My atheist friend has stumped me

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

But admitting a fundamental reality of the human condition - that there are answers in this Universe we don’t know for sure - is at worst, only an artful dodge. But it does have the benefit of being true.

The real artful dodge is saying we don’t know. God is used to dealing with artful dodgers.

Face it, when you say we don’t know, you live as though there is no God. And you have asserted that already.

And you know this how?

Tell children they are animals without souls and they will soon enough behave worse than animals.

 

[Aizi]

Perhaps, basically it means that our understanding of “all (infinitely) good” does not match God’s actions

God is Goodness himself. Which actions do you feel does not match with it?

Having the option is separate from actually doing it. God could create a world where no one ever invented lacrosse but I don’t think people in that world would say that their free will was impeded. Say, for example, Adam and Eve were the only people to exist. There are then 2 possible worlds God could have created: one in which they sinned, or one in which they did not. Would Adam and Eve be anymore free in one world vs the other? I contend they would have an equal amount of free will regardless of the outcome. Why then would God create the one in which they sinned?

If we set up a world ordered toward inventing lacrosse, then to not invent lacrosse would also have to be possible in order for the invention to be at all meaningful. Similarly, a world ordered toward goodness also requires sin to be possible. God created a world in which goodness or sin were both options for humanity, granting them the grace to where goodness was always within their grasp. You say God can create a world where Adam and Eve sin or do not sin, but in fact both of those options are flawed and present a lack of free will, only God’s will would determine it. God instead created a world where Adam and Eve could make their own choice to sin or to do good, one where their own will was the deciding factor. And while Adam and Eve sinned, they also strove toward goodness as well.

I do think that transgressions are a part of having free will. But I disagree that it makes the world a “time bomb of evil”, rather a time bomb of goodness, true goodness which abounds even in the face of sin.

Sure, there is more to Job than just this, but I was talking about the relevance of Job to the problem of evil.

Oh absolutely, evil never really enters into Job. Job is more to do with the problem of suffering, rather than evil. In Christianity, evil is a moral failing/transgression as opposed to supernatural in its origin as it was in the pagan times when the “problem of evil” was proposed.

 

[dandingo]

Eh. He articulates the point well, but there are some interesting points that the choir he is preaching to might not question.

1. He doesn’t appreciate the full extent of the omnipotence/omniscience/omni-benevolence argument. It does not only apply to suffering as in the case of Job. The full argument, I think, goes like this. When God set out to make the world, he would immediately know how any world he created would play out. He would also have the power to create any world, even one without evil. With this fore-knowledge and power, God still chose to create a world in which there was evil. That makes God at least complicit in the creation of evil: he new beforehand, could have prevented it, but did it anyway. Why would God make that decision? See point 2
2. He uses the analogy of God painting a masterpiece and says that the interplay of good and evil makes it more beautiful. This to me is fairly scary. It could potentially lead to the following conclusions:
   A. Evil is actually good. Why? Because if the presence of evil makes God’s work better overall, then God would have no reason to oppose it. Evil does not contradict God’s will, it actually fulfills it.
   B. God needs evil. Without evil, the world he created would not have been as beautiful.
3. Our free will is an important component in this equation. Many Christians say: we create evil because we have free will. However, for that to be satisfying, we must also believe that free will inevitably leads to evil. If free will does not inevitably lead to evil, then we are still left with the question “why didn’t God create a world with free will and without evil?” If evil is an inevitable consequence of free will, then when God gave it to us, he essentially created a time bomb of evil. That, I am quite sure, is incompatible with omni-benevolence.
4. Invoking Job will not satisfy an atheist, and it should barely satisfy religious people. The story of Job is a story of faith. The lesson God teaches is: “You can’t understand this, deal with it.” The book of Job essentially tells us to stop asking questions and take the compatibility of omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-benevolence on faith.

I love the “eh”. Fr. Barron does a 5 MINUTE video on one of the biggest questions of our existence and you criticize him for how much he left out. His videos are overviews to give the general idea. Obviously he isn’t going to cover every single aspect in full detail. I don’t think Youtube allows for 3 week long videos. But thanks for the chuckle!

 

[TheTrueCentrist]

God instead created a world where Adam and Eve could make their own choice to sin or to do good, one where their own will was the deciding factor.

