I don’t understand the argument that if God gave us clear evidence it would somehow undermine my free will. Is this the standard Catholic answer to this question or just your answer. I still think that if God exists and wants me to believe in Him, he would give me some clear evidence.
If God appeared and through His majesty and awesome power you submitted, you might have well been made a robot that would automatically serve. There is no free will in this.
Hello - Catholics reason God inductively, the available evidence tends toward a conclusion.
penWindow(‘cr/32.htm’)
The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.penWindow(‘cr/33.htm’) The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.penWindow(‘cr/34.htm’) The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10penWindow(‘cr/35.htm’) Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.Whether or not we have been made as robots is a separate question. If we assume we were not made as robots and have free will, why would God appearing in his majesty and awesome power take away our free will? Did Moses lose his free will at the burning bush? Did the supposed witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection lose their free will when Jesus appeared to them days after his death?
Faith and understanding
penWindow(‘cr/156.htm’) What moves us to believe is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: we believe “because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived”.28 So "that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit."29 Thus the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability “are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all”; they are “motives of credibility” (motiva credibilitatis), which show that the assent of faith is “by no means a blind impulse of the mind”.30I can’t find any answers to my questions in the above. Why would God appearing in his majesty and awesome power take away our free will? Did Moses lose his free will at the burning bush? Did the supposed witnesses of Jesus’s resurrection lose their free will when Jesus appeared to them days after his death?Faith and understanding
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No, their will was inclined toward God, who they love because He loved them first. We also need grace.
This is a bit disingenuous and quite a ways from the facts. You clearly did not do as I suggested and actually look at some the the cases that have been declared by the Church to be miraculous. Now, I do not suggest for a minute that simply because the Church says something is a miracle that it is therefore so, only that the cases where the Church has done so involve a great deal more than people leaving behind their crutches and braces. If you are actually interested in learning about the miraculous and about how the Church perceives them then read this article.
Of course, but the opposite question is also valid: do you deny that miracles can exist simply because technology can always improve? This is, as I said, my brother’s position.
This seems pretty weak. I suspect that most people who speak of miracles actually mean that God intervened directly to make something happen. The argument that, since God is omnipotent and knows how to do everything therefore miracles are impossible, is not very compelling. It is true that whatever man can do cannot be considered miraculous but it really makes no sense to lump man and God together as if they were somehow comparable and apply the same logic to both.
You did not ask for evidence, you asked for proof. Furthermore your “proof” would soon turn out to be inadequate as other questions would soon rise up in your mind. If the faces on Mt. Rushmore were to change that would merely prove there was something “out there” with tremendous power. Might not that something be aliens? Travelers back from the future? Maybe Zeus really exists. Maybe the pantheists are right; what about Gaia? What you really want is to comprehend the incomprehensible. Don’t hold your breath.
I’m not saying that we ought to have proof. I’ve never said that. What do we have definitive proof of? I’d just like to see some far less ambiguous evidence. I’m just saying that if God exists, then he created me to desire much stronger evidence for God’s existence than he presents me with, and that he must know that and decides not to present such evidence. Your comment about God preferring to remain anonymous is exactly what I’ve been saying. If God exists he is apparently choosing not to present the sort of evidence that he knows I would find convincing. I can only presume it is because if God exists, God does not want me to believe in him.
I am not an infallible authority in catholic catechism but I believe that if one really used his intellect, gathered to himself some knowledge and acted entirely upon his conscience,then He will treat you kindly.
If God revealed himself more clearly before you,you would ,if your brain weighs at least as much as a peanut,believe in Him.You would believe in him because of His sheer power and grace.That would be almost like Him forcing you to believe.But He doesn't want us to believe in Him because of His might.He wants us to do so out of love for him,out of our own free will.It is for each of us to discover how He holds us by hand at each step we take, and thus discover His love for us.When we discover His love,we will find it difficult not to love him,let alone believe in him.Perhaps you cannot see the requisite miracle because you’ve learned to take it for granted. Check out the wonderful limbs already grown from your torso.
You speak frequently, and so persistently about the need for proof of God’s existence. What is it that you currently believe about the origin of the universe, and what proof do you muster for those beliefs?
There is nothing “weak” in the claim that if God is omnipotent He cannot produce miracles— the best He can do is flick an occasional Zippo lighter to impress the ignorant natives with His power. It goes to the definition of what a miracle actually is. I stand by my claim that what we perceive as miracles are merely more flicks of a Zippo.
I’m not overly interested in word games; I use the common definition for words. In this case, the common definition for miracle is the one I’m using: an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs. You have your own (re)definition of the term which makes miracles impossible - by definition.
Not so: either an event is a matter of divine intervention or it isn’t; the truth of the issue is not dependent on belief.
Be specific.
Be more careful interpreting what I say. I was not inferring two forms of logic, I was saying that it was illogical to compare man’s capabilities and God’s and assume they were the same any more than you could logically deduce man’s capabilities from those of monkeys.
If you actually believe this is what Christians (Catholic or otherwise) believe you have a lot more reading to do.
I’m willing to believe you haven’t come across a convincing definition but it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that one of the greatest minds since Aristotle couldn’t cobble together a coherent explanation.
Yes and no. The Catholic church claims both exclusivity in defining Christ and his message and no authority at all in deciding what that message says.
Would those be American high school students or Japanese? Actually, since the Bible isn’t a science text I don’t really think this is a legitimate objection.
It isn’t, they can’t, and I don’t.
Ah - so it is God’s fault you don’t believe. You have been given free will; accept responsibility for your decisions. This includes the decision to believe. You are unwilling to take a leap of faith; you ask for assurance (at least in the form of high probability) that you’re not going to be fooled into believing in something that doesn’t exist. It would seem that you are quite willing to believe in God but only if he first reveals himself to you on your terms.
There are any number of Bible passages with which to respond to this but since you disbelieve in the Bible they are of no help. I’m not sure where this leaves you: you reject the aids God thinks are sufficient on the basis that you find them insufficient. One of you is clearly wrong.
I’m not blaming anyone for anything. I’m just saying that either God does not exist, or he exists and doesn’t want me to believe in him. There is a third possibility that I am like Paul still on the road to Damascus.
My point is that they are not really my terms. If God exists, then I have been created by God to be the way I am and to require a certain level of evidence in support of my beliefs. If I am to believe the Bible and the stories that other people tell about their conversions, then God has provided such evidence without any leap of faith to the likes of Paul and others.