The central contradiction running through the arguments of many of those new atheists authors

[ThomasToo]

If a fool were to make an ineffective, but non-harmful, effort to help you, would you not be grateful for the effort?

Because that effort is semantically equivalent to a couple of propositions:

1. 
   *]‘I will think about you when I’m alone.’
   *]‘I hope you reject your deepest principles and instead accept mine. Rather than discussing them with you and hoping you come around due to logic I’m seeing supernatural aid.’
   *]‘You are probably going to burn in hell for all eternity.’
   *]‘You are subverting God’s plan for you [as if such a thing were possible].’
   *]‘You are founding your life on a life so vile that I am at a loss to explain its depravity.’
   
   I would ask you a similar question–in the strongest possible wording; how could you be ‘touched’ that someone thinks your life is founded on a lie and that you have been deceived into believing it?
   
   I can almost understand how the statement ‘I will pray for you,’ makes sense in the worldview of a person of faith but I think it’s one of those (many) things that are best kept to oneself.

 

[Slowlearner]

Because that effort is semantically equivalent to a couple of propositions:

1. 
   *]‘I will think about you when I’m alone.’
   *]‘I hope you reject your deepest principles and instead accept mine. Rather than discussing them with you and hoping you come around due to logic I’m seeing supernatural aid.’
   *]‘You are probably going to burn in hell for all eternity.’
   *]‘You are subverting God’s plan for you [as if such a thing were possible].’
   *]‘You are founding your life on a life so vile that I am at a loss to explain its depravity.’
   
   I would ask you a similar question–in the strongest possible wording; how could you be ‘touched’ that someone thinks your life is founded on a lie and that you have been deceived into believing it?
   
   I can almost understand how the statement ‘I will pray for you,’ makes sense in the worldview of a person of faith but I think it’s one of those (many) things that are best kept to oneself.

1. 
   So much there to unpack, I don’t know where to begin, except by praying . . . . bear with me, I mean that with all good intentions.
   
   If a person thinks my life is founded on a lie and I’ve been deceived into believing it (is that not true of what you and AntiTheist think of me??), then that is what he thinks. It is a fact. I don’t see how knowing the fact changes the fact and I’d rather know than not know what people think of me. If I know what they think, I can decide if it makes sense or not. If I decide the person is right, then I thank them. If I decide the person is wrong, I stick with what I believe. If they pray for me, and their prayer is like Christian prayer, I’m thankful that they are being loving toward me.
   
   Prayer is a sign of love. Christians pray for people when they are sick or challenged, or suffering. Since life is full of challenges and suffering, we pray for close family daily. We believe that we ALL need help and prayer, all the time. Each day is a challenge to live a holy life. Even the most holy need prayer. Even the Pope sins each day and must work daily to improve himself. (There is a great story of JP2 visiting a Priest who had become a drunkard, then asking that Priest to hear his (i.e. JP2’s) confession.)
   
   We can’t pray for bad things to happen to people (well we can, but should not and don’t believe that such prayers are granted). As Jesus taught in his last prayer, we pray for God’s will to be done.
   
   Maybe Muslims can pray for bad things to happen to people. Now that I think of it, Muslim’s are pretty harsh toward infidels. But for Christians, all we can do is pray that you’ll see the light of truth and find the way to forgiveness and everlasting life. I guess you would not mind if I prayed for you to get a million dollars, but, if I did that, I’d be holding back and not doing my job as a Christian.
   
   I don’t have to know you, yet Christian teaching says I need to love you. I’m kinda new here, but I’ve read enough of what you’ve written and what AntiTheist has written to get the impression that you are both likeable guys. As I said, we should pray for you just as much if you were jerks, but, being human, we tend to pray more for people we like. So I hate to break it to you, but if you come on a Christian forum, people are going to pray for your conversion, whether they tell you or not.
   
   I hope, and pray, this knowledge does not drive you away.
   
   I was agnostic/atheist for 20+ years. I always found any Christian prosthelytizing to be creepy. I felt as though I was being seduced to join a cult. Didn’t like it. But last place I was going to spend time was a Catholic forum.
   
