Way over my head. letter from atheist brother

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brikar

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There is no way, I can help my brother understand Catholicism. I am not even close to his level. Maybe, there is someone here who is? I don’t know where to go for help.

"OK. So Catholics accept big bang cosmology and evolution. Great! So then here’s how I think what Catholics believe reveals that their faith and science are at odds with one another.

God, who exists outside the universe and therefor is not subject to its laws, decided to create the universe, and so he did. It began as a primordial atom of infinite density that expanded outward. Energy condensed into matter, matter condensed into stars, and stars exploded, seeding the universe with the building blocks of creation. Our current estimate is that there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, that is, more stars than the number of grains of sand that exist on all the beaches of all of Earth.

Approximately 10 billion years passed before our own sun came into existence. Half a billion years after that, the earth took shape. (Switching now from belief in big bang to belief in evolution.) A billion years after that, single celled organisms were the only life on earth, and remained that way for the next 2.5 billion years, when multicellular life first appeared about 1 billion years ago. The homo genus branched off from the rest of the great apes about 2.5 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago. So, humans did not exist until 99.9999% of the total amount of time elapsed since God created the universe versus the present day.

For the next 180,000 years, humans lived as hunter/gatherers without civilization, in what must have been a terrifying, animal-like existence. Then about 10,000 years ago, we started farming. Meanwhile, 99.9% of all the species that have ever lived on the planet have gone extinct. This whole time, people suffered horribly. Childbirth mortality rates were extremely high for both mother and child. This whole time, God doesn’t say a word to anyone (as far as we know).

Then, let’s call it 4,000 years ago, God appears to Abraham and says, “Hey, you should kill your son.” So Abraham ties up his son and is just about to plunge the knife in when God stops him and says, “Just kidding. I just wanted to see if you’d really do it. Your faith in me is good.” Isaac lives to see another day, I’m sure with no emotional trauma whatsoever. And this is how the great Abrahamic faiths were born – with an incitation to murder one’s own child and an act of child abuse.

Then God appears to Moses and says, “I need you to tell your people for me that I need them to stop gathering sticks on the Sabbath, because that’s the day of rest. Oh, and take the gays out to the edge of town and stone them. And unruly children, too. And dash some infants against the rocks while you’re at it. And get yourselves some slaves and virgins.” And that’s how Judaism was born. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but every last one of these grossly immoral pronouncements are God’s commandments in the bible. This is what he has to say to people after ignoring them for 196,000 years and then he finally reveals himself to a few choice individuals.

So, without even taking us up to the time of Christ and the birth of Catholicism, that is how you can merge the Catholic belief in Yahweh with the theories of the big bang and evolution. To me, this makes no sense at all, so I would say that this is just one example of many where religion and science are at odds with one another.

Were we “created” at all, let alone “created in God’s image”, if we got here by way of the big bang and evolution?

At what point did God decide that the homo genus had become human enough to start giving them souls? Of course, we can’t know. But what criteria might he use to make such a decision, especially considering that everyone is the same species as their mother? That means someone got a soul, and their mother didn’t. I bet the first woman to get a soul loved her mother.

Also, why do you believe a) there is a God, and b) that He is the source of creation?"
 
I suggest you NOT engage someone this disrespectful and snide, especially if he is family. Agree to disagree.

He is not “way above” you. He is really quite ignorant on a number of fronts, and his note is FULL of inaccuracies and logical fallacies, starting with his premise.
 
Every question that someone asks you, has an answer.

My suggestion: Ask a priest about this.
 
Atheists often accuse us of a logical error called “reasoning from ignorance.” We don’t know how thunder happens, so it must be a god banging a big drum. After all, what else could it possibly be?

But here’s an atheist making that exact mistake. * “How could we possibly know at what point our ancestors were endowed with immortal souls? We can’t answer that question, so it must have never happened!”* Great logic. Bertrand Russell, you are not.

