Please please help.

[wcknight]

Evid3nc3,

I think just about everyone wants to identify the truth. I can’t imagine anyone who wants to settle for a lie, except for some sort of sociopath or psychopath. You may be right that not many folks have quite gone to the lengths that you have in setting up a web site documenting your journey. But there are many who have written books on their path from atheism to Christianity and from other faiths to Catholicism.

How do you respond to the fact that within our faith there is in fact evidence, that God exists and His saints have indeed performed miraculous deeds. As a matter of fact there is PHYSICAL evicence that such miracles have occurred, the Eucharist transforming itself into human tissue or into a beating human heart. These things are located throughout the world at various sites. (just look up Eucharistic miracles).

There is the cloak of ST Juan Diego in Mexico. There are the bodies of various saints, St john Vianney, St Catherine, St Padre Pio and St Bernadette, and a few others that have been perfectly preserved without extraordinary means.

SO what do you do now IF you indeed find that Catholicism has the evidence that you once sought.

BTW taking the Bible literally is not a good idea and NOT one that Catholics were taught.

 

[fhansen]

**Evid3nc3,

We’re all born atheists. And we may actually stay that way despite having grown up in a religious tradition, despite what we may profess even, and despite what reasons there may be that compel us to profess it.

FWIW I’ll tell you first off I’m not particularly impressed with opinions about God associated with the level of ones education, regardless of the field of learning, and regardless of whether one is believer or atheist. I’m not anti-intellectual by any means; I value the enormous strides made in knowledge but, while I’m just a dumb farmer, even dummies know there are limitations to human understanding; the body of knowledge now in the world’s possession is rapidly increasing but will prove itself to be far from complete as we gain even more.

Personally, I think there’s glaring evidence for the existence of a creator-god, of a rational mind behind the universe. However, very few of the attributes of such a god could be determined based on observations of that creation alone. Knowledge of the nature of a god such as the Christian one could only be obtained by revelation, if such a thing is possible.

This idea may sound simplistic, but I suggest you read some of the Catholic “mystics” (a traditional term for people claimed to have received private direct revelation from God), such as Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross. These experiences are very rare, and I’ve been privileged to have received a few myself (I seldom share this fact since the subject of private revelations are, by nature, controversial, although the Church recognizes and teaches that God works in that way at times for His purposes), and, having run in Pentecostal circles for a few years, I can tell you that these “mystical” experiences have absolutely nothing in common with the so-called experiences professed by Pentecostals-all bogus IMO. The real things are strictly direct communications received, nothing more or less, impossible to produce on ones’ own, and in that sense no different than this direct communication I’m posting now. We can question why God doesn’t reveal Himself to all in this way on a regular basis, or why evil exists in this world if God is good and worth knowing, but those are separate questions from the one at hand, which is, does God exist at all?

In any case, had you had the kind of communications I’m referring to you’d be incapable of no longer believing in God-and the reasons you think are valid for doing so now would be reduced to ‘so much straw’. God can communicate directly, bypassing the senses but ending with the same results as with communications received in the normal way *via *sense perception, and these communications have nothing in common with hunches, feelings, or senses that we’ve been touched in some way; we simply play no role in the matter. Emotions may or may not be involved as well, depending on content.

And, BTW, while these experiences I’m speaking of are generally experienced subjectively, I’d suggest that all experiences are ultimately subjective by their nature; we can’t prove that anything we claim to experience has ever actually taken place. Every single experience received in life, all of which come to us via the five senses as far as we know, are solely experienced subjectively by us, including the experience of communicating with others. We can confirm our experiences by comparing notes with others as we simply interact with them in everyday discourse or as we set out to prove or disprove a theory and in this manner we arrive at a high degree of certainty that we’ve ascertained some truth or another-that our experiences aren’t just personal dreams. Similarly, people who’ve received supernatural experiences can compare notes in the like manner.

Ultimately God is an experience, like any other reality in that particular sense. Religion is supposed to give us information about that experience, i.e.* about* God, but can’t provide the experience itself.
**

 

[Evid3nc3]

Zimm3r, you are making a substantial philosophical error in your reasoning. Deism as an epistemology is inferior to Evidentialism.

Through Evidentialism, you could explore a world where there is no God or there is a God. It can handle either case.

Through Deism, if there is no God, your entire worldview is fallacious and you live your life unable to reason about reality. Your first assumption about the world would be based on a false statement.

Therefore, Evidentialism is superior because it can handle any possible world. If there is a God, the route to validating Him is through evidence. I challenge you to come up with a better, more flexible, and more neutral standard.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Wasn’t the example mathematics

There was an example of mathimatics based on the work published in “Where Mathimatics Comes from: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathimatics into Being.” However I mentioned radiation because it is more similar to the example that you used of light that is outside of the wavelength in which we can sense with our eyes.

