Need tips for a debate with wife

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Never debate or try to persuade a wife. Instead, be a shinning example of a Catholic man. If you can do that, she’ll follow.
 
I think many people in this thread have grasped a misconception of what debate actually means. According to the Cambridge dictionary, a debate is ”discussion … in which people with different opinions about something discuss them seriously, or the process of discussing something”. The negative undertone of that word is purely imaginary.
 
I never used the word “blind”, I merely said “having faith”. Good grief, could any person who can see and figure out reality really believe in burning bushes, a virgin giving birth, a person rising from the dead, and rising towards heaven on a cloud believe any of it without faith?
 
Odilon said:
I never used the word “blind”, I merely said “having faith”.
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Well you did say that ”the intellectual side doesn’t matter one bit” so that’s where I got the idea that you are in favor of faith without any intellectually appealing reasoning behind it. I would call that blind faith. Wouldn’t you?
Odilon said:
could any person who can see and figure out reality really believe in burning bushes, a virgin giving birth, a person rising from the dead, and rising towards heaven on a cloud believe any of it without faith?
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I never said ”without faith”. You are actually twisting my use of the burning bush example to mean exactly the opposite of what I intended to use it for. I mean that supernatural miracles for those who experience them first hand can work as a basis for their reasoning. Wouldn’t you find it intellectually compelling to have faith in something that was revealed to you by miraculous, supernatural means?
 
I don’t think she has! I’ve never heard about that site before myself! Thank you 🙂
 
Ilkka said:
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.
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But if they don’t believe in it then they will act like they don’t exist.
 
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I would recommend reading and taking to heart the ideas that G. K. Chesterton presents in his books Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, while also looking into Pascal’s Pensees a bit.

I recommend them, especially Chesterton, because they not only present good arguments for the faith, but they do a great job, I think, in establishing the intellectual framework behind our beliefs. One has to learn how to think properly before one can think properly about Catholicism.

Here’s a website with most of Chesterton’s books free in both ebook and audiobook form: G. K. Chesterton's Works on the Web
 
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VanitasVanitatum said:
But if they don’t believe in it then they will act like they don’t exist.
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Yes but there are still only two ways to go from there: conscious denial or conversion. The evidence for God is so clear that at some point, no one can argue against it.
 
I second The Everlasting Man — even C.S. Lewis cited it as the book that helped him the most (unfortunate that he never overcame his Northern Irish prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church). And bonus that it’s now in the public domain.
 
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Sorry, but you cannot judge people’s salvation.
you said “blind Faith poisons the soul”

I asked you where on earth you got this statement from and then you said.
" You got me there. I made it up myself. However, it is true."

You are accidentally using selective ambiguity as a debate tool. Good luck !
 
littlebird said:
Sorry, but you cannot judge people’s salvation.
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Where have I? As far as I can tell, ”to poison one’s soul” does not mean losing salvation, whatever that means. The soul is where our rational consciousness resides so to poison a soul could simply mean a corruption that damages its capabilities to follow a rational line of reasoning. Blind faith is one of these things that severely damage our rational thinking due to its ignorance of the importance of reasoning.
littlebird said:
You are accidentally using selective ambiguity as a debate tool
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Oh? Can you point out where that happened so I can learn from my mistakes?
 
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Almost all pagans believe in a divinity or multiple divinities. They have all come to the same conclusion that a divine being (or many) exist. There are even separated indigenous tribes that have independently reached the conclusion that God sent His Son to save us before any missionaries got to tell them about that.

Trust me, the empirical evidence is out there.
 
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In John 6:66 Jesus lets most walk away. On the night of his passion all but John abondond him. Jesus could at any time, have MADE people recognize Him for what He is. He did not try to convince anyone. Ever. Neither should you.
The question you want to debate, Was never meant to be one understood by logic alone, if it was there would be no FAITH.
God wants you, to WANT TO, know Him, and (for your own good) Love him and do His Will.
So the question you should be discussing (not debating) with your wife is. “Why do you CHOOSE not to believe in God.”
This is NOT WHY you believe (or not) in God ( there is no end to the that back and forth on that question), but why you CHOOSE to believe as you do.
The answer is always; I want to do something I know I shouldn’t, which means, “I will decide what is OK to do.” And THAT really means I willl decide what is good or evil. A urge as old as Adam and Eve.
 
Youngatheart said:
So the question you should be discussing (not debating) with your wife is. “Why do you CHOOSE not to believe in God.”
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That is NOT the case at all. There is a big difference between atheism and agnosticism. Many self-proclaimed agnostics are practical atheists but my wife isn’t one of those. She DOES want to believe in God and really wishes to have faith but is simply very unsure if God really exists and if He does, is He a personal God and more specifically God of the Bible.
 
Ilkka said:
Wouldn’t you find it intellectually compelling to have faith in something that was revealed to you by miraculous, supernatural means
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For the individual involved yes, but in trying to convince another person that might not work at all. It is said that faith is a gift, and I am thankful that I have it.
 
Ilkka said:
She DOES want to believe in God and really wishes to have faith but is simply very unsure if God really exists and if He does, is He a personal God and more specifically God of the Bible.
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Okay, so what else is there? We find ourselves in a world where there is hatred, continuing violence and disease. Our lives here are temporary so the promise of a better place (heaven) is very comforting to me. Perhaps you could work your conversation with your wife along those lines.
 
Ilkka said:
Blind faith is having confidence in something that is not supported by any reasons.
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This is what believing in Jesus Christ and His Passion, death and Resurrection are. Resurrection cannot be supported by any reason. We must have faith that it happened, that it occurred as reported in the Gospels.

We also require blind faith to know Jesus is God and not just a mortal man. We do not know this except in our hearts. We have never met the man Jesus, we live over 2000 years into the future.
 
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