Lack of Questioning Leads to Atheism?

[Charlemagne_III]

This is some more peculiar fundamentalism rearing its head: things MUST be either literal OR historical…

Either/Or thinking abounds with atheists.

Either God exists or he doesn’t. Not even a whiff of “maybe”…

“God does not exist.” Dogmatic literalism run amuck.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Surely you jest!

No, I am very serious.

 

[jmcrae]

No, I am very serious.

People grow limbs from nothing every hour of every day - in the womb.

Why would it be a miracle for an amputee to grow a limb, but it’s not a miracle that unborn children grow them, all the time?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Either/Or thinking abounds with atheists.

Either God exists or he doesn’t. Not even a whiff of “maybe”…

“God does not exist.” Dogmatic literalism run amuck.

Ah yes, those darn atheists and their either/or thinking.

The thing is either beautiful or it is not. People always know what is beautiful when they see it.

The same applies to art. Either there is inherent greatness in the work of art that makes it possible to be subjectively perceived as great art, or it lacks that objective merit.

Yes, inevitably we will disagree, but that does not change the fact that one of us is objectively right and the other is objectively wrong even if we cannot satisfy each other of the objective evidence.

Either God(s) exist or they don’t.

Either the human being is sacred or not.

 

[Vera_Ljuba]

Ah yes, those darn atheists and their either/or thinking.

And they even have the audacity of inventing axioms, like “Tertium non datur” - the law of excluded middle.

 

[jmcrae]

Ah yes, those darn atheists and their either/or thinking.

Apples and sky.

It seems as if you prefer to chase rabbits, rather than learn what the Church actually teaches.

God isn’t “hiding HImself in the clouds” - that’s where He’s hiding the rain, and it’ll fall on you, because God gave us the law of gravity, as well as laws around evaporation.

 

[jmcrae]

According to Feser, your conception of God is heretical. As I quoted earlier:

I stand corrected. My essential point remains.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I stand corrected. My essential point remains.

It does not. God is not allowed to have distinctions. For any X and Y where God IS X and God IS Y, X and Y must not be distinct. The trinity requires that the father/son/holy spirit be distinct. If God IS the father and God IS the son, the father and son cannot be distinct without violating the doctrine of divine simplicity.

 

[jmcrae]

It does not. God is not allowed to have distinctions. For any X and Y where God IS X and God IS Y, X and Y must not be distinct. The trinity requires that the father/son/holy spirit be distinct. If God IS the father and God IS the son, the father and son cannot be distinct without violating the doctrine of divine simplicity.

If it’s a heresy to say that God does not have distinctions, then obviously, God is allowed to have distinctions.

If He has no distinctions, then there is no distinction between the Person of the Father, and the Person of the Son. Which makes perfect sense to me, but if I’m wrong about that, then I bow to wiser folk.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

If it’s a heresy to say that God does not have distinctions, then obviously, God is allowed to have distinctions.

If He has no distinctions, then there is no distinction between the Person of the Father, and the Person of the Son. Which makes perfect sense to me, but if I’m wrong about that, then I bow to wiser folk.

Now who is the one not interested in finding out what the church actually teaches?

Perhaps you can start learning about the trinity here: edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/02/trinity-and-mystery.html

 

[Aloysium]

If it’s a heresy to say that God does not have distinctions, then obviously, God is allowed to have distinctions. If He has no distinctions, then there is no distinction between the Person of the Father, and the Person of the Son. Which makes perfect sense to me, but if I’m wrong about that, then I bow to wiser folk.

Try this:
youtu.be/KQLfgaUoQCw

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Ah yes, those darn atheists and their either/or thinking.

You would have to have a split personality (be insane) to say in the same moment::

“This picture is beautiful. This picture is ugly.”

So obviously sometimes either/or thinking is required.

The existence of God allows a third choice.

“Maybe God does exist.”

That is the position of the agnostic, not the atheist.

 

[inocente]

Either/Or thinking abounds with atheists.

I think JapaneseKappa may have made those quotes to point out that you are undoubtedly the undisputed master of either/or thinking, when you decide it’s required.

Either God(s) exist or they don’t.

Either the human being is sacred or not.

The thing is either beautiful or it is not.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I think JapaneseKappa may have made those quotes to point out that you are undoubtedly the undisputed master of either/or thinking, when you decide it’s required.

Again, either/or thinking is allowed when required or one must have a split personality to embrace opposites.

Example:

God exists. God does not exist. Only mentally challenged persons can embrace the truth of both propositions.

In the case of God, there must be three options.

God exists.

God does not exist.

Maybe God exists.

Is this difficult to fathom?

The atheist cannot say with objective certainty that God does not exist.

He must therefore allow that maybe God exists.

But he doesn’t. So the atheist is guilty of either/or thinking without warrant.

This is probably why Bertrand Russell refused to call himself an atheist but did embrace the label of agnostic.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The atheist cannot say with objective certainty that God does not exist.

He must therefore allow that maybe God exists.

And here I think we have evidence against the subject of the thread: Lack of Questioning Leads to Atheism?

An atheist could claim to have an a-priori proof that the concept of God is logically impossible (e.g. like a square circle) and thereby claim to have objective certainty that God does not exist.

You failed to account for this possibility due to a lack of questioning.

Now you will try to object that the atheist has no a-priori basis for trusting her reasoning or senses, so even if she had such a proof, she couldn’t be certain. But this is a double edged sword that can be deployed against theists as well. You can’t say “I trust my reasoning for God because God makes my reasoning trustworthy” because that is begging the question, not asking it. In other words, by attacking the reliability of reason, you will end up making a case that *both *atheists and theists should actually be agnostics.

