The burden of proof is on believers to prove God exists (according to atheist philosphers)

[ffg]

After investigation I have discovered that they are not, but most of them, from a Christian’s point of view, should be.

If you think that they are all inapplicable, then there are no reasons that you can suggest for me to become a Christian.

I’m sure you’ll come up with some.

Thanks for the reply!

Folks like to say faith is a gift.

It seems like you might be a good example as to why # of words read in a lifetime may not be the delivery method of the gift.

A read word might be a trigger for desire of the gift, but other things might be triggers also.

It might be possible you can examine the evidence in a method that might have an applicable outcome in your life.

Perhaps try something other than reading, see what happens.

Take care,

 

[inocente]

As usual, CS Lewis hits the nail on the head regarding this issue when he compares all the “writings” of Christians – the straw, if you like – to maps made by those who have trodden the ground – i.e., have had the direct experience of God.

Some of us have to rely on that straw since it makes excellent bedding to keep us warm in the night and even serves as food for we sentient beasts who are not “cognitive dissonant angels singing,” but tone deaf and possibly in danger of fading away.

Certainly, having direct experience of God makes all the theology and philosophy, by comparison, to seem as straw, but to those who are not having a direct experience and need to be led to the possibility of a beatific vision, all those writings, those maps, the “science,” if you like, of God, become crucial while we wander in the desert, trying to find our way while not having any experience of God.

You may want to watch the first seven minutes or so of this video to better understand the point:

youtu.be/_RAsb3lv968

I think you’re still mixing up theology with philosophy. In 1 Cor 1, Paul says philosophers can only ever have human wisdom. Lewis talks in similar terms of what man creates compared with God. The philosopher’s God is a theory, and if God is alive then he can’t be found in a static theory. God transcends any map they can produce, he keeps moving.

Whereas theologians and preachers, if they are any good, try to explain God’s wisdom.

btw I had a Santa Teresa type of experience. Lasted some months. Perhaps it was God, perhaps a brain storm, perhaps both. Not something you can prepare for, not something you can cause. Imho leaps of faith have nothing to do with intelligence or education. More like the motto: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel.

inocente;14319069:

Sounds like geocentrism on steroids. Man isn’t just center of everything, man creates everything. Including, presumably, God, otherwise the presence of the rational mind of God would have done the trick already.

So you don’t think God created the rational mind of man, along with everything else?

I’m not a geocentrist on steroids, no. I’m saying that anyone who subcribes to the Copenhagen Interpretation would appear to limit minds to human alone, and so necessarily rule out God, as if man bootstraps reality by observing himself in a mirror.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think you’re still mixing up theology with philosophy. In 1 Cor 1, Paul says philosophers can only ever have human wisdom. Lewis talks in similar terms of what man creates compared with God. The philosopher’s God is a theory, and if God is alive then he can’t be found in a static theory. God transcends any map they can produce, he keeps moving.

And natural human wisdom is NEVER from God? Why did he create us capable of thought and reason? Just a trick to sort the good and faithful sheep from human thinker goats, no matter how well they do at it?

Nah, I would think that human wisdom, properly practiced will get us to the truth –*perhaps not the whole way there, but pointing in the general direction. Ever heard of “natural theology” – i.e., theology or knowledge of God based upon observable facts and experience rather than divine revelation?

 

[Bradski]

It still would appear that specifically human traits would need to arise from one male and one female at some distant time in the past.

Peter, if you don’t understand the subject then it would be a really good idea not to attempt to make assumptions and then use them as arguments.

 

[Glassjester]

That we are descended from two specific people. Unless you want to treat it as allegory - and the Catechism does use what might be classed as poetic license when it comes to A and E.

I have no problem with those who wish to treat it as such.

Someone linked to this earlier in the thread - tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/09/adam-and-eve-and-ted-and-alice.html

Worth reading

 

[CHRISTINE77]

But many people didn’t arise at once. Our ancestors didn’t wait aeons for a mutation to change us into human. There never was a specific point where anyone became human. And there were no two single humans from whom we are descended.