Is light particles or waves? We can’t possibly answer that question (we really can’t - not now, and not ever - it has been proven and is settled scientific fact), so light must not exist if we cannot even say what it IS. Wow. What is this bright stuff all around me?

It’s unusual to see an atheist make this mistake.

By the way, I mentioned light - if you ever have a discussion with an atheist who knows physics, tell him that the Blessed Trinity is the quantum superposition of God. Watch him blow a cork.
 
Tell him: either a godless cosmos had a beginning, or it had no beginning (always existed in one form or another). Then ask him: “If the godless cosmos had a beginning, then the only way for the very first something to pop into existence from absolute nothing is by magic. Do you believe in magic even though there’s no scientific proof?” Science can’t even develop a theory for how absolute nothing could magically spontaneously morph into the very first something without sounding ridiculously illogical. Then tell him, “if the godless cosmos had no beginning, then it has always existed in one form or another, which means that science is indefinitely flawed since it is forever impotent to scientifically explain how a godless cosmos could Exist when it was never born, by definition. Also, sadly, this would mean there is no reason for the cosmos’s existence, since it was never born, by definition.”
 
First I would point out that that is what science may say now but in 100 years it will change.

The Catholic church does not 'accept evolution and the big bang they just say it is not incompatible with Catholic doctrine and we can believe it if we wish with certain assumptions.

I would also point out that the hebrew word translated as “day” in genesis means a period of time. It is not specific. And that Genesis said, well before science did, that first came the land and the sea, then came the animals in the sea, then came then animals of the land, then last came man. If evolution is true (and I’m not convinced it is) then I say it was in the bible first.

I would also point out that it was science that said the world was flat, not the bible. the bible says it is a sphere in Issaih.

If you want to engage him you might challenge him to prove evolution on the big scale. Not the small scale that says all dogs are related, or all monkeys are related. But the big picture of everything starting from a single fish. See if he gives you something tangable and not insults. I bet he can’t.
 
Hey brikar, I’m not here to paint a pretty picture of roses for you. I think your brother has some good points. I’ve had a similar conversation with an atheist friend and I am going to share it here, so you can pretty much see the possible outcome of trying to explain things to your brother. I hope it doesn’t go over your head, and in saying that I do not mean to insult your intelligence! If you’d like some clarification you can always ask questions. 🙂

Atheist:
I . . . find it ironic in the extreme that . . . a God who creates and silently watches over, for millions of years, the innumerable instances of suffering and cruelty endured by humans and animals, is behaving “consistently with His moral perfection”.

He goes on to quote Nietzsche:

“A God who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure that his creatures understand his intention - could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of the truth”? (Daybreak.91).

Me:
The quote from Nietzsche is compelling to me. But, I know of a similar attitude from Christopher Hitchens. WLC [William Lane Craig] seemingly refutes him:

“Well now Mr. Hitchens says, ‘But why did God wait so long before he sent Christ? Human beings have existed for thousands of years on this planet before Christ’s coming.’ Well, what’s really crucial here is not the time involved rather it’s the population of the world. The population reference bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever lived on this planet is about 105 billion people. Only 2% of them were born prior to the advent of Christ.”
(hitchensdebates.blogspot.com/2010/07/hitchens-vs-craig-biola-university.html)

Here’s Hitchens’ response:
“Dr. Craig talks as if, ‘Ok, but since then they’ll be more people born so it might have been a good time in terms of population growth,’ well, there are a huge number of people who still haven’t even heard of this idea [of Christianity]. The news hasn’t penetrated to them, or where it has, it’s been brought to them by people who Dr. Craig doesn’t think of as Christians, such as Mormons, for example, and it’s taught to them in many discrepant and competitive and indeed incompatible and violently irreconcilable ways.” (from same debate)
 
Cont.

Atheist:
  1. I seem to remember Jesus showing concern for even one sheep that goes astray, but according to WLC if over two billion human beings were born too early, that’s not a problem!
  2. Suffering didn’t suddenly stop once Jesus arrived.
Nietzsche’s point is significantly different from Hitchens’s. Nietzsche’s main point is that even after Jesus, it’s far from clear what the whole point of his visit was, and that “getting things wrong”, theologically speaking, can have the severest consequences. Hitchens, I take it, was stressing the actual suffering that people endured prior to Jesus’s intervention.