But God is omniscient. He knows past, present and future. He knew all that would happen when he created the world. He knew about Adams sin before Adam existed. He created the world already knowing what decisions we would make. If we have free will in this world, then we could have free will in a world where we make different decisions, including a world in which everyone decided to be good all the time.

 

[Whadyamean]

My atheist posed this question to me the other day: “If God is so loving, fair, and powerful, why does He allow innocent children and babies to suffer from disease?”

I would have been able to answer the question if he asked why evil exists (free will, sin, etc.) but I myself began to have doubts with this one. Babies and children are innocent, and did not do anything to deserve painful and terminal diseases.

How would I give him an answer that he, an atheist, could understand?

Thanks,

Jake

Try looking at it from the standpoint of assuming an impersonal “God.” I put God in quotes not because there isn’t one, but because we tend to make Deity in our own image and likeness, even if “we” are a Church.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

**Now, it’s clear (at least to me) that in no sense does this represent the way we think about the minutiae of our day-to-day lives, whether we believe in God or not. And I will say that, as an atheist - the belief that my consciousness has a shelf-life, and that someday it will blink out just as simply as it once blinked in, does not depress me or give me a feeling of hopelessness. Rather, it focuses me on the now. It makes life, at least in principle, unbelievably precious.
**

As a Christian you would also get focused on the unbelievable preciousness of life. You would get so focused on it that you would want to make the best of your life. You would get so focused on it you would do everything in life not only to preserve your life in this world, but also to preserve it in the next.

But let’s face it, if you believe there is no next life, you have no obligation to treat others kindly, nor might others believe they have an obligation to treat you kindly. Instead of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, you might decide to do unto others before they do it unto you. And there would be no reason not to, since you would think you could get away with it in this life, and would not have to worry about retribution in the next.

There is nothing in Christianity that makes life any less precious than an atheist would make it; but there is nothing in atheism that makes death and what follows it the least bit precious. That is why with atheism life really loses its joy … because you believe it will all end … and end forever. Not only does life lose its joy, but death becomes the great Terror moving toward us every day of our lives, to strike with or without warning, and leave the atheist with nothing but ashes in his hands.

 

[ASimon]

ASimon
As a Christian you would also get focused on the unbelievable preciousness of life. You would get so focused on it that you would want to make the best of your life. You would get so focused on it you would do everything in life not only to preserve your life in this world, but also to preserve it in the next.

The problem is that for the Christian, life effectively goes on forever. You can try to partition it, but this doesn’t change that reality for you. And for making the best of it, I don’t deny that possibility, but you have to ask yourself, who is more likely to try to make the most of it - the guy who knows he has a week to live, or the guy that thinks it doesn’t matter when he dies, because he’s just going to keep on living?

But let’s face it, if you believe there is no next life, you have no obligation to treat others kindly, nor might others believe they have an obligation to treat you kindly. Instead of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, you might decide to do unto others before they do it unto you. And there would be no reason not to, since you would think you could get away with it in this life, and would not have to worry about retribution in the next.

Fallacious, and I’ve explained why elsewhere.

There is nothing in Christianity that makes life any less precious than an atheist would make it; but there is nothing in atheism that makes death and what follows it the least bit precious. That is why with atheism life really loses its joy … because you believe it will all end … and end forever. Not only does life lose its joy, but death becomes the great Terror moving toward us every day of our lives, to strike with or without warning, and leave the atheist with nothing but ashes in his hands.

Also fallacious. Though it’s amusing to hear someone who doesn’t even acknowledge death claim that anyone who does must be terrified of it.

 

[bmullins]

who is more likely to try to make the most of it - the guy who knows he has a week to live, or the guy that thinks it doesn’t matter when he dies, because he’s just going to keep on living?

It’s according to what you think the ‘most of it’ is. The fellow who thinks he only has a few years to live is likely to be concerned more with how much he can make the most of his own life, while the person who knows they will have eternity filled with peace and relaxation, is likely to be more concerned with the short life experience of others than himself.

 

[Ian_Ward]

Because that’s life.
Just because you have a disease or illness even as a baby doesn’t mean that: God doesn’t love you, that you are being punished, that something bad is actually happening to you (if God gives a child a disease consider it a blessing that God would even think to take an interest in your life). Why does sickness and death = God’s ignoring them? “All the hairs on your head have been numbered” “Not one sparrow falls from the sky without God knowing” “God tests the one’s he loves to discover the genuineness of their faith” (If someone folds over a natural life occurrence then how are they going to stand when they are tested by a real enemy, or did they even have faith in the first place to be put off by one hardship?). Why doe Babies get diseases? Who am i to question why God calls people back to him at a young age and or at any other point in time, but they should be happy because they got to go to heaven before us.