   I also didn’t like the Holier than Thou attitude of some Christians and Catholics. Some do have that attitude, and it is probably a sinful attitude. I don’t seem to “see” that attitude much anymore now that I’ve converted. Now I see other sinners standing in front and behind me, waiting in line to go to confession.
   
   Quite separate from the prayer issue or religion, I also must say that I’ve learned (the slow, hard way), that we can only be offended or upset if we allow something to offend or upset us.
   
   Anyway, I wish you the best (i.e. I’ll pray for you).

 

[Slowlearner]

Oh, I think I can respond more tersely to each point you made:

Because that effort is semantically equivalent to a couple of propositions:

*]‘I will think about you when I’m alone.’ OUR PRACTICE FOR PEOPLE WE LOVE

*]‘I hope you reject your deepest principles and instead accept mine. NOT MINE, GOD’S Rather than discussing them with you and hoping you come around due to logic I’m seeing supernatural aid.’ TOOK SUPERNATURAL AID FOR ME AND EVERYONE. SERIOUSLY, THAT IS A TENANT OF THE FAITH.

*]‘You are probably going to burn in hell for all eternity.’ WE ARE PRAYING FOR PRECISELY THE OPPOSITE RESULT.

*]‘You are subverting God’s plan for you [as if such a thing were possible].’ GOD’S DESIRE FOR ALL OF US IS WE LIVE A LIFE TRYING TO FOLLOW EXAMPLE OF JESUS.

*]'You are founding your life on a life so vile that I am at a loss to explain its depravity.I CAN’T IMAGINE YOURS IS ANY WORSE THAN MINE WAS. ANYWAY, IF YOU COULD BE SAVED MINUTES BEFORE YOUR DEATH, WE’D HAVE EQUAL SEATING IN THE AFTERLIFE – AND THAT IS WHAT WE ARE PRAYING FOR.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

People can deny evidence of very apparent principles and statements of fact–evolution is an easy example of this fact. Giving someone evidence, even very clear evidence, does not undermine free will if one still has a choice to explain the evidence away however much hand waiving would be required.

Without getting into a debate on this topic, I hardly think that the “evidence” supporting the theory of evolution qualifies it as indisputable fact. That said, I am generally inclined to agree that something like evolution may have been one of the mechanisms of Creation.

Having stood at ground zero (formerly 1 World Trade Center) a few months ago, I couldn’t agree more; faith can do some pretty powerful things.

My first reaction to this was to be offended, but I believe (so far) that you are a sincere, considerate person involved in an honest, respectful debate, and that you do not realize the implications of what you are saying. To equate the fanatical zealotry of bloodthirsty, hate-filled extremist Islamic terorrists with the life-transforming power of true faith in God is not only unfair, but inaccurate.

Peace,
Dante

 

[ThomasToo]

My first reaction to this was to be offended, but I believe (so far) that you are a sincere, considerate person involved in an honest, respectful debate, and that you do not realize the implications of what you are saying. To equate the fanatical zealotry of bloodthirsty, hate-filled extremist Islamic terorrists with the life-transforming power of true faith in God is not only unfair, but inaccurate.

My intention was not to offend and I apologize if I did so. I just wanted to state in the strongest possible terms that faith per se is not a universal, unambiguous and eternal good. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, I believe, did an advertising campaign that carried the line from John Lennon’s “Imagine”, ‘imagine no religion,’ against the skyline of New York City with the World Trade Center conspicuously present.

I acknowledge and so far as my knowledge of Islam goes understand that Christianity and Islam are substantively different religions but both are necessarily predicated on the notion of faith as a virtue. I’ve always had practical and theoretical problems with this notion; when I was in classes for my first Communion, I asked enough questions about inaccuracies and contradictions in the Bible that one of our classroom helpers quit–and I was only 7! (N.B. my parents are very faithful Catholics so my skepticism is not their fault and they by no means put me up to the above) In brief, I’ve never had the ability to believe without proper evidence which, rankly, I see lacking for gods of any sort. Theoretical issues run deeper but may simply be the result of the practical issues but frankly the origin is more or less moot.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

My intention was not to offend and I apologize if I did so. I just wanted to state in the strongest possible terms that faith per se is not a universal, unambiguous and eternal good. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, I believe, did an advertising campaign that carried the line from John Lennon’s “Imagine”, ‘imagine no religion,’ against the skyline of New York City with the World Trade Center conspicuously present.