If you think that each of those statements is wrong then you are debating from a position of ignorance. I’m not sure how you can justify arguing against something that you show every indication of not understanding.

I don’t think you know what you are talking about at all. You are just a product of evolutionist’s propaganda.

 

[Bradski]

Someone linked to this earlier in the thread - tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/09/adam-and-eve-and-ted-and-alice.html

Worth reading

Worth reading? They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There was very little apparent in that blog. If that is the type of source material that people are using to educate themselves, then they would be becoming less knowledgeable the more they read.

Some of it isn’t even wrong.

 

[tonyrey]

Yet the rational mind disappears entirely in full-blooded versions of reductive materialism which regard persons as no more than

One materialist on this forum declared that truth is merely an “isomorphism” of atomic particles. He didn’t explain what comprehension is! Perhaps another “isomorphism”…

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t think you know what you are talking about at all. You are just a product of evolutionist’s propaganda.

To be precise, a product of evolution without no control of its output, i.e. a cog in the universal machine.

 

[tonyrey]

Peter, if you don’t understand the subject then it would be a really good idea not to attempt to make assumptions and then use them as arguments.

“if you don’t understand” = a flagrant example of an argumentum ad hominem…

 

[tonyrey]

I’m not sure, but maybe you think you need a breeding pair to start off a new species. Which is not the case. In fact, the minimum number you need to sustain any given group without the risk of genetic problems developing because of inter-breeding is reckoned to be 160. And you would have to artificially control breeding with a number as low as that.

Imagine if you had a group of say 2000 individuals that were separated from other members of the same species. Let’s say climatic conditions encouraged this large group to move to a different area. Whatever conditions applied in the new area would affect the new group. If there were creatures that used the cover of darkness to hunt them, then those with better night vision would survive on average longer than those without. The ones with poor night vision (purely the luck of the roll of the genetic dice) would be removed from the gene pool. There would be an overall improvement in the night vision over time.

Add a couple of millions of years, rinse and repeat and if conditions were suitably different, then you have a group that is significantly different to the originals. Keep going and you end up with a different species.

Groups evolve. Individuals don’t.

If individuals don’t evolve **all **our thoughts and conclusions are caused by events beyond our control and equally worthless! Biological computers lack insight and understanding…

 

[inocente]

And natural human wisdom is NEVER from God? Why did he create us capable of thought and reason? Just a trick to sort the good and faithful sheep from human thinker goats, no matter how well they do at it?

Nah, I would think that human wisdom, properly practiced will get us to the truth –*perhaps not the whole way there, but pointing in the general direction. Ever heard of “natural theology” – i.e., theology or knowledge of God based upon observable facts and experience rather than divine revelation?

Paul doesn’t say human wisdom is worthless, he says it’s foolishness compared with God’s wisdom.

But you appear to think that given a little more time, philosophers could have synthesized the message of the Cross from theory, if only God wasn’t so impatient then revelation was unnecessary, Christ suffered in vain.

“Some of us have to rely on that straw” you said. No you don’t. Suppose you had to choose whether to follow either Christ or philosophers? Clue: you have to choose.

 

[inocente]

One materialist on this forum declared that truth is merely an “isomorphism” of atomic particles. He didn’t explain what comprehension is! Perhaps another “isomorphism”…

I’ve told you recently that he didn’t. His post is easily found since ‘isomorphism’ is not a word that appears often in your conversations.

Please link where you think he said this, and explain your interpretation. I seem to remember you failed to do so last time, but if you did then by all means just link your previous explanation.

 

[inocente]

I don’t think you know what you are talking about at all. You are just a product of evolutionist’s propaganda.

Do you think Tony’s “argumentum ad hominem” complaint in post #786 should also apply to girls?

