The case for Christianity

[Wannano]

Chistian-ity:

I’m not quite sure how to articulate this, but after quite a bit of deliberation, it just seems as though an atheist worldview can give more eloquent/logical answers to the questions that plague humanity. Additionally , all the inconvenient little holes in Christianity begin to add up it seems. For example, numerous inconsistencies throughout The Bible, God’s seemingly immoral actions, and other things such as the olivet discourse’s prophecies being unfulfilled, or even the underwhelming “miracle” of liquefying the blood of St. Januarius. Also, the concept of faith is inherently illogical because it essentially means believing in something despite a lack of evidence. I’m not saying that there is no answers to the aforementioned questions/points, but that it creates quite the hurdle for logically believing Christianity. So I suppose I wanted to hear why you guys believe your worldview to be the most intuitive/logical worldview.

Before you make any decision about Christianity, read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. It’s short, and many many people have come to faith after reading this book. Our priest constantly recommends it to us.

Lews was an atheist, before coming to faith. He was influenced to accept Christianity in part because of the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien, a Catholic! (C.S. Lewis was not Catholic, but Anglican, which is very close to Catholicism when it comes to practice, liturgy, worship styles, etc.–certainly closer than Baptist or any other Evangelical fellowship!).

The book is easy to read, much easier than, e.g., Chesterton’s apologetics. I read it when i was around 13 years old, and I’ve read it several times since.

I not sure I agree with you Peeps, there is plenty of commonality within the CC and Evangelical framework in terms of practice and in the etc. which is more important than worship styles. It interests me how Catholics love Anglicans when they think there is commonality but when they want to chastise Anglicans the other side shows.

What kept Lewis from seeing Catholicism as the one and only truth?

 

[IanAG]

What kept Lewis from seeing Catholicism as the one and only truth?

According to this article growing up in Belfast with all its sectarianism.

NCR Article

 

[AlNg]

The heart has its reasons that reason does not know.

How reliable is the heart as compared with repeatable experimental evidence or a proven mathematical theorem?
The heart tells us that the sun rotates about the earth and that in a vacuum, a lighter ball does not fall as fast as a heavy ball. How many women have been deceived by loving the wrong man?

 

[AlNg]

What kept Lewis from seeing Catholicism as the one and only truth?

What keeps Catholics from seeing that the filioque should not have been added to the creed?
What keeps Catholics from seeing that it was wrong to torture people during the inquisition?
Lewis may have seen the Catholic Inquisition as a serious mistake.

 

[po18guy]

1. The Transcendent.
2. The supernatural.

Unless you broaden your cognitive portfolio to include these concepts, nothing relating to faith will make sense.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Il me semble que vous avez l’esprit de contradiction. Il faut penser de maniere poetique pour apprecier les sentiments de Pascal en ce qui concerne le coeur.

 

[AlNg]

Il faut penser de maniere poetique pour apprecier les sentiments de Pascal en ce qui concerne le coeur.

Le problème que je vois est que la poésie peut souvent induire en erreur. Je préférerais de loin être sur le terrain ferme et solide de preuves expérimentales reproductibles.
Mais merci pour vos commentaires.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Welcome back!

 

[meltzerboy2]

D’accord…

 

[CathBoy1]

I don’t think there’s any way I can fit this into a single paragraph or post. Continuing a little bit from above, any non-theistic answer ultimately relies on there being ontological brute facts, things that just are without reason or explanation (and I don’t just mean “no reason we know”, I mean there is no reason or explanation, full stop, whether we can know it or not), and that is more magical or miraculous than anything theism proposes. Or in more charitable terms it results in some level of reality being unintelligible and irrational, which makes everything after that point ultimately unintelligible and irrational. It’s like saying the book is held up by a shelf, and the shelf is held up by brackets, but don’t ask what the brackets are being held up by, because there’s no wall nor anything there we need to rely on. If that’s true, then ultimately we have no explanation for how the book is kept from falling at all.

This entire post says it perfectly, honestly I’ve said this for a while now atheism becomes almost a religion onto itself.

Honestly I think this demonstrates exactly how atheism is almost a religion in itself, it has been said before and so I will repeat it:

It is most definitely easier for there to be an intelligent design (creator, God), then for nothing to happen to nothing in a bunch of nothingness and then everything lining up perfectly for everything to just explode out of this nothingness simply because it can.