I acknowledge and so far as my knowledge of Islam goes understand that Christianity and Islam are substantively different religions but both are necessarily predicated on the notion of faith as a virtue. I’ve always had practical and theoretical problems with this notion; when I was in classes for my first Communion, I asked enough questions about inaccuracies and contradictions in the Bible that one of our classroom helpers quit–and I was only 7! (N.B. my parents are very faithful Catholics so my skepticism is not their fault and they by no means put me up to the above) In brief, I’ve never had the ability to believe without proper evidence which, rankly, I see lacking for gods of any sort. Theoretical issues run deeper but may simply be the result of the practical issues but frankly the origin is more or less moot.

Back to the point:

Given that even incontravertible proof can be doubted, it stands to reason that we are “expected” to take a leap of faith on some things. We can be no more certain of astrophysics than we can about anthropology; at some point in our theorizing, we must just have faith that our deductions are right because there just isn’t any more evidence – even if the evidence we have points to particular outcomes, we can only theoretically connect A to B; we cannot always observe it to be true.

Why is this valid for science but not for religion?

Peace,
Dante

 

[ContegoFides]

For the god question, the evidence that would be sufficient would depend on the god and the nature of the particular god claim under discussion. I’m not totally sure what evidence would be sufficient to get me to accept the existence of, let’s say, the Catholic god. But an all-knowing being obviously would know what kind of evidence would convince me, so I imagine that if such a being really wanted to convince me, he would have offered such evidence long ago.

I have sometimes used this as an example: if a god really wanted to demonstrate his existence, I would want him to do something like send an audible message to everyone on earth at once – to each in their primary language – informing them of his existence and providing a window of a few minutes in which each person could ask a few questions and receive answers that could be confirmed through later investigation of the world.

I think that such an event would make it impossible to be an atheist because it would be overwhelming evidence that a god is real. Now, whether that god is worthy of worship is an entirely different question, so I would not necessarily immediately become a Christian or whatnot.

You have assumed that God desires to reveal Himself to everyone in a dramatic way that no one could deny. In fact, Jesus specifically avoided doing just that several times, refusing to perform miracles for those who were hard of heart or who demanded a “sign” for belief, ironically sometimes after He just worked a miracle. The cynic would of course say that He couldn’t perform the miracle when demanded of Him because He was not God at all, but a charlatan. However, if God is who we assert Him to be, then He doesn’t need to prove anything to us at all, and we have no right to presume that he has to give us such proof. Additionally, I speculate that the issue is threefold: 1) the focus and 2) the nature of the choice for faith, as well as 3) the futility of proof.

First, the nature of the choice. As you indicate, such an event would make it impossible to be an atheist. By definition your free choice in the matter of belief would be denied. If God revealed himself irrefutably, then you would have no choice but to believe in Him, thereby depriving you of free will in the matter. Additionally, God wants us to love Him, in the sense of Agape (as opposed to some twisted romantic notion of that term). Agape is to desire the highest and best good for the beloved, to the point of total self giving and sacrifice. This love requires choice by its very nature. If God “proved” Himself to us, then such love would be impossible.

Second, the focus of the choice. The focus of your choice is on yourself. You are the ultimate arbiter of whether or not God is worthy of your worship. By definition, all atheists are inwardly focused, each believing that they as individuals are the judge of what is rational and true. However, the opposite focus is what is required; because God is omnipotent and unchanging we must conform to Him, not the other way around.

Focusing on the self as the arbiter of truth, right and wrong, and on the question of the worthiness of God to be worshiped is quintessentially Satan’s battle cry of “non-serviat.”

