mass-murders? All atheists are evil? Atheism is wrong? You cannot conclude general statements from three examples.

So what about the popes calling christianity to the crusades, thus starting some decent killing? Does their bad example make all christians evil?

 

[squirt]

AnAtheist:

I can assure you, deep,deep,deep,deep down I do NOT believe in gods. Really, despite of what is written in Romans.

That makes you … an atheist

Welcome.

It’s amazing the number of theists who think that atheists actually believe in gods of some sort.

 

[AnAtheist]

Captain Napalm:

Based on my own life, I think many atheists reject God because of what they might refer to as “unanswered prayers.” I wanted this, I wanted that, I wanted God to play by my rules. I prayed to God and didn’t get what I wanted. So, I rejected him and that was it. Now, I know that God answers all prayers; sometimes we don’t like the answers.

Maybe that’s why many believers become atheists by unanswered prayers:
Matthew 21:22 - And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.