Is reason really the reason for unbelief?

[BrianH]

Isn’t this the nature of the world we live in? 15%(roughly) of the world is Protestant/Orthodox… wondering how people cannot see what is so obvious to them. 18% of the world is Catholic …wondering, what is wrong with the rest of the world? So it goes on…truth…appears to be unconvincing, from all perspectives, to others who think differently.
BrianH

 

[joseph_caiphas]

BrianH:

Isn’t this the nature of the world we live in? 15%(roughly) of the world is Protestant/Orthodox… wondering how people cannot see what is so obvious to them. 18% of the world is Catholic …wondering, what is wrong with the rest of the world? So it goes on…truth…appears to be unconvincing, from all perspectives, to others who think differently.
BrianH

To say that your version of truth is right is exactly why atheists fail to understand you. I know that’s what you believe, and I’m not going to stop you from beliveing, but the second you try and convert me, I get defensive. Not because I have a reluctance towards God or a supernatural creature (I think it would be more reassuring for there to be an afterlife), but I know through my reasoning, that no God could exist in anything but an optimists view. I believe that Christian morals are apt, just not where their strengths lie.

It’s not that atheists are all close-minded pessimists, it’s just that they feel like they are taking the material universe for what it is. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. No hell, I can live with that in mind.

I’m not going to try and convert anyone here with my beliefs but suffice to say I have gained them after many years of being intimately involved in the Catholic Church and I believe I understands it’s workings as much as you have.

Not that I am ruling out a major “Conversion” for me in the future, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

 

[Like]

joseph caiphas:

To say that your version of truth is right is exactly why atheists fail to understand you. I know that’s what you believe, and I’m not going to stop you from beliveing, but the second you try and convert me, I get defensive. Not because I have a reluctance towards God or a supernatural creature (I think it would be more reassuring for there to be an afterlife), but I know through my reasoning, that no God could exist in anything but an optimists view. I believe that Christian morals are apt, just not where their strengths lie.

It’s not that atheists are all close-minded pessimists, it’s just that they feel like they are taking the material universe for what it is. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. No hell, I can live with that in mind.

I’m not going to try and convert anyone here with my beliefs but suffice to say I have gained them after many years of being intimately involved in the Catholic Church and I believe I understands it’s workings as much as you have.

Not that I am ruling out a major “Conversion” for me in the future, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I don’t think you really believe this, JMHO & I think you are here search for the truth.
But like I said, it’s just MO.

 

[joseph_caiphas]

Like:

I don’t think you really believe this, JMHO & I think you are here search for the truth.
But like I said, it’s just MO.

In a way you are right. But I’m not really finding much to be honest. No one seems to like answering my questions and you are all so strict and upstanding in your faith, something which I could never be.

But in a different way, these ar emy beliefs, whether infantile or contemporary, they are mine and mine alone.

 

[BrianH]

joseph caiphas:

To say that your version of truth is right is exactly why atheists fail to understand you. I know that’s what you believe, and I’m not going to stop you from beliveing, but the second you try and convert me, I get defensive. Not because I have a reluctance towards God or a supernatural creature (I think it would be more reassuring for there to be an afterlife), but I know through my reasoning, that no God could exist in anything but an optimists view. I believe that Christian morals are apt, just not where their strengths lie.

It’s not that atheists are all close-minded pessimists, it’s just that they feel like they are taking the material universe for what it is. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. No hell, I can live with that in mind.

I’m not going to try and convert anyone here with my beliefs but suffice to say I have gained them after many years of being intimately involved in the Catholic Church and I believe I understands it’s workings as much as you have.

Not that I am ruling out a major “Conversion” for me in the future, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I think you would have understood my point better if I had put “truth”, that is my fault…and would have enabled you to understand that I appreciate your skepticism

 

[Della]

joseph caiphas:

To say that your version of truth is right is exactly why atheists fail to understand you. I know that’s what you believe, and I’m not going to stop you from beliveing, but the second you try and convert me, I get defensive. Not because I have a reluctance towards God or a supernatural creature (I think it would be more reassuring for there to be an afterlife), but I know through my reasoning, that no God could exist in anything but an optimists view. I believe that Christian morals are apt, just not where their strengths lie.