Me:
  1. You have a good point; I agree that this is a discrepancy unless it be resolved by some “scholarly hermeneutics” or something similar. There is a somewhat ambiguous passage in the NT that might be relevant here. Some people interpret as referring just to believers in God before the coming of Christ, but that doesn’t seem to be entirely accurate:
    “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared. . . . For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh they way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does” (1 Peter 3:18-20; 4:6). This constitutes an example of something that probably requires “scholarly hermeneutics” to get a good idea of what it means out of it. It sounds as though its saying those who died during the flood or before the flood (whose disobedience led to God eventually unleashing the flood) had a chance to hear the gospel and so be saved. In which case, at least some of those two billion people, “lost sheep,” did not have to remain lost. If that interpretation of the passage is false, then of course it doesn’t resolve the problem, but it’s the best I can think of.
  2. Surely nobody could disagree with this point. I don’t think Craig was thinking so much of suffering, however, as he was ignorance of God/Christ, especially since Christianity claims that “there is salvation in no one else [but Christ]” (Acts 4:12).
Alright, I now see a difference between Hitchens and Nietzsche on the topic. I would add that Hitchens appears to be stressing not only the actual suffering people endured but also the impossibility that they would ever have a chance of “redemption” or recompense of that suffering in heaven because they were born before Jesus and never could believe in him (which might be resolved by the passage from 1 Peter mentioned above).

Atheist:
b) Jesus: But saying Jesus died for our sins and through him we can achieve salvation is ambiguous and insufficient in the extreme, because Jesus, at no point in the Gospels, actually sets out and explains just what “sin” and “salvation” actually means and how these concepts are grounded.

c)The indispensability of Jesus’s message: There are two different, but related, points here.

(i)Those countless millions who, for whatever reason, lived and died without ever having heard of Jesus.

(ii) Those countless millions who have read the Gospels (or have been informed of their contents by various intermediaries) and disagree profoundly (and often violently) on how it is to be interpreted.

Me:
You’re right to point out that Jesus doesn’t expound on the meaning of sin and salvation. In the book of John, he talks about salvation a great deal, although he isn’t easy to understand (hence the need for an interpreter). So, apparently he passed down the meaning to his apostles–and we have their writings, and from them we can glean what Jesus meant by sin and salvation. Then there is the question of what the apostles meant–the Catholics and Protestants disagree there. Sin, I believe, meant to the Jews transgressing God’s law (as set out in the Torah). Salvation is more ambiguous though, and I hardly know what to make of it myself based on the NT writings. The Jews did not believe in a need to be “saved from sin” (they had ways to “atone” without Jesus); they believed in a need to be “saved from their Gentile oppressors.” So, the whole concept of “salvation from sin” that Jesus brought onto the scene is alien to Judaism, I suspect.

taken from “Nietzsche and Pascal” from his blog nietzscheasfisherman.blogspot.com.
 
edarlitrix said:
Hey brikar, I’m not here to paint a pretty picture of roses for you. I think your brother has some good points. I’ve had a similar conversation with an atheist friend and I am going to share it here, so you can pretty much see the possible outcome of trying to explain things to your brother. I hope it doesn’t go over your head, and in saying that I do not mean to insult your intelligence! If you’d like some clarification you can always ask questions. 🙂

Atheist:
I . . . find it ironic in the extreme that . . . a God who creates and silently watches over, for millions of years, the innumerable instances of suffering and cruelty endured by humans and animals, is behaving “consistently with His moral perfection”.

He goes on to quote Nietzsche:

“A God who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure that his creatures understand his intention - could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of the truth”? (Daybreak.91).