The idea that Evidentialism is better than say Deism is silly Deism makes claims that are as equally provable (that is there not)

Deism

1. A being existed before this universe (God)

Evidentialism

1. I exist
2. My sense are sometimes correct.

Correct me if I am wrong, but are not the same two basic assumptions that are being made in evidentialism also being made in Deism? In other words would a deist not also assume that (s)he exists and that his/her senses are sometimes correct?

 

[Nicko]

Correct me if I am wrong, but are not the same two basic assumptions that are being made in evidentialism also being made in Deism? In other words would a deist not also assume that (s)he exists and that his/her senses are sometimes correct?

A Deist also assumes that a God exists. It has never been made clear to me how this is a reasonable, or even helpful, assumption.

 

[gentle_atheist]

Evid3nc3,

I think just about everyone wants to identify the truth. I can’t imagine anyone who wants to settle for a lie, except for some sort of sociopath or psychopath.

Actually, I would rather have happiness than truth. Atheism may be true but it is a truth that came with a terrible price: the loss of my happiness.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

A Deist also assumes that a God exists. It has never been made clear to me how this is a reasonable, or even helpful, assumption.

Now that I think about it this may be a bit of a red herring since the topic of discussion is Christianity and not Deism.

 

[wcknight]

Zimm3r, you are making a substantial philosophical error in your reasoning. Deism as an epistemology is inferior to Evidentialism.

Through Evidentialism, you could explore a world where there is no God or there is a God. It can handle either case.

Through Deism, if there is no God, your entire worldview is fallacious and you live your life unable to reason about reality. Your first assumption about the world would be based on a false statement.

Therefore, Evidentialism is superior because it can handle any possible world. If there is a God, the route to validating Him is through evidence. I challenge you to come up with a better, more flexible, and more neutral standard.

The fact of the matter is, THERE is a God, so we are not beginning with a false assumption. We have already shown you evidence of HIs existence and your world view discounts that based on your preconceived notion that it is impossible to prove that He exists.

MY background is computer science as well, over 40 years of it. BUT my education is mathematics, and the main focus of mathematics is to determine what is true and what is not. There is only one absolute true either in philosphy or in mathematics, and that is either it is true or it is not.

Your evidentism is trying to play both sides of the coin but seems to be front loaded in favor of atheism… I don’t see how it can be superior when you have already incorporated bias into your theories from the beginning.

Your faith started out with some holes in it to begin with, so now you are basing your arguments with a faulty basis to begin with. Start with the Truth and maybe you might have a prayer in achieving what you set out to prove.

BTW my world view has never interfered with me having to face reality or accomplish whatever I wanted. I have had a very successful career in computer science and I’ve retired with every thing that I would need or ever want. AS far as being happy, the thought that one day I too will meet God face to face makes me fell perfectly fine.

The only thing I worry about is the world interfering with my friends or loved ones, convinving them that God doesn’t exist or some other such nonsense,

 

[medaroge]

But why give this guy’s videos more credence than you do some other random stuff on the internet?

Exactly. Why give this guy’s videos ANY credence?

 

[wcknight]

My message to atheists, IF you really want to find the Truth, then keep searching for God and I guarantee you will find Him.

IF you want to continue believing in a lie, then you won’t bother to look.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

The fact of the matter is, THERE is a God

Now that this is settled, onto other matters

…]my education is mathematics, and the main focus of mathematics is to determine what is true and what is not.

I’d extend this a bit to say the purpose of applied math is to build inference preserving models that may be used to draw conclusions from a system provided that the the mathimatical operations and quantities can be mapped to attributes, operations, and/or actions on the system to which it is applied.

There is only one absolute true either in philosphy or in mathematics, and that is either it is true or it is not.

I’m a little lost here. Is this meant to say that given a well formed and valid proposition in which we can agree in the semantics that it is either “true” or “false”?

Your evidentism is trying to play both sides of the coin but seems to be front loaded in favor of atheism. I don’t see how it can be superior when you have already incorporated bias into your theories from the beginning.

Hmmm…I get the feeling you may be describing confirmation bias. What is it that was done that made the confirmation bias apparent?

Your faith started out with some holes in it to begin with

If it has no holes is it still faith?

Strat with the Truth and maybe you might have a prayer in achieving what you set out to prove.

“Truth” when spelled with a capital “T” often times refers to something that may be of special meaning to the speaker, but that something is also often times not communicated to others that are not within the same mindset or mental context. Advisement to “start with the Truth” might not be unambiguously actionable.