It’s not that atheists are all close-minded pessimists, it’s just that they feel like they are taking the material universe for what it is. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. No hell, I can live with that in mind.

I’m not going to try and convert anyone here with my beliefs but suffice to say I have gained them after many years of being intimately involved in the Catholic Church and I believe I understands it’s workings as much as you have.

Not that I am ruling out a major “Conversion” for me in the future, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

And I would say you have the right to believe whatever you want, of course. We really aren’t discussing that issue. What we are discussing is the person who will not believe anything put before them, no matter the evidence, simply because they do not want to believe. And the question that brings forward is–is that the right attitude to have when one is claiming (no matter who he is or what he believes) to be seeking for the truth?

As to why you in particular have come to believe that only an optimist can believe in God is yet another issue for another thread. I will say, though, that I tend to be a very pessimistic person (as my dh will testify) who believes solely because belief is the basis for all we know. It allows us to function in the world, whereas constant doubt about everything would make it impossible. This tells me that belief is better than doubt, but it doesn’t, consequently tell me that I must believe everything anyone says is true. OTOH, I believe a good many things on the authority of others because they are reliable or have the authority, as proven by history, to do so.

 

[Della]

BrianH:

Isn’t this the nature of the world we live in? 15%(roughly) of the world is Protestant/Orthodox… wondering how people cannot see what is so obvious to them. 18% of the world is Catholic …wondering, what is wrong with the rest of the world? So it goes on…truth…appears to be unconvincing, from all perspectives, to others who think differently.
BrianH

Considering the Orthodox are nearly identical in belief to Catholicism I wouldn’t classify them along with Protestants. They are merely in schism not in protest against the Catholic Church.

And as to yours, mine, or our “truth” proving that no one can really know the truth (which is truly your position if you think about it) this is what G. K. Chesterton had to say:

No fallacy has led modern people a madder dance than that transparent fallacy that because a certain superlative is applied everywhere it cannot be applied anywhere. Because each schoolboy says that his father is the richest man in the town it does not follow that there is no richest man in the town. Because six women claim the biggest baby it does not prove that there is no biggest baby. Because six religions claim to have the real truth it does not prove that there is no real truth, though millions of mild sceptics seem really to think that it does. (Daily News, Jan. 15, 1910)

 

[Della]

joseph caiphas:

In a way you are right. But I’m not really finding much to be honest. No one seems to like answering my questions and you are all so strict and upstanding in your faith, something which I could never be.

I don’t know what you mean about “not really finding much to be honest.” If you mean that because Catholics won’t admit that what the Church teaches could be wrong, I’d say that that hardly makes us not honest–it only means that we actually believe what our Church teaches, which is a virtue not a vice.

And as to us being “all so strict and upstanding in [our] faith, something which [you claim you] could never be” doesn’t at all mean that this is true. You are no doubt a strict observer of of many laws and rules, but you simply don’t think about it. For example, I imagine you stop at red stoplights. Not because you have a mystical inclination to observe this ritual every time you see the color red, but because you know it is the law of the land and that not doing so might have very serious and immediate consequences. It is the same for keeping the rules and regs of the Church. The consequences may not be as immediate or obvious but they are just as certain and it is the law of God.

But in a different way, these ar emy beliefs, whether infantile or contemporary, they are mine and mine alone.

At the risk of offending you, so what? The fact that they are yours in no way makes them ipso facto good–not even necessarily good for you. What is always good for everyone everyplace is what is true no matter if we believe it or not.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

scriabin:

EnterBowser- I believe that faith goes *beyond * reason; which doesn’t necessarily make it *contrary * to reason. Does that seem unreasonable to you?

Do you mean that faith operates by resolving disputes beyond the scope of reason? That is, if we want to know whether A or ~A, and reason entails neither A nor ~A, faith can help us resolve the issue - and give us knowledge that either A or ~A?

 

[kp1]

EnterTheBowser:

At the moment, I’m happy with the conclusion that athiesm is a rational position, while theism is not. To tell the truth, trying to justify reason - to win an outside perspective as it were - is something I am interested in, but as of right now, I have no answers.