You failed to account for this because in your hurry to attack atheism you never questioned whether or not your own beliefs were any better off.

And so I say that a lack of questioning doesn’t “lead” anywhere, a lack of questioning is how you stay put.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

And here I think we have evidence against the subject of the thread: Lack of Questioning Leads to Atheism?

An atheist could claim to have an a-priori proof that the concept of God is logically impossible (e.g. like a square circle) and thereby claim to have objective certainty that God does not exist.

You failed to account for this possibility due to a lack of questioning.

Now you will try to object that the atheist has no a-priori basis for trusting her reasoning or senses, so even if she had such a proof, she couldn’t be certain. But this is a double edged sword that can be deployed against theists as well. You can’t say “I trust my reasoning for God because God makes my reasoning trustworthy” because that is begging the question, not asking it. In other words, by attacking the reliability of reason, you will end up making a case that *both *atheists and theists should actually be agnostics.

You failed to account for this because in your hurry to attack atheism you never questioned whether or not your own beliefs were any better off.

And so I say that a lack of questioning doesn’t “lead” anywhere, a lack of questioning is how you stay put.

The error that pervades your entire post is the assumption that reason is supreme, whereas it is not. The assumption of the believer is that some things are unfathomable rationally because God is Infinite and we are finite. We cannot rationally grasp Infinity in toto, therefore faith is the alternate approach to God, not arrogant reason that must lead ultimately to agnosticism.

For the atheist reason, not faith, is supreme. Yet ultimately he, like the agnostic, falls prey to the belief that the universe we live in is irrational and meaningless. This is a logical conclusion to draw since he refuses to entertain the belief that the universe was created by God for a reason. The atheistic and negative existentialism of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus lend support to this view.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

The error that pervades your entire post is the assumption that reason is supreme, whereas it is not. The assumption of the believer is that some things are unfathomable rationally because God is Infinite and we are finite. We cannot rationally grasp Infinity in toto, therefore faith is the alternate approach to God, not arrogant reason that must lead ultimately to agnosticism.

For the atheist reason, not faith, is supreme. Yet ultimately he, like the agnostic, falls prey to the belief that the universe we live in is irrational and meaningless. This is a logical conclusion to draw since he refuses to entertain the belief that the universe was created by God for a reason. The atheistic and negative existentialism of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus lend support to this view.

You’ve literally made the very argument I anticipated and provided a rebuttal for.

All you’ve added is that faith “solves” the problem for the theist. However, “faith” is one of those subjective judgements that fall short in the way I described at the very outset:

I agree that lumping all religions together isn’t entirely fair, but I think they all have a feature which allows us to reason about them collectively. That feature is: lack of a well defined epistemic method for testing their claims.
So someone else might say “Well Catholicism has an objective method; all the other denominations fail to meet our criteria.”
It may be true that there is a way to test whether claims are Catholic or not, but we only care about whether claims are true or not. Specifically, the methods underlying Catholic belief are not actually objective

And so unless you’re going to make a surprise move into some kind of relativism (by saying that whatever you subjectively have faith in is true) you’ve failed to actually answer the objection I raised.

 

[jmcrae]

And here I think we have evidence against the subject of the thread: Lack of Questioning Leads to Atheism?

An atheist could claim to have an a-priori proof that the concept of God is logically impossible (e.g. like a square circle) and thereby claim to have objective certainty that God does not exist.

The only a priori proof that God does not exist would be that nothing exists.

Since we exist, then obviously existence is possible. Since existence is caused by God (that’s one definition of God, actually) it seems obvious that God exists.

 

[Aloysium]

You’ve literally made the very argument I anticipated and provided a rebuttal for.
All you’ve added is that faith “solves” the problem for the theist. However, “faith” is one of those subjective judgements that fall short in the way I described at the very outset:
And so unless you’re going to make a surprise move into some kind of relativism (by saying that whatever you subjectively have faith in is true) you’ve failed to actually answer the objection I raised.

You seem to be stuck in some sort of circular argument that views knowledge of the truth to be subjective.

The truth is the truth, eternal reality itself.

Concepts such as “relativism” and “subjectivity” arise from a lack of appreciation of the fundamental ontological reality of relationality. We exist as self-other in our perceptions, understandings, feelings and grounding in what is. Existence is relational in itself and towards everything that it brings into being. Although I am referring to an “it”, the ultimate Reality transcends personhood.

I do understand that this is some sort of game for some and hence we hear talk of “surprise moves”. If you want to know the truth, it is knowable. Consider that your understanding of the how’s, what’s and why’s of existence may boil down to a merely subjective opinion, or perhaps actually a lack there of, but it need not remain as such.

 

[STT]

The error that pervades your entire post is the assumption that reason is supreme, whereas it is not. The assumption of the believer is that some things are unfathomable rationally because God is Infinite and we are finite. We cannot rationally grasp Infinity in toto, therefore faith is the alternate approach to God, not arrogant reason that must lead ultimately to agnosticism.

What do you mean that God is infinite? Nothing can defy logic, 1+1=2.

For the atheist reason, not faith, is supreme. Yet ultimately he, like the agnostic, falls prey to the belief that the universe we live in is irrational and meaningless. This is a logical conclusion to draw since he refuses to entertain the belief that the universe was created by God for a reason. The atheistic and negative existentialism of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus lend support to this view.

And how do you get meaning as Christian? Is eternal life grant meaning?