Third, the futility of proof. Jesus is asserted to have performed miracles in front of some people’s eyes and even so they would not accept Him. I submit that if God “proved” His existence to you with a loud announcement to everyone in the world at once that you would still not accept His existence. You would find some other “scientific” explanation, or try, or at best simply say you can’t explain the event.

There are many miracles documented by atheist scientists in the 20th century (and probably already in the 21st). In fact, the Church will often seek out an atheist scientist in order to assess whether an observed miracle has a scientific explanation.

Do such atheist scientists accept the miracle as proof of God’s existence when they can’t explain a miracle cure or some miraculous event? No, they simply say they can’t explain it and move on.

People’s hardness of hearts prevents faith, just as hardness of heart allows some people to choose to do evil.

 

[ThomasToo]

You have assumed that God desires to reveal Himself to everyone in a dramatic way that no one could deny. In fact, Jesus specifically avoided doing just that several times, refusing to perform miracles for those who were hard of heart or who demanded a “sign” for belief.

Except… you know… when he didn’t.

[BIBLEDRB]John 20:24-28[/BIBLEDRB]

 

[ContegoFides]

Doesn’t Pascal’s wager also rest on the notion that one can believe by force of will and that the Judeo-Christian God would prefer someone who attempted to believe because of possible consequences and rewards rather than earnestly seeking out his or her own answers? Further doesn’t it ignore the possibility that some other theology may in fact be correct and in attempting to feign belief in your God one may exacerbate punishment from another deity and the reality that one does in fact lose much in being a believer?

Frankly, I think Pascal’s wager is arguably the worst possible argument for belief to have been imagined. That fact that it persists today is a testament to the fact that people don’t like to throw away ideas, however bad they may be.

No, it’s just a testament that you don’t like the result of the risk analysis.

Pascal’s Wager relies on the supposition that there is a monotheistic God and a Heaven and Hell. As I showed before, ontologically speaking it is rational to assume this assumption is fact due to the nature of the risk analysis. No matter what you do to explain around it, you will always return to the risk you are taking for lack of belief in a monotheistic God and a Heaven and Hell.

The issue of the possibility that some other monotheistic theology may be correct, thereby “exacerbating punishment” does not change the underlying risk analysis. All you have done is show that there may be EXTRA risk above and beyond the underlying question whether to accept a religion that teaches one ominipotent God and Heaven and Hell. (The extra risk being whether you picked the correct religion.) Again, no matter what you do you are back to the underlying issue of belief in a monotheistic God and a Heaven and a Hell.

You have bet the farm that there is no God. That is your choice. No matter what arguments you come up with to try to deny the choice, ontologically speaking you will always have to come back to it.

As for which religion to pick, as I showed earlier, the answer to that question lies in analyzing the claims of the religion itself. Which claim are internally self-consistent (a pointer towards Truth) and which claims are also consistent with the natural law (another pointer towards Truth) and which claims represent the claim to the highest authority (another pointer towards Truth). When analyzed in this light, only the Catholic faith comes out the winner.

Regarding the issue of the “Judeo-Christian God would prefer someone who attempted to believe because of possible consequences and rewards rather than earnestly seeking out his or her own answers,” to a point you are correct. Why? Because the God doesn’t change. There is no “his or her own answers.” There is the absolute Truth, which represents simply what “is.” In your worldview, what “is” is that there’s no God. If that is Truth, then I would have to live with it regardless of whether or not I accepted it. Likewise, if God (as proclaimed by His church) is real, then you will have to live with Him whether you accept Him or not.

Additionally, you have a poor understanding of salvation. You should think less in terms of master-slave and carrot-stick. Instead, try to think in terms of relationships. We and God are friends if we keep His commands (He said so) - there is a relationship of lover and beloved. (The “command” part is required as we as limited beings must conform to Him, not vice-versa.) The carrot and the stick represented by Pascal’s Wager is merely the beginning of this relationship - a “wake up call” to start developing that personal relationship with God.

