To Atheists - why God does not appear to us

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FightingFat:
When you spend 10 days working with a child that can’t move or talk, you have no experience with disabled children and struggle to wash, them, cloth and toilet them. When you start the experience terrified of what lies ahead, wondering why they are alive and what you are doing and then finish, and the child looks up at you and smiles broadly- you have all the answers you ever needed.
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I currently work 8 hours a day seeing to the needs of six developmentally disabled adults - all in their 20s. All incontinent, non-verbal, and only one is ambulatory. Two must be fed processed foods.

So while putting a “smile” on their faces, is a reward in and of itself, there are no “answers” there.
 
God does not force belief in Him on us. We can choose to believe or not.

If God appeared in a way that everyone would recognize Him, and said “Come join the Catholic Church, it is my Church” everyone would be Catholic. Nobody would have a choice anymore, it is effectively taking away our free will.
 
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BobCatholic:
God does not force belief in Him on us. We can choose to believe or not.

If God appeared in a way that everyone would recognize Him, and said “Come join the Catholic Church, it is my Church” everyone would be Catholic. Nobody would have a choice anymore, it is effectively taking away our free will.
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God appeared to the first man and woman and they still managed to disobey. I assume God has appeared to Satan yet he is still disobedient. Don’t these examples disprove your point?

Besides, if I invite God to appear to me, how could he violate my free will by appearing to me?
 
Would you recognize him or would you reject him like the Jewish leadership did?
 
Two words: Pascal’s Wager

Pray to God, REALLY and sincerely Pray to God. Ask for a sign. Give it a little time.

If he doesn’t answer you, you have lost nothing and maybe feel a liitle silly.

When you do get your sign, you’ll have the answers you’ve been looking for.
 
Sorry to jump in, if all this has already been said forgive me! First, I’d say to my atheist friends to not be so sure that God hasn’t appeared to them! Just because a person didn’t understand what they were seeing doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.

Second, I suppose that the reason that atheists might think that God never appears to them is because when atheists do see him, and get it, they’re not atheists anymore!
 
Before you blame the Jewish leadership for not recognising Jesus as God, when he told them to give up the old ways and to accept some new ones, consider this:
If someone stood up in front of you and said: *“I am the son of God, and my Father says, contraception is a good thing, homosexuality is not a sin, and, please, stop spending a fortune on church buildings while children are starving.” *
Would you recognise such a person as “God”?
 
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AnAtheist:
Before you blame the Jewish leadership for not recognising Jesus as God, when he told them to give up the old ways and to accept some new ones, consider this:
If someone stood up in front of you and said: *“I am the son of God, and my Father says, contraception is a good thing, homosexuality is not a sin, and, please, stop spending a fortune on church buildings while children are starving.” *
Would you recognise such a person as “God”?
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Of course not, because this “God” would be in opposition to the natural law that he imposed via creation. Unfortunately, this “someone” you propose mixed worthy agendas with frivolous ones: contra-ception subverts a natural process, and homosexuality (among other things) perverts it. Charity is a virtue of human nature, and the balance of giving to the poor at the expense of oneself (one’s church building, one’s home, one’s SUV, one’s playstation/PC/cel phone, etc.) is a matter of prudence. The poor have always been with us, and most likely will always be - liquidating parishes and the Vatican won’t negate that fact.

Furthermore, anyone can say they are the Son of God, but why should we believe them by their word? Jesus backed these words up by showing His power through miracles, most specifically the resurrection. Miracles of the faithful have persisted throughout history, and people have gone to their death to preserve the church that he founded. There is a 2000-year legacy; if you ignore that, you can draw some pretty lame hypotheses, and make them sound intellectual.
 
The point is, that Jesus (if he existed) teached stuff, that was against the Jewish belief. He declared some things to be perfectly ok, that were considered to be a sin.
If someone showed up and teached something contrary to your set of beliefs, you would not consider him to be God. Neither did the Jewish leadership.
 
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7andcounting:
Two words: Pascal’s Wager

Pray to God, REALLY and sincerely Pray to God. Ask for a sign. Give it a little time.

If he doesn’t answer you, you have lost nothing and maybe feel a liitle silly.

When you do get your sign, you’ll have the answers you’ve been looking for.
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By stating this you assume that we haven’t. I have and have never felt anything.
 
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Monarchy:
By stating this you assume that we haven’t. I have and have never felt anything.
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none of my business, but … was that a turning point from agnosticism to atheism for you? just curious.
 
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squirt:
none of my business, but … was that a turning point from agnosticism to atheism for you? just curious.
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Atheism is just being without God belief. Agnosticism is just saying that you can’t prove it either way. So it is possible to be both.
 
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Monarchy:
Atheism is just being without God belief. Agnosticism is just saying that you can’t prove it either way. So it is possible to be both.
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Thanks for answering. I don’t know that I’ve ever run into anybody before who classisfies him or herself as both atheist and agnostic. Live and learn, eh.
 
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squirt:
Thanks for answering. I don’t know that I’ve ever run into anybody before who classisfies him or herself as both atheist and agnostic. Live and learn, eh.
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Booger, an agnostic atheist.
 
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squirt:
Thanks for answering. I don’t know that I’ve ever run into anybody before who classisfies him or herself as both atheist and agnostic. Live and learn, eh.
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Well there are ‘strong atheists’ who state that there is no God, but by doing so they are making a positive statement and should back up their claim. ‘weak atheists’ (like myself) simply have no belief in god (like the way they have no belief in Santa Claus).
 
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Monarchy:
Well there are ‘strong atheists’ who state that there is no God, but by doing so they are making a positive statement and should back up their claim. ‘weak atheists’ (like myself) simply have no belief in god (like the way they have no belief in Santa Claus).
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So you don’t believe Santa Claus can be proved either way, either? An agnostic aclausist? :cool:

(And no, I’m not trying to get into any debates about existence of God or anything … just curious about ways in which different people see the world.)
 
Well there are ‘strong atheists’ who state that there is no God, but by doing so they are making a positive statement and should back up their claim. ‘weak atheists’ (like myself) simply have no belief in god (like the way they have no belief in Santa Claus).

Not the same at all. You can prove that Santa Claus does not exist. You cannot prove that God does not exist. You can only hope that God does not exist, which is how atheists think.

They never stop to ask themselves why they hope that God does not exist. Selective questioning, to put it mildly!

Read psychologist Paul Vitz’s book *Faith of the Fatherless * and you will find out the fundamental pathology underlying atheism.
 
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squirt:
So you don’t believe Santa Claus can be proved either way, either? An agnostic aclausist? :cool:
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You can not physically prove the non-existance of anything, Santa included.
 
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