I’m not quite sure what that means…

A friend of mine once said that life is like food. Just because it’s gone when the meal is over doesn’t mean it wasn’t tasty while it lasted. I enjoy being alive - very much - though as I’ve previously admitted, deep questions regarding the meaning of life are questions for which I have no answer (incidentally, I’m reading a book by David Brink on moral realism vs anti-realism that bears strongly on this sort of issue; maybe I’ll have more to say when I’m done with that).

OK, I will use computers as an example. Remember the 1999-2000 scare. The computers were programed to not be able to comprehend the two didgit year as 00. It would default to nothing and not be able to work properly. The computer cauld not fathom the possibilty of the year 00, it was beyond it’s programming. So the computer would shut down. We all had to place patches on our computers to fix the problem of not being able to compute the date change. The answer was to change the programming from a two didgit year to a four didgit year. Now the computer could recognise that the days were still cummulating and that it was not the year of 00 but 2000.

So I was saying that if you try to place the concept of God into any man made equation the default anwer will be zero because the program or equation can not compute something beyond it’s ability to deduce. God does not fit nicly into our logical minds, to understand God you must accept the possibilty that there is something greater out there that you are incapable of rationalizing with systems of science, math, or logic. You scratch your heads at miracles and denounce them as a random fluke of nature, using the theories of physics and radom variables causing the unforseen event. A person who only suscribes to Darwinism must believe in the chaos theory of life. They must then duduce that all of the particles of the earth just fly about in random accidently colliding with other matter to form exsistence. However the theory if flawed because we see a strong pattern in life down to the structure of DNA being so precise to p(name removed by moderator)oint specific changes between you and I. Science has a hard time dealing with this because then they have to say that there was a force driving the collision of these particles to form a specific order, hence the theory of Intelligent Design. But if you start to accept the theory of ID, then you must admit to the strong force that was driving the structure, and this force can not be explained by science, so they want to believe they have full control of the knowledge of life and discount the possiblity of being wrong for so many years.

People use to kill others because they could not believe the world was round. Then the truth came out. Those people could not fatholm something that was beyond their sight. So, yes the world has come along way from debating if the world is round, but the argument is still the same. People are so set in their beliefs that PRIDE prevents them from even entertaining the possiblity that they are wrong. Some will, some will not!

How do you explain spirits? Most athiests will say they do not exsits, or are figments of the imagination. My parents have experienced a person in full possession that smelled of sulfur and was writhing around on the floor shouting blasphemies while they were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. How do you explain this? You could say the inflicted was suffering from some psychosis, but the sulfuric smell? Are you going to say they were just full of gas?

I am saying this to challenge you to consider my point not to really debate the specifics of possession. As the OP message said, people get set in their ways and do not want to comprehend they were wrong. For if they were wrong on this, then their whole view of life must be wrong. That in itself is something to look at with trepidation.

As for those who say they knew the RCC from the inside and left to soemthing better. I can only say, YOU DID NOT REALLY KNOW YOUR FAITH TO WELL, OR YOU WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT IT! Most of us posrt Vatican II children have not been brought up correctly in the faith, especially if you are from the US. Re-Educate your self with the faith and you migh tbe surprised at what you discover!

 

[EnterTheBowser]

kp1:

…

So I was saying that if you try to place the concept of God into any man made equation the default anwer will be zero because the program or equation can not compute something beyond it’s ability to deduce. God does not fit nicly into our logical minds, to understand God you must accept the possibilty that there is something greater out there that you are incapable of rationalizing with systems of science, math, or logic.

Just as a note, this statement appears not to jive with what you go on to do in your post - which is provide a pair of evidential arguments for the existence of God. According to you, there can be no such arguments. That problem aside, like I said previously: I’ve got no problem with a theist who admits that belief in God is irrational. Simply, if there are no good reasons to believe in something, then belief in that thing is irrational.

You scratch your heads at miracles and denounce them as a random fluke of nature, using the theories of physics and radom variables causing the unforseen event. A person who only suscribes to Darwinism must believe in the chaos theory of life.

…

There have been, and are, quite a few evolution threads; I don’t want to derail this one. I don’t intend to debate the issue, because I’m tired of hearing the same silly arguments again, and again, and again.

I’m going to chop up the order of your post so as to bring relevant points together.