Me:
The quote from Nietzsche is compelling to me. But, I know of a similar attitude from Christopher Hitchens. WLC [William Lane Craig] seemingly refutes him:

“Well now Mr. Hitchens says, ‘But why did God wait so long before he sent Christ? Human beings have existed for thousands of years on this planet before Christ’s coming.’ Well, what’s really crucial here is not the time involved rather it’s the population of the world. The population reference bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever lived on this planet is about 105 billion people. Only 2% of them were born prior to the advent of Christ.”
(hitchensdebates.blogspot.com/2010/07/hitchens-vs-craig-biola-university.html)

Here’s Hitchens’ response:
“Dr. Craig talks as if, ‘Ok, but since then they’ll be more people born so it might have been a good time in terms of population growth,’ well, there are a huge number of people who still haven’t even heard of this idea [of Christianity]. The news hasn’t penetrated to them, or where it has, it’s been brought to them by people who Dr. Craig doesn’t think of as Christians, such as Mormons, for example, and it’s taught to them in many discrepant and competitive and indeed incompatible and violently irreconcilable ways.” (from same debate)
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Somehow I’m not buying this. You say you are a christian, yet you talk like an atheist. Specifically " I hope this doesn’t go over your head." and ’ I don’t mean to insult your intelegence".
You had a conversation with an atheist friend that, apparently, you remember verbatim (yea right) You keep saying repeatedly that the Atheist makes good points and seem confused as to what Christianity believes. You also have a sense of hopelessness in debating an atheist. I smell a rat.
 
Hi Brikar,
The one premise that must be accepted by those who have faith in the creator is that the creator exists eternally and independently outside space and time.
As far as all the rest goes it is evolution or one should say the evolving creation. The “Big Bang” gave us Time, Space and the Quantum Vacuum. everything else is a result of the evolving process from that point.
When creationists and evolutionists take up mutually exclusive positions they do each other and us all a disservice. From this point of view Creationists appear to deny that the creation process is on going, and evolutionists glance over the fact that more and more scientist’s are coming to the realisation that the universe is the way it is because it can’t be any other way in other words the universe is the way it is because to exist it must be this way.
Let me explain this way: The same laws of physics that give us consciousness exist in the quantum vacuum therefor the quantum vacuum itself has a consciousness, is poised and participating with us and with the universe as creation continues to unfold.
: If the intensity of the Big Bang caused the expansion of the universe to go one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second faster or slower the universe as we know it would not be here and would definitely not be able to sustain life.
Nearly all accept the premise now that the probability of this occurring by chance is practically nil and that when Einstine famously said “God dose not play dice” he knew what he was talking about.
This is not blasphemy. This is God. As Augastine said " The bible is not a book of the natural sciences".
 
Father Spitzer, a brilliant physicist and priest, has a website dedicated to showing the harmony of science, philosophy, and faith. Tell your brother to check it out.

magisreasonfaith.org/
 
Don’t give your brother so much credit. Perhaps you haven’t studied enough, so you’re not capable of responding. But his argument is full of logical fallacies and misunderstandings.
brikar said:
"OK. So Catholics accept big bang cosmology and evolution. Great! So then here’s how I think what Catholics believe reveals that their faith and science are at odds with one another.
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Yes, Catholics accept Big Bang cosmology. The Big Bang was first theorized by a Belgian Priest, who was also a physicist and astronomer, named Fr Georges Lemaitre. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_lemaitre.html

The Big Bang isn’t something that atheists discovered and then Catholics accepted so that we don’t look ignorant and anti-science. The Big Bang was discovered by Catholics. Likewise Heliocentrism was basically discovered by Copernicus, who was a devout Catholic. There are numerous other scientific fields that this is true too.
God, who exists outside the universe and therefor is not subject to its laws, decided to create the universe, and so he did. It began as a primordial atom of infinite density that expanded outward. Energy condensed into matter, matter condensed into stars, and stars exploded, seeding the universe with the building blocks of creation. Our current estimate is that there are about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, that is, more stars than the number of grains of sand that exist on all the beaches of all of Earth.
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Yes, there are more stars than grains of sand in the universe. Sounds crazy! But there are also more molecules in 10 droplets of water than there are stars in the universe.

npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/09/17/161096233/which-is-greater-the-number-of-sand-grains-on-earth-or-stars-in-the-sky

Either way, the size of the Universe isn’t an argument for or against God’s existence. This whole paragraph is irrelevant and he’s just trying to impress you with his knowledge.
Approximately 10 billion years passed before our own sun came into existence. Half a billion years after that, the earth took shape. (Switching now from belief in big bang to belief in evolution.) A billion years after that, single celled organisms were the only life on earth, and remained that way for the next 2.5 billion years, when multicellular life first appeared about 1 billion years ago. The homo genus branched off from the rest of the great apes about 2.5 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago. So, humans did not exist until 99.9999% of the total amount of time elapsed since God created the universe versus the present day.
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Again, more irrelevant info.

I see where he’s going with his time argument though. But it’s another red herring. God exists outside of time and space, so you can’t say that “10 billion years passed” from Gods perspective.
 
For the next 180,000 years, humans lived as hunter/gatherers without civilization . .This whole time, God doesn’t say a word to anyone (as far as we know).
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He made 3 assumptions here than he didn’t prove.
  1. “in what must have been a terrifying, animal-like existence.” He doesn’t know if this is true or not. But again, it’s still irrelevant. Even if our ancestors had a harsh life, that doesn’t prove or disprove Gods existence. So long as the humans of that time had rational souls (a conscious) and could turn to God, then they could know and love God. Catholicism never promises an easy life. So the harshness of life is an irrelevant question. If anything, a harsh life is a reason to believe in God, not disbelieve in God. From his atheist perspective, all suffering in the world is meaningless. At least theism gives purpose to suffering.
  2. “childbirth mortality rates were extremely high” Again, how does he know this? Did he get into a time machine and go back 50,000 years to find out? I’ll bet that the childbirth mortality rate was approximately the same 10,000 years ago as it was 150 years ago. They had pretty much the same medicine from 100,000 years ago until 150 years ago. Modern medicine is very new. But again, whether or not childbearing was tough or not is irrelevant.
  3. “This whole time, God doesn’t say a word to anyone (as far as we know)” This is, theologically, the biggest assumption he makes, and it shows that he knows nothing about Catholic teaching. The Bible teaches that God is not distant from any of us. That includes you, me, an Australian Aborigine before Christianity arrived, or a person living 100,000 years ago.
Acts 17:25-28 "Rather, He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’As some of your own poets* have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
*“your own poets” refers to non-Christian Greek poets, who sought God but were not Christians or Jews. Paul affirms that even they are children of God.

Romans 2:6-8, 14-18 "God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. . . (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) "

Notice that it doesn’t say only Christians who seek glory, honor, and immortality will be given eternal life. It even specifically states that Gentiles who don’t have the law-- that means they’re not Jews or Christians-- have the law of God written on their hearts and can still seek God.

So your brother is very mistaken to believe that people who existed thousands of years ago had no access to God. Quite the opposite. Even Christopher Hitchens, a very famous atheist, admitted that the universality of religion is actually a good argument in its favor, since such widespread cultural commonalities cannot be explained away as cultural constructions. Belief in God is something intrinsic within human nature; and that’s true whether you’re a Catholic, Australian Aborigine, or Native American.

So the question isn’t whether or not people who lived thousands of years ago had access to God. They did.

The question is whether or not the God that humanity has been seeking has revealed Himself in Jesus. The atheist simply assumes that all religions make the same claims. But this isn’t true. All major religions outside of Christianity teach that God (or their similar figure) is transcendent and cannot be completely accessed. None of them teach that God incarnated to make Himself known.

Muslims believe that God is completely and utterly transcendent, incomprehensible, and has not revealed Himself fully. Hindu’s believe that the Creator of the Universe has only revealed itself in different mysterious forms. The Pagan philosophers like Aristotle and Plato believed in One Creator, but believed that this Creator was transcendent and largely inaccessible.