Babies are innocent, but they are also not innocent. Hitler was a baby at one point. Babies are born with origional sin therefore they are not innocent. Only God is Good everyone else is not good therefore bad things happen to good people including babies who are innocent even though God is the only one that is innocent.

 

[Aizi]

But God is omniscient. He knows past, present and future. He knew all that would happen when he created the world. He knew about Adams sin before Adam existed. He created the world already knowing what decisions we would make. If we have free will in this world, then we could have free will in a world where we make different decisions, including a world in which everyone decided to be good all the time.

I am pretty sure that God exists in an eternal present, so to speak of “before” Adam exists seems a bit off to me. But yes, God knows the end result of our decisions, transcending time itself–this does not make them un-free. As a matter of fact, an un-free decision (one which lacks consent or knowledge) is not a sin at all.

And yes, we could have free will in a world where we make difficult decisions, and decide to be good all the time–whether this world manifests or not is up to us. That is the world which God willed.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

ASimon

And for making the best of it, I don’t deny that possibility, but you have to ask yourself, who is more likely to try to make the most of it - the guy who knows he has a week to live, or the guy that thinks it doesn’t matter when he dies, because he’s just going to keep on living?

The guy who knows he’s going to keep on. He has vested himself in living the good life so that when he lives on he will live on also in the good life.

If you think atheists value life so much more than Christians, why is the suicide rate among atheists higher than among Christians all over the world?

Atheism is fundamentally suicidal. It accepts not only the death of the body, but also of the soul. Cut it any way you like, there’s nothing positive about atheism. Look at what the word means. No God. Is that positive?

 

[GuanYuWarGod]

If you think atheists value life so much more than Christians, why is the suicide rate among atheists higher than among Christians all over the world?:

This is a red herring and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Besides even if we grant this as true, correlations arent causations and you are deliberately omitting important factors such as overwork and high expectations from society in places like Japan. There is no reason why a non belief in God will suddenly cause someone to kill him/herself anymore than a non belief in Zeus, Poseidon, Cheshwan, Anubis, etc.

Atheism is fundamentally suicidal. It accepts not only the death of the body, but also of the soul. Cut it any way you like, there’s nothing positive about atheism. Look at what the word means. No God. Is that positive?

You’re appealing to consequences and wishful thinking. A statement that sounds positive or negative has nothing to do with whether that statement is true or false. A Muslim can go to you now and say that a world with Allah would be more positive than a world with the Christian God.

---

This thread is so offtopic already.

 

[Starcrash]

Because that’s life.

The bible does indeed say that it rains on the just and unjust alike. But from the atheist point-of-view, this makes sense… random events fit a world where there is no deity in charge. What makes the atheist wonder is the amount of credit and glory given to a God who may or may not be behind a good event, because even a theist admits that there is an element of chance behind it. But when you do this, honoring God for things that may have just happened anyway (the sun also shines on the just and unjust alike), it demonstrates a double-standard.

Babies are innocent, but they are also not innocent. Hitler was a baby at one point. Babies are born with origional sin therefore they are not innocent.

Have you forgotten Elijah, who went to heaven without tasting death? How about Enoch? Paul didn’t say that the wages of original sin was death, and these counterexamples demonstrate that it is not, in fact, a death sentence. Besides, atheists and theists agree that we shouldn’t punish the children for the mistakes of the parents. Original sin explains why people sin, but it’s a poor reason for bestowing punishment on innocents.

 

[Aizi]

This is a red herring and has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. Besides even if we grant this as true, correlations arent causations and you are deliberately omitting important factors such as overwork and high expectations from society in places like Japan. There is no reason why a non belief in God will suddenly cause someone to kill him/herself anymore than a non belief in Zeus, Poseidon, Cheshwan, Anubis, etc.