 

[ChesterBeach]

I watched the whole series. I thought it was well done and well thought out. I don’t see this as a challenge to the Catholic Faith. Well, no more than any other faith.

In a nutshell he puts his confidence into what can be shown to have evidence.

At one point he describes God as a feeling or an experience, that is somewhere in between our interconnectedness with each other and our universe and the infinite.

Later he describes mathematics as abstraction of our evidential experience.

I see that as a beautiful description of our concept of God. An abstraction of our feeling of interconnectedness with the universe.

If we make the assumption that the attributes of God are as the Church says, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, infinite. Our experience has to be an abstraction.

[BIBLEDRB]Exodus 33:20 [/BIBLEDRB]

 

[wcknight]

I meant Truth in every sense of the word. One as applying as to whether we are dealing with what is real and imagined, two as to God Incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, and three as to whether the Church established by God is indeed the Catholic Church.

Yes, faith does necessarily have a hole where one has to make the leap from what one can determineand experience for oneself and believing what one has heard and read. Unless you were alive for the life of Jesus and saw His miracles, or have experienced miracles or the supernatural yourself, then one needs to either believe or not believe without having a first hand encounter with God.

This is very similar to UFOs belief in alien encounters. Most folks have never had an alien or UFO encounter, so they chalk it up to myth and fantasy. BUT there are a significant number of folks with very reliable credentials (military pilots and law enforcemnet officers etc, who have had encounters. So, I think, (actually I know because I had a first hand experience in seeing such a thing - not an alien, but a UFO), that such things exist.

As I said before, even though I have not had a first hand encounter with the supernatural, I do know folks personally who have. And there is more than enough reliable testimony from very reliable folks who also encountered, the supernatural, miracles, apparitions, etc to more than justify belief that God is much more than some fantasy or myth.

 

[wcknight]

The biggest hole that I see in the experience of our friend with the web site, is that he assumed that his being a CHristian made him infallible, that God would be whispering in his ear all the answers that he would need to argue with his professor.

I have no problem that he became disillusioned enough to turn to atheism, given the strength of his former belief. But I think he threw out the baby with the bath water.

ANd now that he wants evidence the God exists, why does he now ignore that which is presented to him ? As with most atheists, there is no amount of proof that can convince them, because they have closed their minds and hearts to what is there. In there zeal to be objective, they actually have become biased to demoand more that what would normally be more than convincing to most.

Suppose, you heard from various sources throughout history that personally saw an alien that could teleport itself from one location to another, And then several of your friends or acquaintences experienced the same. BUT you have never seen such a thing, would you believe them or would you be saying that they are all fools and just imagining things. That is basically what you are doing now.

 

[ChesterBeach]

The biggest hole that I see in the experience of our friend with the web site, is that he assumed that his being a CHristian made him infallible, that God would be whispering in his ear all the answers that he would need to argue with his professor.

I have no problem that he became disillusioned enough to turn to atheism, given the strength of his former belief. But I think he threw out the baby with the bath water.

ANd now that he wants evidence the God exists, why does he now ignore that which is presented to him ? As with most atheists, there is no amount of proof that can convince them, because they have closed their minds and hearts to what is there. In there zeal to be objective, they actually have become biased to demoand more that what would normally be more than convincing to most.

Suppose, you heard from various sources throughout history that personally saw an alien that could teleport itself from one location to another, And then several of your friends or acquaintences experienced the same. BUT you have never seen such a thing, would you believe them or would you be saying that they are all fools and just imagining things. That is basically what you are doing now.

I don’t think he made that assumption at all. He just sought guidance from God.

Thomas asked for proof.

[BIBLEDRB]John 20:24-25[/BIBLEDRB]
I don’t see why you see this as an affront to your faith.

 

[ChesterBeach]

My question to Evid3nc3 is :

I think the physical world is a “magical” (for lack of a better term) place. The more I learn what science has to teach, the more wonderful and mind blowing I think the world is.

Even if you relegate Religion and God as a method to navigate our internal landscape and our place in the world, (a la Joseph Campbell " The Power of Myth") - it serves a valuable purpose. It has been part of the Human experience since we have a record of the Human experience. It effects us in a very fundamental way. In a way that rational thinking does not.

If you are throwing out the “God / Mystical experience” what are you replacing it with?

 

[Zimm3r]

Zimm3r, you are making a substantial philosophical error in your reasoning. Deism as an epistemology is inferior to Evidentialism.

Through Evidentialism, you could explore a world where there is no God or there is a God. It can handle either case.

Through Deism, if there is no God, your entire worldview is fallacious and you live your life unable to reason about reality. Your first assumption about the world would be based on a false statement.