Christianity says that the Creator that Aristotle, Plato, Hindu’s, Muslims, and Jews all look towards has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus. No longer does man reach up the huge distance trying to reach God, but rather, God has come down to us to make Himself known to us.
 
Then, let’s call it 4,000 years ago, God appears to Abraham and says, “Hey, you should kill your son.” So Abraham ties up his son and is just about to plunge the knife in when God stops him and says, “Just kidding. I just wanted to see if you’d really do it. Your faith in me is good.” Isaac lives to see another day, I’m sure with no emotional trauma whatsoever. And this is how the great Abrahamic faiths were born – with an incitation to murder one’s own child and an act of child abuse.
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This shows just how little your brother knows about Abraham and his life story. It sounds like he’s read a lot of Richard Dawkins and swallowed it whole.

Besides, didn’t your brother talk about how brutal life was back then? Shouldn’t Jacob have been culturally conditioned to be around knives? And didn’t God provide the Ram before anything serious happened?

What you brother doesn’t see is that the story of Abraham and Jacob is a typology (a foreshadowing) of what was going to come later. God was going to sacrifice His own Son. There was also the foreshadowing of Christ’s substitution-- the Ram-- who takes our place. The whole story is a foreshadowing of Christ’s life, written many many centuries before it happened.

The Jews and Romans then unknowingly fulfilled the foreshadowing, which was written many many centuries ahead of time. The chances of that happening are pretty slim.
 
Then God appears to Moses and says, “I need you to tell your people for me that I need them to stop gathering sticks on the Sabbath, because that’s the day of rest. Oh, and take the gays out to the edge of town and stone them. And unruly children, too. And dash some infants against the rocks while you’re at it. And get yourselves some slaves and virgins.” And that’s how Judaism was born. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but every last one of these grossly immoral pronouncements are God’s commandments in the bible. This is what he has to say to people after ignoring them for 196,000 years and then he finally reveals himself to a few choice individuals.
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Wow, your brother shows a real ignorance of history here. He shows no knowledge of Judaism, no knowledge of why these seemingly strange OT ceremonial laws were enacted, and even claims Jews did things that were strictly condemned. It’s like pointing to King David and Bathsheeba and concluding that Christianity is pro-adultery.

He also conflates OT slavery with 19th century American slavery. They’re two completely different things.

And again he insists that God was ignoring humanity for 196,000 years, which I’ve already showed this idea is completely false above.

But what I really always enjoy is the atheists objection to sexual ethics in the Bible. I think that’s the REAL reason most atheists object to Christianity. They want enjoyable sex and Christianity ruins their fun. Any intellectual objection is simply a justification of their a priori decision to pursue lust. But this doesn’t necessarily disprove the atheists position, but it does question their motives.

I find it funny that secular humanists accept their contemporary sexual mores as the norm for humanity, and then apply their ethics to past cultures. Yet the safety of their sexual morality is completely dependent upon latex condoms, pills, and abortion as a back-up to contraception-- all of which are completely unnatural.

The sexual morality of the Bible is necessarily for physical, mental, and relational health. In our Modern world we’ve artificially solved the physical health problems. So, for instance, people who have multiple partners won’t give their partners syphilis and kill them (hence the Bible teaching that all sex outside of marriage is a serious sin).

But unfortunately today we still deal with the mental and relational health issues from having multiple partners. Hence we now deal with a high divorce rate, since men are able to have many partners without contracting STDS or having an insane amount of children, which enables them to jump from partner to partner. The result? Just turn on the TV and see how our culture treats women as sex objects, which ends up with young women feeling like garbage because they don’t look like models or because their men abandon them as single mothers.

We’ve solved the physical health aspects of sex via artificial means, but we’ve made the mental and relational aspects of sex much worse.