Well if it helps any correlations or lack thereof, a lack of religiousity is associated with higher suicide rates, greater depression rates, etc on the national scale as well, though lack of religion does not imply atheism per se. (And I think someone here made the good point that strong atheists often become a “religion” unto themselves, but I haven’t seen any studies which divide between weak and strong atheists)

Also I think comparing a pagan god and the monotheistic God is pretty disingenuous, and I’m surprised you would do that as a Catholic. They occupy two totally different roles–most pagan gods are stand-ins for forces of nature. They aren’t often included in most studies of the effects of religiousity since they don’t have many followers.

 

[Aizi]

The bible does indeed say that it rains on the just and unjust alike. But from the atheist point-of-view, this makes sense… random events fit a world where there is no deity in charge. What makes the atheist wonder is the amount of credit and glory given to a God who may or may not be behind a good event, because even a theist admits that there is an element of chance behind it. But when you do this, honoring God for things that may have just happened anyway (the sun also shines on the just and unjust alike), it demonstrates a double-standard.

No, since the Catholic believes that God is absolute ontological Goodness himself. It is not, therefore, a double standard to praise him for good things.

Any extant viewpoint needs to make sense with our current world.

 

[bmullins]

The bible does indeed say that it rains on the just and unjust alike. But from the atheist point-of-view, this makes sense… random events fit a world where there is no deity in charge. What makes the atheist wonder is the amount of credit and glory given to a God who may or may not be behind a good event, because even a theist admits that there is an element of chance behind it. But when you do this, honoring God for things that may have just happened anyway (the sun also shines on the just and unjust alike), it demonstrates a double-standard.

The problem with that supposition is that it eliminates the fact that no matter who the sun is shining on, you make the assumption the sun was just randomly there. In the Christian world view the sun itself is created by God, so it doesn’t matter who it shines on, it wouldn’t shine on anyone if God had not created it in the first place. The reason some theist gives thanks for God for a good event, even if there is any element of chance behind it, is because every event is only possible by the gift of life that God has given us, the creation of the universe, etc. All good then should be given thanks for. (Not all theists see events as random chance btw.)

 

[Starcrash]

You took apart my metaphor (the sun shines on the just and unjust alike) and took it literally (the sun itself is created by God, so it doesn’t matter who it shines on). So let me express the whole point literally instead.

The bible admits that bad things happen to good people as well as bad people. But this is exactly what the first poster was positing, that this is the case (as we all know from shared experience), and was asking why it should be this way (or in other words, what is the benefit of being a Christian if it doesn’t change how life treats you). I said that good things happen to good people as well as bad people, and that we should remember this the next time that we point out the benefits of being Christian, because otherwise we’re treating “bad things” and “good things” that happen to us differently, even though logically there is no difference in how many of each happen to believers and nonbelievers alike.

 

[Starcrash]

No, since the Catholic believes that God is absolute ontological Goodness himself. It is not, therefore, a double standard to praise him for good things.

Any extant viewpoint needs to make sense with our current world.

Isn’t this the point of the original post, that a belief in God as absolute Goodness is contradictory to the notion of a creation of his that is not absolute Goodness?

 

[bmullins]

what is the benefit of being a Christian if it doesn’t change how life treats you

Being a Christian doesn’t mean that life will be a bed of roses. Being a Christian isn’t about how life treats you, it’s about how we spend eternity. It’s great when good things happen, we should rejoice as well when the bad come along, always giving praise. I don’t like bad things, but I’m not in it so that I can have stuff and comfort. I’m in it so that I can spend eternity with my savior, who loved me enough to give me that option.

 

[Starcrash]

Being a Christian doesn’t mean that life will be a bed of roses. Being a Christian isn’t about how life treats you, it’s about how we spend eternity. It’s great when good things happen, we should rejoice as well when the bad come along, always giving praise. I don’t like bad things, but I’m not in it so that I can have stuff and comfort. I’m in it so that I can spend eternity with my savior, who loved me enough to give me that option.

This eternity with God is all hypothetical, and having evil in the world is a good clue that this eternity is not all that you expect.

Was Earth meant to be perfect and without sin? If it was, then it follows logically that Heaven could also end up with sin in it, despite God’s intention to keep it sinless. Or was Earth meant to end up with sin? Then the question made here is more than valid - it means that God is partly evil by nature. If God intended evil, it’s because He needs or wants it, not because of anything that we did.

But no matter what explanation you come up with for a world that contains evil, Heaven is the perfect example to prove that God could have created a sinless world without evil. So why didn’t He?