The absurdity of atheism

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PRmerger said:
Let me remind you of this: * we *don’t get our beliefs from a book.
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Then I wonder where the idea of heaven came from. I guess what I could have said is:

P: Someone told me. It’s what the Catholic Church teaches.
B: But where did they get this idea from?
P: From a book. Here’s a quote from it:

“And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:31-46).

B: So you’ve been told that this bit of the book is true.
P: Yep.
B: But the talking snake and animals two by two and stuff?
P: Not so much.
 
Bradski said:
“And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:31-46).

B: So you’ve been told that this bit of the book is true.
P: Yep.
B: But the talking snake and animals two by two and stuff?
P: Not so much.
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Yep. Pretty much. 👍
 
And in regard to term atheism, from a page to which you linked:

‘If such objective evidence is not found, conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that a God with these properties does not exist.’

That seems entirely reasonable. In fact, if you inserted any noun in the place of ‘God’ then it would be something with which I’m sure you would agree.

And before you start typing out ‘Multiple Universes’ as a replacement for ‘God’, you need to recognise the difference between something that is claimed to definitely exist and something that is being proposed as a possibility.

There is evidence put forward for God which can be examined. Any conclusion is based upon that evidence only. That is why, in scientific terms, you cannot make a definitive statement. It is always conditional. There may be more evidence that comes to light that will even see the conclusion reversed.

So even when an atheist says ‘there is no God’, he or she is invariably saying ‘(based on all the evidence that has been presented to me) there is no God’.

If everyone worked on that assumption, there would be no problems with the definition.
 
Bradski said:
Then I wonder where the idea of heaven came from. I guess what I could have said is:

P: Someone told me. It’s what the Catholic Church teaches.
B: But where did they get this idea from?
P: From a book. Here’s a quote from it:

“And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:31-46).
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But what Jesus says about eternal punishment and eternal life is not from a book.

It is from the mouth of Jesus. And it was known as such long before the Gospel of Matthew was written.

Only misinformed Protestants can believe that what Jesus taught and the Church preached has to be from the Bible and the Bible only.

If that were the case, the first generations of Christians would have known nothing about Jesus since the gospels were not written until the second generation had arrived, nor were they finally authorized until the 4th century.

All teaching authority was lodged in the traditions of the Church, not the scriptures.

The scriptures only serve to show for generations of later Christians what truth and light Jesus had brought into the world.
 
PRmerger said:
sigh
face palm

No.

The Catholic faith was whole and entire before a single word of the NT was ever put to writ, Bradski.
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Clearly, Bradski subscribes to sola scriptura.

I would guess that Brad is trying to “one up” ThinkingSapien’s claim that a person can be both an atheist and agnostic, by proposing that it is possible to be an agnostic, an atheist AND a fundamentalist Christian.

Can hardly wait until someone proposes ignostic as well. What fun. :jrbirdman:
 
I get confused when people go on about what they don’t believe in.
This is especially so if they use words and concepts that relate to what i do believe in.
Communication tends to break down when you get fed back distorted images of what you say.
I prefer people to say what they do believe in, such as:
  • A knowable rational universe
  • a mind that can understand reality
  • some particular approach to the truth, such as empiricism, intuition or realization, revelation, logic, geometry.
    Hitchens clearly believes in a knowable universe comprised of matter which can be known to the senses and their extensions, using reason. Isn’t that much clearer than saying he does not believe in God when he has not the slightest idea of what people who believe in God know Him to be.
 
PRmerger said:
I really wish you would stop saying this.

Firstly, I remember everything I read, and (peculiarly)* almost *everything I type/write. So I don’t need a reminder.
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For what it’s worth I didn’t think you had completely forgotten
PRmerger said:
Fourthly, there’s always new lurkers who can benefit from the current discourse.
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Just take my “reminders” as a declaration to the lurkers that there’s been previous discussion. I have often but do not always quote or provide links back to those previous discussion.
PRmerger said:
but I propose that if they identify as an “atheist”, then this is what is meant by atheism: it is a positive assertion that God does not exist)
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I’m stating my interpretation of the above in the hopes of avoiding the discovery several messages later that we are not discussing the same thing. My understanding of what you are saying above is that “all people that identify as atheist are people that make the assertion that God does not exists.” Do you find that statement to be synonymous with what you said above?
 
Peter_Plato said:
Clearly, Bradski subscribes to sola scriptura.

I would guess that Brad is trying to “one up” ThinkingSapien’s claim that a person can be both an atheist and agnostic, by proposing that it is possible to be an agnostic, an atheist AND a fundamentalist Christian.
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I think it is much easier to be an atheist (or agnostic) when one reads the Bible with fundamentalist lenses.