 

[po18guy]

Now I share something with Gabe Kaplan besides a poker face.

Thank you.

 

[AlNg]

This reminds me of a picture that I came across many years ago and I feel it is relevant so here it is:

Yes there are people who misrepresent and mock atheism. But there are also those who misrepresent and mock theism and Christianity.

 

[CathBoy1]

Yes there are people who misrepresent and mock atheism. But there are also those who misrepresent and mock theism and Christianity.

I didn’t intend to mock atheism whatsoever with that picture, seeing as that is how it has been perceived I have edited my above post.

I only intended to show that what most atheists (that I know) believe still requires a certain amount of faith of some kind, most will even admit so.

I would argue that this “version” of atheism is a sort of religion itself:

The belief that everything happened out of absolutely nothing without a prime mover, designer, creator, God?

Statistically speaking there is a greater probability that there is a God*, so I personally find it a bit hypocritical when someone who is a confessed atheist scoffs at the idea of faith, and dismisses theology, yet believes everything came out of nothing and has no problem accepting scientific theories.

• Odds on that God exists, says scientist | Higher education | The Guardian

 

[meltzerboy2]

I used to watch that show. Corny but good.

 

[AlNg]

The belief that everything happened out of absolutely nothing

E = mc^2 indicates that matter and energy are convertible. Physics proposes the conservation of energy or that matter cannot be created or destroyed. The implication drawn from this by some atheists is that the matter (or energy) was always there; i.e., there never was a time when there was nothing.

 

[CathBoy1]

E = mc^2 indicates that matter and energy are convertible. Physics proposes the conservation of energy or that matter cannot be created or destroyed. The implication drawn from this by some atheists is that the matter (or energy) was always there; i.e., there never was a time when there was nothing.

Only some atheists subscribe to this, not all.
But let’s talk about the odds of everything lining up just so…

…astrophysicists now know that the values of the four fundamental forces gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the “strong” and “weak” nuclear forces were determined less than one millionth of a second after the big bang…

…Change any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction, by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000 then no stars could have ever formed at all.
Now let’s multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing whatsoever are insanely astronomical.

This is why I said earlier:

It is most definitely easier for there to be an intelligent design (creator, God), then for nothing to happen to nothing in a bunch of nothingness and then everything lining up perfectly for everything to just explode out of this nothingness simply because it can.

 

[po18guy]

For those who question everything, Fr. Robert Spitzer PhD and a noted physicist, explains the Shroud of Turin in detail, and in an easily understandable manner.

 

[AlNg]

for nothing to happen to nothing in a bunch of nothingness

I don’t think that this is an accurate description of what atheists believe.

 

[lanman87]

… Change any one value and the universe could not exist. For instance, if the ratio between the nuclear strong force and the electromagnetic force had been off by the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction, by even one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000 then no stars could have ever formed at all.
Now let’s multiply that single parameter by all the other necessary conditions, and the odds against the universe existing whatsoever are insanely astronomical.

I’ve never had any atheist reply to this argument. Even if matter always existed in some form (as many of them claim) it still doesn’t account for the complexity and “fine tuning” of the universe. There are so many things that had to happen in the perfect order, in the perfect conditions, with the perfect amount of elements/matter/chemicals, in the perfect location, at the exact perfect time, for life on earth as we know it to exist in such a precise way that it is statistically impossible for it to have happened by chance.

 

[CathBoy1]

I’ve never had any atheist reply to this argument. Even if matter always existed in some form (as many of them claim) it still doesn’t account for the complexity and “fine tuning” of the universe. There are so many things that had to happen in the perfect order, in the perfect conditions, with the perfect amount of elements/matter/chemicals, in the perfect location, at the exact perfect time, for life on earth as we know it to exist in such a precise way that it is statistically impossible for it to have happened by chance.

Exactly, and that’s why I said atheism, specifically atheists that hold to the idea that everything lined up perfectly by random chance (as do most atheists that I know), is a religion onto itself.

I don’t think that this is an accurate description of what atheists believe.

Perhaps not all atheists believe this, however many I have spoken with and specifically asked what was before the Big Bang, the answer I’ve heard most has been:
Nothing.

That’s the thing about atheism, there is no general consensus on such matters.

However my argument in my previous post still stands whether there was nothingness or whether there was always some form of matter, the odds of everything lining up just perfectly is more beyond belief than a belief in an omnipotent Creator.