Which brings me to your remaining objection regarding choice of belief. You can will belief. Faith and prayer is like a muscle you excersise, and your relationship with God improves with time just like your relationship with your spouse improves with quality time investment. The first step is simply to say “I believe” and then go from there.

For example, I can will myself to marry a woman. Maybe I don’t know her or love her, but I can will for myself to enter into marriage with her. Marriage is a choice, though maybe I can’t really feel what that means. Over time, if I try, I can come to feel and understand love for my wife. The first step, though, is a basic act of will. Faith is the same way.

People can make acts of faith from radically different postions all the time. Some go from being true believers to being atheists. Some go from being hard-core atheists to becoming true believing Catholics.

Why does this happen? Something magical? No, it boils down to an act of will.

 

[AntiTheist]

But if you saw a leprechaun walking down the street, you would have little choice but to believe in leprechauns. In the same way, God cannot merely reveal His existence in an indisputable way without compromising – in fact, revoking – our free will. This would NOT be an act of love (caritas) on His part, as we would effectively be forced to believe.

I would be forced to believe that he exists, but I wouldn’t be forced to worship him: I would certainly still have free will in choosing whether or not to worship him.

There’s an example from the Christian story itself of someone who knows 100% for sure that god exists and still chooses not to worship him: Satan. That story demonstrates that it is possible to be 100% sure that god exists and still have the free will to reject him and refuse to worship him.

Whether I believe that a god exists is an entirely different question from whether or not that god is worthy of worship. I can only begin to address the second question after I am convinced of the truth of the first.

Faith is what is necessary; no amount of evidence can do what faith can do – and I speak from experience.

I agree that your beliefs are based on faith and not evidence, and I’m glad that you agree.

You suggest in other places that there is evidence, but you can’t have it both ways. Either there is insufficient evidence to support the claim, in which you need faith to accept this claim, or there is sufficient evidence, in which case there is no faith required at all.

I submit that there is insufficient evidence to support this claim and that you need to fall back on faith, which is the excuse that we give ourselves to believe things not justified by evidence.

 

[ContegoFides]

I would disagree with that supposition. It seems that the universe looks fundamentally different than it would if there were an all-powerful, all-loving being that actually cared about the lives, pains and sufferings of life on this planet. While as an agnostic atheist I acknowledge the possibility that there may be gods out in the universe of one sort of another I think the Christian God is demonstrably non-existent.

Why would the universe look different? You have assumed that you know what is best, and in fact have substituted yourself for God.

You say the Christian God is demonstrably non-existent. Demonstrate it! Wait… you can’t. Well, you could TRY - but any such arguments ultimately boil down to statements of faith because they can’t be positivistically proven.

The question of suffering is difficult. Suffering results from sin (our refual to follow God) and thus is a result of free choice. Free choice is required to attain a deep loving relationship with God. Suffering also teaches us something of the nature of sacrificial love and total self giving. Hence, I would come to the opposite conclusion that you have: that suffering is a strong indicator of the reality of a loving God that respects our choice to love Him or not.

 

[ContegoFides]

Except… you know… when he didn’t.

John 20:24-28 (Douay Rheims)
24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, who is called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.

25 The other disciples therefore said to him: We have seen the Lord. But he said to them: Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Jesus cometh, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said: Peace be to you.

27 Then he saith to Thomas: Put in thy finger hither, and see my hands; and bring hither thy hand, and put it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing.

28 Thomas answered, and said to him: My Lord, and my God.

Sure, God can give us signs when He chooses, and always it is for our benefit.

However, all of the apostles, even Thomas, had an underlying faith in God. God gives us tools to work with and helps us out along the way if there’s an underlying desire to have a relationship with him. If hardness of heart is the rule, then that relationship is impossible - and all the signs in the world won’t help you.

 

[AntiTheist]

Do such atheist scientists accept the miracle as proof of God’s existence when they can’t explain a miracle cure or some miraculous event? No, they simply say they can’t explain it and move on.

