Need tips for a debate with wife

[C.Ray]

I struggle with a similar issue so its something I am always thinking about. I heard an interesting homily last week:

The priest said “I don’t believe in God as a proposition, as something that can be proved. I believe in God like I believe in my mother and father, as something I have experienced, rather than something that has been proven to me.”

And when I think of it it’s true, we don’t believe in our closest relations because someone has presented us with a birth certificate or a driver license and a utility bill. One believes in God the same way. At least, this resonated with me.

 

[Servant31]

I
One thing that helped me was the witnesses of near death experiencers. I’ve written about these before (feel like I’ve beaten a bit to death tbh) but those helped me as a bit of empirical evidence. Observationally focused. Opinions are great but they are abundant, to me a but of empirical evidence was helpful. Just my.02.

 

[Ilkka]

Philosophy and theology aren’t bound to literary knowledge. They are freely accessible to everyone with a sound mind.

 

[Ilkka]

The whole belief in God is based on having faith, the intellectual side does not matter one bit.

Oh wow! You just pulled the rug from under the feet of great theologians and Church fathers throughout centuries! Blind faith poisons the soul while reasonable faith is medicine for many ills.

 

[littlebird]

You can only have faith if you are smart ?

 

[littlebird]

“blind Faith poisons the soul” ? Where on Earth did you get that statement from ?

 

[Jen95]

Ilkka, in Finnish do you have the expression “is nothing sacred?”
This leads me to believe, personally, that some things are sacred, and it is valuable for humans to view some things as sacred.
Does your wife believe that some things are sacred?

 

[Dan_Defender]

Start with everything has a cause; nothing can bring itself into existence. Obviously there is a long chain of causes in the universe, but ultimately there must be a first cause, and uncaused cause, which we call God. She has to accept this on its own logic in order to continue the discussion.

 

[jochoa]

Good evening @Ilkka,

Here is some advice for consideration:

Since Catholicism is the Fullness of Truth, rather than striving to prove her wrong about what she does not know, learn how her truth is incomplete, and help her understand how Catholicism shares the Fullness of Truth about her Truth.

 

[JMMJ]

Uh, this Church teaching is infallibly true regardless of whether an individual skeptic accepts it as a fact or not. The Church teaching is infallibly and objectively true no matter what any human being thinks about it. It is based on objective reality and this is why human reason without error is able to find out about God that He exists and what He is roughly like.

My point is that this will get you no where in a debate with an agnostic.

 

[do_justly_love_mercy]

I am a Christian. And by that I mean that I subject myself to the teaching authority of the Holy Catholic Church of which the Pope is the single unifying earthly representative.

That is not the definition of a Christian. You are essentially saying that “Christian” means a Catholic who accepts the teachings of the Church and the authority of the pope. Consider this: “I am a Christian. And by that I mean that I believe the doctrine of the Church of England, of which Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the Supreme Governor.” Or this: “I am an American. And by that I mean that I am a member of the NRA and I believe that federal transportation infrastructure is a violation of the Tenth Amendment.” You are taking the definition of the subset to which you belong and using it as if it were the definition of the whole set. I would say, “I am a Christian, and by that I mean that I believe in Jesus.”

 

[Neithan]

There is plenty of objective evidence that God exists. You don’t need the church to tell you that. I’m sure you’ve heard of the cosmological argument. Which of the premises are subjective? If you use Hume’s fork, then you are forking over (sorry) most of the objective grounds for empirical observation and experiment in the natural sciences as well.

Fun fact: In the church’s liturgy for Good Friday, we pray for people who do not acknowledge God, Whose existence is an object of knowledge accessible to anyone, with or without faith.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

Given you are Catholic, you will attend Mass on Sunday, why not just bring her to Mass . I find debating people and trying to persuade people never works. You must allow God to shine through you. You must live your life as an example to her. Pray at home. Go to Mass, live the Commandments.

At the end of the day it is blind faith that we are gifted with from God, to give us the grace to believe.

"happy are those who believe and did not see or put their hands in my wounds’

 

[Ilkka]

For morality she may answer societal norms or familial upbringing, or just plain old humankind common sense, but those are all incomplete and different answers on their own.

One could argue that a moral sense is developed during evolutionary processes that accomodate behavior for the survival of our species. That’s where the objective moral argument fails.

 

[Ilkka]

My point is that this will get you no where in a debate with an agnostic.

Of course not. But because the fact still remains true, agnostics’ objections are able to be overcome by reasoning. That is my point.

 

[Ilkka]

I’ll answer both of your comments in this single reply.

You can only have faith if you are smart ?

I don’t think I ever said that.

“blind Faith poisons the soul” ? Where on Earth did you get that statement from ?

You got me there. I made it up myself. However, it is true. In the Bible and Church history we see no man soing great things by blind faith. Every patriarch and every Church father had reasonable faith. While blind faith is accepting things that seem contradictory and are against common sense, reasonable faith derives beliefs from at least some level of assurance.

A great example of blind faith are Christian fundies who claim that Christ has physically healed them while they still exhibit symptoms of disease. They believe that they should accept their perceived promises of God by blind faith so that they might become reality by the power of faith. This is just a form of defensive denialism of the surrounding facts.

Reasonable faith, however, examines probabilities and the internal coherence of any beliefs. It still leaves room for leaps of faith but it doesn’t take them hastily without a proper evaluation. For example, Moses took a leap of faith because he saw a miracle and heard a voice. To him, that was reason enough to believe and so he did.

 

[Ilkka]

For her personally, yes. But she thinks that if God doesn’t exist and there is no purpose in anything, then no. And I agree. The difficulty she has lies in the fact that considering things sacred is in itself possibly just an evolutionary feature that helps us survive.

 

[Ilkka]

Child-like faith isn’t blind faith. If you’ve ever fathered a child, you know that they often ask many many questions. They take nothing at face value. Even when you tell them how things are, they think and they think and they think. If the answers aren’t satisfactory, they will get confused and maybe lose a bit of their trust.

As Christians, we are called to ask questions. That is reasonable faith.

When we achieve an acceptable level of assurance, we should then proceed to act by faith. An acceptable level of assurance depends on the individual and their intellectual capabilities. A mentally challenged person might not have the burden of intellectual curiosity and they may reach personal assurance more easily.

At the same time, someone with an average or greater intellect will find more questions to ask in order to find assurance. To reject this sort of intellectual curiosity with a demand for blind faith is a great disservice.

 

[OurLadyofSorrows]

Child-like faith isn’t blind faith. If you’ve ever fathered a child, you know that they often ask many many questions.

Define blind.
We are to forgo our will for the Will of God. That is our goal in life as Catholics. Hard to do because it requires blind faith, complete trust in God.

 

[Ilkka]

Blind faith is having confidence in something that is not supported by any reasons. The degrees of this vary, of course but as knowledge increases, the blindness either grows in severity or is cured.

God hasn’t called us to blind faith. He has given every good reason to follow His will and commit our lives to serving Him. We have a cloud of witnesses, the Scriptures, natural sciences, supernatural miracles etc. All of these are reasons that support our faith. I would argue that blind faith is very dangerous.