 

[Aloysium]

Science seeks to understand the structure and processes of nature as they are revealed through the senses and their technological extensions. It’s methods are empirical, involving observation and experimentation. It is one of a number of gifts to humanity, a tree that can bear much good fruit in the garden that constitutes our relationship with each other and with the universe.

This relational nature is founded on the reality of our spiritual soul. Existing as a unity of body and spirit, we’re not like billiard balls in a merely physical universe. We participate in creation. have the capacity for both understanding and action. This rational soul is who we are and what we do; it is necessary to and pervasive in our relationships. Because it is ubiquitous, one can’t point and say, “There is the human soul”. Like the fish in the ocean, having known nothing other, queried, “Water? Where?”

We can understand the mind as being the manifestation of the I-in-the-world. The unfathomable knower’s connection to the unfathomable known, the knowing/doing. It’s structure is primarily spiritual in that it is a means of communion. Reflecting our body-spirit oneness, it’s structure can be understood in terms of two different and mutually exclusive dimensions - the physical and the mental. Physically our connection with the world can be described along a spectrum that goes from the micro- to the macrocosm, with biology in the middle. Mentally, we have libraries filled with books on psychology that speak of archetypes, family relations, development of the self, and so on. We have other gifts that include philosophy, music, literature and the arts which reflect the wonder of this realm in our existence. The physical sciences are a mental activity that seeks to understand the material world. The material nature of the person, our body permits our existence in time and space and allows for our capacity to sense and act in the world around us.

Science as it is transmitted among us in textbooks, movies and other media, at this point in time appears to be fixated on the material. While sci-fi is primarily about struggles, courage, overcomings, good and evil, love (so our girlfriends will accompany us, we say), these issues of primary importance and which provide the greater context in which we live our daily lives, seem to disappear when some talk about the ground of our being. It sounds ridiculous and even delusional, but I put it down to people not really knowing what they are talking about, but trying to establish some sort of coherent intellectual system, perhaps as a barrier to the chaos of infinite possibilities that arises when disconnected from the truth.

As to the first man, that is what has been revealed and what makes sense when we gaze into who we are as one humanity, each of us blessed with certain gifts and the crosses we will bear in life. It isn’t the DNA, it isn’t the degree of “sapiens” that makes us human, sharing in the hardships that are the outcome of sin and the possibility of communion with the eternal Ground of our being. We are persons, physical images of the Triune Godhead, on a journey to discover where we have always been, existing in Gods love.

 

[tonyrey]

Do you think Tony’s “argumentum ad hominem” complaint in post #786 should also apply to girls?

I did think of writing “argumentum ad mulierem” but decided it was too ostentatious in its display of knowledge of the Latin accusative singular - although it is undoubtedly a justified accusation.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Paul doesn’t say human wisdom is worthless, he says it’s foolishness compared with God’s wisdom.

But you appear to think that given a little more time, philosophers could have synthesized the message of the Cross from theory, if only God wasn’t so impatient then revelation was unnecessary, Christ suffered in vain.

“Some of us have to rely on that straw” you said. No you don’t. Suppose you had to choose whether to follow either Christ or philosophers? Clue: you have to choose.

What if Christ shows me the way to the very best philosophers? You know, the ones like Aquinas, Augustine, the Early Church Fathers, Kierkegaard, and hundreds of others, who explain things clearly and cogently to help me understand the meaning and significance of Christ’s message? The one’s who don’t invent their philosophy from whole cloth but have devoted their lives to explicating Christ’s message in words that leave an enduring impression if you care to read and grapple with what they wrote?

Why do I have to choose? Because you say I must? Christ doesn’t say I must. He led me to those philosophers, to the Scriptures, to the Church and continues to show me what is right and true provided I don’t put giant stumbling blocks in his way. It is my own egoism and pride that he tells me are greater obstacles to knowing him than are “the philosophers” – at least, that is what Christ has made clear to me.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Worth reading? They say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There was very little apparent in that blog. If that is the type of source material that people are using to educate themselves, then they would be becoming less knowledgeable the more they read.