A miracle – defined here as anything that cannot be perfectly explained via science – is simply something that cannot be perfectly explained via science. There’s lots of stuff we can’t explain.

The first thing you would have to do is to demonstrate that something weird is happening – and you’d have to demonstrate it in laboratory conditions, to rule out errors in perception. Then, once we’ve established that something weird is happening, we’d have to investigate causes.

There is, unfortunately for you, no way to get from “something weird happened” to “something weird happened because the god of the Jews made it happen.” It might, for example, have been the doing of Thor or Loki or a wandering rakshasa or a leprechaun or a zillion other potential supernatural explanations.

That’s why I proposed the scenario that I did: a god explicity announcing himself to everyone on earth would be pretty much undeniable.

If it’s true that your god doesn’t want to prove himself to people, then he’s doing a really good job of it. There is absolutely no discernable difference between a hypothetical universe in which there is a god and a universe in which there is not.

Thomas:

Except… you know… when he didn’t.

Yeah, but note that the point of that story is that those who believe without seeing are the truly blessed. The purpose of the passage is to show that true followers shouldn’t need evidence, like silly ol’ skeptic Doubting Thomas did…

 

[ContegoFides]

In other words, evidence tells us that complexity and intelligence are the results of a process. On the basis of this evidence, claims that rely on the assumption that intelligence could exist without such a process immediately become suspect. So if it is true that gods exist – assuming that a god is an intelligence that preceded the universe – then it flies directly in the face of all the evidence we have ever collected about life. That, right there, is grounds for being skeptical of god-claims.

Now, this isn’t airtight evidence that “There are no gods,” but it suggests that there is something very wrong with god-claims.

I challenge the assertion that complexity and intelligence are the results of a process. Using your own rubric, I demand positivistic proof for your assertion.

I happen to know that you cannot provide it. You can’t even show me how single celled organisms with specialized organelles developed from the primordial soup before life arose on Earth. You can show me that evolution changes creatures bodies, but not the initial industrial complexity in the first place.

Additionally, even if “proof of intelligence arising from process” is accepted as being true, your assertion that God’s existence “flies directly in the face of all evidence”, is groundless and illogical. God could still be the first cause of that process, and thus the creator of all life.

You even nearly admit it when you say, “Now, this isn’t airtight evidence that “There are no gods,” but it suggests that there is something very wrong with god-claims.”

Ironically, you rely on “suggestion” as your reason for atheistic belief, the same as I do for showing there is a God.

 

[AntiTheist]

The issue of the possibility that some other monotheistic theology may be correct, thereby “exacerbating punishment” does not change the underlying risk analysis. All you have done is show that there may be EXTRA risk above and beyond the underlying question whether to accept a religion that teaches one ominipotent God and Heaven and Hell. (The extra risk being whether you picked the correct religion.) Again, no matter what you do you are back to the underlying issue of belief in a monotheistic God and a Heaven and a Hell.

See, here’s the part that’s problematic.

You’re admitting that those who pick the wrong religion are risking punishment. In fact, everybody who picked the wrong religion is gonna be in for it. At best, one particular group is going to hit the jackpot, and the way you guys have presented it, it really will be a jackpot: it’s completely and totally dependent on blind luck.

Not having sufficient evidence, you’re in a position where you have to blindly choose a religion and begin from “I believe” – I’ll grant for the sake of argument your weird notion of being able to choose beliefs – having absolutely no way of knowing whether you’re correct or whether you’re being misled by Satan or perhaps some wayward rakshasa of Hinduism.

My position is that I choose to be honest and say that I don’t see any reason to suppose that any religion has met its burden of proof. If I’m going to be “punished” for this, then fine – I don’t want to spend eternity with some doofus who gave me the ability to reason and then deliberately made himself obscure and beyond the reach of reason.

As for which religion to pick, as I showed earlier, the answer to that question lies in analyzing the claims of the religion itself. Which claim are internally self-consistent (a pointer towards Truth) and which claims are also consistent with the natural law (another pointer towards Truth) and which claims represent the claim to the highest authority (another pointer towards Truth). When analyzed in this light, only the Catholic faith comes out the winner.