…so they want to believe they have full control of the knowledge of life and discount the possiblity of being wrong for so many years.

…

People are so set in their beliefs that PRIDE prevents them from even entertaining the possiblity that they are wrong. Some will, some will not!

…

As the OP message said, people get set in their ways and do not want to comprehend they were wrong. For if they were wrong on this, then their whole view of life must be wrong. That in itself is something to look at with trepidation.

As for those who say they knew the RCC from the inside and left to soemthing better. I can only say, YOU DID NOT REALLY KNOW YOUR FAITH TO WELL, OR YOU WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT IT! Most of us posrt Vatican II children have not been brought up correctly in the faith, especially if you are from the US. Re-Educate your self with the faith and you migh tbe surprised at what you discover!

Indeed… there are some people who would sooner abandon reason itself than a position they cling to out of pride and fear. People with such certainty - such conviction - that no evidence or argument will ever suffice to convince.

How do you explain spirits? Most athiests will say they do not exsits, or are figments of the imagination. My parents have experienced a person in full possession that smelled of sulfur and was writhing around on the floor shouting blasphemies while they were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. How do you explain this? You could say the inflicted was suffering from some psychosis, but the sulfuric smell? Are you going to say they were just full of gas?

…

I mean no disrespect, but I hope you can see that this argument, as it stands, is not so convincing. “My parents saw a person writhing on the ground while in Israel, and they smelled sulfur, therefore God exists.” Did the person have a history of mental illness? Does statistics say that we should actually observe fluke occurrences with some frequency? Are eyewitnesses very unreliable? Do people miss gorillas in plain sight? Do they fit the evidence to their beliefs? Is a single strange occurrence enough to immediately reject naturalism?

 

[kp1]

EnterTheBowser:

I mean no disrespect, but I hope you can see that this argument, as it stands, is not so convincing. “My parents saw a person writhing on the ground while in Israel, and they smelled sulfur, therefore God exists.” Did the person have a history of mental illness? Does statistics say that we should actually observe fluke occurrences with some frequency? Are eyewitnesses very unreliable? Do people miss gorillas in plain sight? Do they fit the evidence to their beliefs? Is a single strange occurrence enough to immediately reject naturalism?

I am not trying to openly argue the point of God’s exsistence with you. What I am trying to do is show that within the parameters of certain reasoning, the ability to prove the exsitence of God is very limited. Inorder to give the full arguement justice, you need to look beyond the paramenters of science, math, and logic. Yes yoou can use these things to accomplish some proof, but not the whole scope.

The example of the possessed it to intergect a possiblity of an answer not given by mere science, math, or logic. The other spectrum of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is something that defies the definitions of science, math, and logic. You see when you disregard the spiritual word, you must disrgard both God and satan. You must ignore the posisbilty of good and evil at pull in every situation. With every Ying there must be a yang. Yes science can assert the gravitational pull or the electromagnetic pulls on things are always in motion, but can not use the same theroies to accept good and evil. To denounce God actually gives more weight to satan because either way you have turned you back on God, it is not an even split. Ever talked to a satanist? They will tell you their god encourages them to “think for themselves”, “to search for what is more meaningful to them”. Because either way satan wins because you turn your back on God.

And if you want direct testimony, why have I seen demons, angels and other spirits that you claim do not exsist. I do not suffer from any psychosis, I am do not experiment with drugs. You see I have no choice but to believe because I have been a part of something you can not define. You have the luxury to pretend it does not exsist, I do not. I have to tell people like you to be careful, I am concerned about your path of choice, and you look at people like me as though I am crazy. I am a warning for you to consider the other possibity, you will most likely discount anything I say. I was away from the boards for awhile, I come and go, but sometimes I have to delivere a message. I try to word it in ways to hide myself, but sometimes I am told to be straight forward. Know that opening myself up at this moment is scary, but God protects those who seek his protection. And he reveals truths to those who ask and are willing to accept. Pride is much more an obstance in people than they are willing to admit.

Was this straight forward enough? If God told you something would you believe it was from him? If God told you to do something, would you do it? Noah built an ark in the middle of a dessert, do you think people thought him to be crazy.

Please pray and seek the Lord!