Some of it isn’t even wrong.

And making no attempt to actually demonstrate where “that blog” is in error doesn’t exactly prove “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” You might want to contribute to making the dangerous little pool of knowledge a tad less dangerous by pumping in a bit of your knowledge rather than relying upon disparagement or aspersions to frighten people away from the danger as if having no knowledge at all is safer than gaining that bit more knowledge that could get them out of danger of having too little.

At this point you are beginning to sound a lot like inocente pushing the mystical knature of knowledge which has nothing at all to do with genuine human understanding but lies beyond all understanding.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But you appear to think that given a little more time, philosophers could have synthesized the message of the Cross from theory, if only God wasn’t so impatient then revelation was unnecessary, Christ suffered in vain.

When Mary Magdalene encountered the Risen Christ she called him “Rabboni” which – roughly translated – means “master teacher.”

Why would she refer to Christ as a “teacher” unless integral to his message or revelation – his teaching – was implied some kind of LEARNING on her part? In other words, teaching – especially the teaching of a master teacher – must involve some significant learning on the part of the student.

So what do you think that learning was to involve except the kind of wisdom that Christ desires his disciples, his students, to learn? Surely, the most basic requirement of gaining wisdom of any kind, especially the highest form of it – the kind made available by the Master Teacher, Himself – is the ability to think about the truth in an accurate and complete way, no?

Now, if the wisdom of God – the ability to think clearly about the truth, that Christ – as master teacher – came to impart to his students is available even to children and the uneducated, why would it not be available to philosophers? I mean if philosophers can overcome their egoism, narcissism, self-delusions and sin, that is?

I suspect your problem, re: the role of philosophy, is that you have an issue with human thinking, per se, and believe Christ came to overthrow, root out and get rid of human thinking and willing completely.

I wouldn’t suppose that to be true. I would suggest that Christ came, and became fully human (including the thinking parts,) to show us what human thinking and willing ought to look like and gave us the means – the Spirit of Truth and the vehicles of grace – by which we can think and will as Christ wills us to. Grace perfects nature, including the natural ability to think, it doesn’t negate or nullify nature.

That implies that we can – through Christ – apprehend nature as it should be understood and supernature for what it is.

 

[inocente]

What if Christ shows me the way to the very best philosophers? You know, the ones like Aquinas, Augustine, the Early Church Fathers, Kierkegaard, and hundreds of others, who explain things clearly and cogently to help me understand the meaning and significance of Christ’s message? The one’s who don’t invent their philosophy from whole cloth but have devoted their lives to explicating Christ’s message in words that leave an enduring impression if you care to read and grapple with what they wrote?

Why do I have to choose? Because you say I must? Christ doesn’t say I must. He led me to those philosophers, to the Scriptures, to the Church and continues to show me what is right and true provided I don’t put giant stumbling blocks in his way. It is my own egoism and pride that he tells me are greater obstacles to knowing him than are “the philosophers” – at least, that is what Christ has made clear to me.

Again, you’re conflating philosophy with theology. If you exclude that, then Jesus does say you must chose between him and the worldly, for example in Mark 10:29.

Paul also gives that choice between Christ and the worldly: “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe”.

“Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”. Paul is not saying deny theology or don’t listen to preachers, for like him they’re trying to explain God’s wisdom. But on the other hand philosophers can only ever give you worldly wisdom, and Jesus says don’t put anything between you and him, for example Luke 14:26.

I think we probably agree here if we excluded the conflation. There needs to be a letting go to make a leap of faith. Written by someone as she escaped to be born anew, perhaps the philosophy is “The moment I let go of it was the moment I got more than I could handle. The moment I jumped off of it was the moment I touched down”. Alanis Morissette - Thank U