You do realize that every other religion claims to be internally self-consistent, consistent with natural law, and claims the highest authority, right?

 

[ContegoFides]

Is a notion of ‘love’ that allows for this amount of suffering a meaningful one? I could say I love my daughter and regularly beat her within an inch of loss of consciousness but you would–rightfully–question my verisimilitude. Similarly if I knew someone else was beating her and I had the ability to stop it easily and didn’t. That’s what the Christian God does, especially if we ignore the free will point and confine ourselves to the suffering of non-humans (e.g. ichneumonidae and caterpillars).

I addressed the question of suffering above. It boils down to free will, sin, and the requirement of free will to have a truly meaningful relationship.

God does not beat us. We beat ourselves.

The more difficult question of suffering, what you did not raise, is physical evil - natural disasters and such and the suffering that results. That’s a much better challenge than the moral evils you have raised.

Again, however, there’s a difference between what God allows and what God wills. You have also assumed that suffering is always bad. In the larger picture, suffering could be considered good if it prepares us for our final encounter with God.

 

[AntiTheist]

I challenge the assertion that complexity and intelligence are the results of a process. Using your own rubric, I demand positivistic proof for your assertion.

Every last thing that we have ever learned about living things.

EDIT: To be serious for a moment, check out Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth for an overview of the staggering amounts of evidence in favor of evolution.

 

[ContegoFides]

In other words, we have a ton of evidence that intelligence is the product of a process. If you’re going to claim the existence of an intelligence that is not the product of such a process, then you’ve really got your work cut out for you, as you need to demonstrate something that runs counter to all of the available evidence.

The scientific evidence is out as to whether intelligence is the product of process. I did require proof of such process in a previous post, but that was not dispositive of my faith. The answer to this scientific question has no effect on first cause, and thus the answer to the scientific is tangential to the metaphysical question. Of course, if intelligence were not the product of process, that would be another “indicator” for proof of God - but I suspect that proving that would be impossible (as you’re proving a negative).

 

[DanteAlighieri]

ThomasToo and Antitheist,

I just want to make sure we’re on the same page here, as I’m about to post something that I’ve already posted. AT, you assert that I am trying to have it both ways by trying to lean on faith and evidence, but I am relying on the evidence of logic and right reason as well as the evidence of my own faith.

Given that even incontravertible proof can be doubted, it stands to reason that we are “expected” to take a leap of faith on some things. We can be no more certain of astrophysics than we can about anthropology; at some point in our theorizing, we must just have faith that our deductions are right because there just isn’t any more evidence – even if the evidence we have points to particular outcomes, we can only theoretically connect A to B; we cannot always observe it to be true.

Why is this acceptable for science, history, etc. but not for religion?

Peace,
Dante

 

[ThomasToo]

Why would the universe look different? You have assumed that you know what is best, and in fact have substituted yourself for God.

You say the Christian God is demonstrably non-existent. Demonstrate it! Wait… you can’t. Well, you could TRY - but any such arguments ultimately boil down to statements of faith because they can’t be positivistically proven.

The question of suffering is difficult. Suffering results from sin (our refual to follow God) and thus is a result of free choice. Free choice is required to attain a deep loving relationship with God. Suffering also teaches us something of the nature of sacrificial love and total self giving. Hence, I would come to the opposite conclusion that you have: that suffering is a strong indicator of the reality of a loving God that respects our choice to love Him or not.

I have hardly substituted myself for God but looking at the state of the world I could probably do a good bit better.

The Christian God is demonstrably non-existent because this is most certainly not ‘le meilleur des mondes possibles [the best of all possible worlds]’ (Gottfried Leibniz, Essays on Theodicy, concerning the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil). Do you disagree with this assertion (i.e. is this the best of all possible worlds)?

But what of the suffering of all those beings that lack the ability to choose anything (e.g. caterpillars containing the eggs of the ichneumonidae) and that results from natural phenomena? Surely these cannot be explained away by the free will defense.