However, when one reads the Bible through the lens of the faith which gave them this Bible, it’s harder to have objections to the Scriptures.
 
I read to page ten of this thread and stopped.

We will never understand God. Without understanding then one cannot judge.

If I could judge God’s actions then God would not be God. Simply God is beyond human understanding due to Gid being undefined in human terms and infinitely powerful.

You placed value in your daughter’s cup because you love your daughter.

Love is a gift God gave to us.

The human body is a gift.

Why do atheists post here? It seems to be an oxymoron doesnt it
?

Are you as an athesit interested about faith or here to ridicule faith or prove it doesn’t exist?

I laughed at the miracle of growing your arm back as proof of God… and all medical miracles are
misdiagnosis. i guess there is a lot of terrible doctors.

Faith is a choice. I choose to have a relationship with the trinity.

A small personal miracle to share. My daughter was pronounced legally deaf at 3 months and again 6 months. As a family we were deciding which sign language class
to attend because we were told by are pediatrician that our daughter would never hear. A miracle happened and she could her perfectly fine at the year mark.

You could call it a freak accident of nature or a miracle.

but that is a scientific example. a litmus test. two scientific tests were done and concluded thst she was deaf and now she hears perfectly fine.

i will pray that you find God.
 
Bradski said:
. . . B: So you’ve been told that this bit of the book is true.
P: Yep.
B: But the talking snake and animals two by two and stuff?
P: Not so much.
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Let’s see if this works. It hasn’t before, but what the hey.

Scripture is a revelation of the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, in time, permitting a dialogue between God and mankind.

It is all about meaning.

The wood of the cross, the wood of the trees at the centre of the garden, the wood carried by Isaac up the mountain, following Abraham his father, the wood of the frame on which the blood is sprinkled in Exodus, and the wood of the arc.
The wood represents the sacrifice of the unblemished lamb at the foundation of time to redeem mankind and bring us to salvation.
The arc is mankind protected in right relation to all creation (the animals two by two) and God. It is a new Eden contained by the sacrifice on the cross. This in the midst of the sin, washed away by the water, the original baptism. All in preparation for the incarnation - Jesus Christ our Saviour. (I do realize that this language can be irritating and sound primitive to modern thinkers, but it’s important to say things as they are.)

I’m not sure I’ve communicated this well but it is this sort of stuff I believe in. Therein lies the truth of our existence, it’s Source, meaning and ultimate nature.
 
Presence said:
It is interesting how atheists try and get away with this. There is, in fact, no evidence in support of their claim that there is no God yet all they demand of theists is evidence of God. Which we’re quite willing to offer, but they choose to either ignore the arguments or brush them aside with fallacious reasoning.
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Of course we demand evidence. You believe in a God that is invisible to our senses.

You claim that your invisible God is real, but all the other invisible Gods that people believe in, well those Gods aren’t real?
 
PRmerger said:
I don’t think so.

At any rate, if one is an atheist, he is asserting a positive statement: there is no such thing as God. God does not exist and those who believe in God have a false sense of reality.
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I leave open the possibility that some ancient alien species or alien dna may have had some kind of a hand in the creation of life on earth. Either directly or indirectly, accident or on purpose.

I have no idea, but it’s a pretty cool thought.

I wouldn’t call that alien species God if it turned out to be true.
 
987mk said:
It was written in a book.

Oh wait, no it wasn’t, the apostles told people and they told people and then someone wrote it down and put it in a book.

Oh wait, uhm…
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Well, at the time it could have been scrolls or a codex of bound leaves of pages, but, either way, I am not sure what your point is. Do you suppose that what was written in a book, a scroll or on some blog or forum is more reliable than word of mouth?

Oh, I see… the telephone game! Oh right.

Been reading some Ehrman, have you?
 
987mk

please, take a history class and then you might gain a deeper understandng of how evidence is obtained.

Witness testimony is perfectly acceptable in a court of law.
 
987mk said:
Of course we demand evidence. You believe in a God that is invisible to our senses.

You claim that your invisible God is real, but all the other invisible Gods that people believe in, well those Gods aren’t real?
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You really haven’t grasped the concept of God, have you?

Do you understand what is meant by Ipsum Esse Subsistens or that God is the Subsistent Act of Being Itself?

If God is the ultimate Ground of Being Itself, then there is, by definition, only one God.

Oh, sure, there could be beings that are greater in some sense than human beings – gods of a sort: angels mistaken as deities, but God, in order to be God can only be One in Being.

God’s essence is existence or Being Itself. He is not “a being” alongside a plethora or hierarchy of other beings. He is not even the greatest of all beings. He is Being Itself – Pure Actuality.

Read Aquinas. Read Maritain. Read Gilson. Heck, read Aristotle.
 
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