Therefore, Evidentialism is superior because it can handle any possible world. If there is a God, the route to validating Him is through evidence. I challenge you to come up with a better, more flexible, and more neutral standard.

Not really because you are speaking as though both have the same first assumption Evidentialism requires you to exist, Deism requires God exists both of those statements are just as provable (that is their not). Also Deism then derives that you exist through the assumption of a cause outside the universe (“God”) Evidentialism assumes you exist and then assumes your sense’s are sometimes right, the former makes 1 claim the latter 2 claims. Deism only requires one assumed unprovable statement to be true Evidentialism requires two.

EDIT: Also your Evidentialist underpinnings and atheistic beliefs make for a contradiction atheism is the belief there is no god, evidentialism gives no evidence there is no god, so you aren’t an atheist (“without god” as there is no evidence there is no god) but obviously you don’t have any belief in god and evidentialism only leads to belief in what there is evidence for (at least that is its goal) so it would seem you are more agnostic (that there is no knowledge for god the sense that there is or isn’t in the future could be a god is not in line with evidentialist)

But why does this matter because as an atheist you reject god as an agnostic you simply say I don’t know, one is the claim you have evidence there is no god (especially coupled with evidentialism).

TL;DR
Atheism - the rejection of god
Agnostic - “I don’t know” when it comes to god’s existence.

 

[wcknight]

I don’t think he made that assumption at all. He just sought guidance from God.

Thomas asked for proof.

I don’t see why you see this as an affront to your faith.

I don’t see him or his web site as having any affect to my faith whatsoever. I have the evidence I need. He is looking for evidence but when presented that, like most atheist they discount or ignore it because they personally have not seen or experienced it.

I have never seen or experienced Mt Everest or the south pole, but based on what folks have reported, I know both are far too cold for me to ever want to visit there.

When enough folks of integrity report what they have experienced, then I tend to believe what they are claiming happened is true. And when some of these folks are people that I personally know and trust, then I am 100% that what they say is true.

There may be some slight possibility that all were delusional or conspiring to deceive me, but the more folks that have these experiences, the smaller that possibility become.

A lot of folks seek guidance from God, BUT very few have that direct line of communication open to them. The saying goes, God is listening to what you ask but sometimes the answer is no.

 

[ChesterBeach]

Not really because you are speaking as though both have the same first assumption Evidentialism requires you to exist, Deism requires God exists both of those statements are just as provable (that is their not). Also Deism then derives that you exist through the assumption of a cause outside the universe (“God”) Evidentialism assumes you exist and then assumes your sense’s are sometimes right, the former makes 1 claim the latter 2 claims. Deism only requires one assumed unprovable statement to be true Evidentialism requires two.

EDIT: Also your Evidentialist underpinnings and atheistic beliefs make for a contradiction atheism is the belief there is no god, evidentialism gives no evidence there is no god, so you aren’t an atheist (“without god” as there is no evidence there is no god) but obviously you don’t have any belief in god and evidentialism only leads to belief in what there is evidence for (at least that is its goal) so it would seem you are more agnostic (that there is no knowledge for god the sense that there is or isn’t in the future could be a god is not in line with evidentialist)

But why does this matter because as an atheist you reject god as an agnostic you simply say I don’t know, one is the claim you have evidence there is no god (especially coupled with evidentialism).

TL;DR
Atheism - the rejection of god
Agnostic - “I don’t know” when it comes to god’s existence.

You’ve obviously haven’t watched all the videos. This is addressed with the concepts of weak and strong atheism.

 

[ChesterBeach]

I don’t see him or his web site as having any affect to my faith whatsoever. I have the evidence I need. He is looking for evidence but when presented that, like most atheist they discount or ignore it because they personally have not seen or experienced it.

I have never seen or experienced Mt Everest or the south pole, but based on what folks have reported, I know both are far too cold for me to ever want to visit there.

When enough folks of integrity report what they have experienced, then I tend to believe what they are claiming happened is true. And when some of these folks are people that I personally know and trust, then I am 100% that what they say is true.

There may be some slight possibility that all were delusional or conspiring to deceive me, but the more folks that have these experiences, the smaller that possibility become.

A lot of folks seek guidance from God, BUT very few have that direct line of communication open to them. The saying goes, God is listening to what you ask but sometimes the answer is no.

You obviously do see it as an affront to your faith because you can’t understand why someone else wouldn’t share it and feel the need to defend it.

You keep repeating the same mantra “people I respect believe it, so I believe it” - which is fine. A valid reason for faith as any other but you must realize that your personal belief is, a personal belief. You can’t expect everyone to share it.

For instance - He had an experience of God, which you are discounting as valid because it led him to atheism.