So the sexual morality of the Bible isn’t arbitrary or meant to “spoil the fun.” People in the past enjoyed sex just as much as we do. But sexual morality exists for a purpose.
So, without even taking us up to the time of Christ and the birth of Catholicism, that is how you can merge the Catholic belief in Yahweh with the theories of the big bang and evolution. To me, this makes no sense at all, so I would say that this is just one example of many where religion and science are at odds with one another.
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Except for the fact that the Big Bang and many other scientific discoveries were actually discovered by Catholics.
Were we “created” at all, let alone “created in God’s image”, if we got here by way of the big bang and evolution?
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Yes, there are 4 types of causes. (1) material cause, (2) formal cause, (3) efficient cause, and (4) final cause. The Big Bang and Evolution are the material and formal causes; but that doesn’t explain the efficient or final cause.
At what point did God decide that the homo genus had become human enough to start giving them souls? Of course, we can’t know.
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The point at which they were rational and thus able to comprehend God enough to love and to seek Him.
But what criteria might he use to make such a decision, especially considering that everyone is the same species as their mother? That means someone got a soul, and their mother didn’t. I bet the first woman to get a soul loved her mother.
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This is like arguing that the first ape must have had a non-ape mother. Thus evolution isn’t true. Which is, of course, a ridiculous argument.

What your brother fails to realize is that all animals have souls. The question is when the first human had a RATIONAL soul. So yes, there was a time when a mother had an Sensitive soul and the son or daughter had a Rational soul.
Also, why do you believe a) there is a God, and b) that He is the source of creation?"
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This is a big long question. But the quickest simplest answer would be “ex nihilo nihil fit.”
 
brikar said:
…So, humans did not exist until 99.9999% of the total amount of time elapsed since God created the universe versus the present day.

For the next 180,000 years, humans lived as hunter/gatherers without civilization,…

“Also, why do you believe a) there is a God, and b) that He is the source of creation?”"
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I don’t see how it matters how long it took to create the universe, whether it was 6 days or 15 billion years, to an eternal, self-existent God. And, from our perspective, it doesn’t matter how long it took to get to now since the now is all we experience.

There are many reasons for belief in God. For instance, there is the Contingency argument, the Kalam Cosmological argument, the design argument, and the moral argument. I suggest you listen to the existence of God series by Dr. William Craig found here - reasonablefaith.org/defenders-2-podcast/s4

I like the contingency argument myself but each adds to the cumulative case for God’s existence. I think if you listen to those podcasts you will have a much deeper level of understanding for the existence of God.

“If there were no God there would be no atheists”
  • G.K. Chesterton
In addition, one can not discount one’s own experience of God. When you have a relationship with God it takes it from beyond intellectual belief to the soul level where you experience his presence in your life. Start with simple prayer asking God to reveal himself to you.
 
1ke said:
I suggest you NOT engage someone this disrespectful and snide, especially if he is family. Agree to disagree.
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Agree. In fact, tell him it is “grossly immoral” for him to be disrespectful and snide to you (OP). He will object, loudly, and you simply tell him that without God, your definition of morality is every bit as good as his, and repeat that, if God doesn’t exist, then he is a grossly immoral person, and his very denials simply prove his guilt. Then you can have a discussion about universal morality. 🙂
He is not “way above” you. He is really quite ignorant on a number of fronts, and his note is FULL of inaccuracies and logical fallacies, starting with his premise.
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Invite him to come here if he’s so sure of his arguments.

The basic thing he is doing, over and over, is presuming to know how God would act, if God existed. He is presuming to know the mind of God. That means he is presuming that he himself is omniscient. Ask him if he is omniscient. If he isn’t, then why is he claiming to know the mind of God?

Another interesting question, to “smoke out” that which is unspoken, is to ask him if he would prefer that there is a God, and thus the possibility of eternal and perfect happiness, including for those who have suffered greatly, or if he would prefer that there is no God, and thus no possibility of eternal and perfect happiness, including for those who suffered greatly. He will probably evade and dodge and try to change the question, but keep after him until he answers the question as posed. You will discover a lot in his answer.
 
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