(Continued from last post)
To which I respond:
“Let me use an analogy here. If I said to you that there is a man in China named John Smith, you can’t prove his non-existance. There is simply no way for you to know, for certain, that he does not exist. You can say ‘Well I’ve never met him before’ or ‘Well I don’t think he exists’ but you can never be 100% sure that there is not a man named John Smith living in China.”
“I, however, can know for certain that John Smith exists because I found him and met him personally and interacted with him.”
“And it’s the same with God. We, as Christians know, 100%, that Jesus Christ is God and that He exists because we have found Him (or I should say He has found us) and we have met Him and interacted with Him (through things like the Mass, our prayer life, our spiritual walk with the Lord, the way God has intervened in our lives, through contemplation and meditation on the lives of Mary and the saints, through reading Sacred Scripture, through learning Sacred Tradition which manifests Itself in the writings of the Church Fathers, through gaining a greater appreciation and understanding of the infallable teachings of the Magesterium of the Catholic Church etc).”
“God has found us and we have found Him, and He has revealed Himself to us as the one, true, God of Christianity. That is to say, God has shown us that He is in fact real and does exist. He has also revealed to us the One, True, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church which He founded 2000 years ago when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could be redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. He took upon Himself the sin of the whole world, so that all of us could have the possibility of entering into the eternal beatitude of heaven with God the Father Jehovah, God the Son Jesus Christ, God the Holy Spirit, the blessed Virgin Mary, and all of the angels and saints who have served the one, true, God throughout the ages.”
This line of reasoning can also work with agnostics and theists as well, in order to try to bring them to a deeper appreciation of the truth about Christianity, but it has been most effective for me with atheists.
As far as agnostics go, the best way to approach their situation seems to be first showing a deep level of admiration and respect for their sincerity and honesty in searching for truth and being open to the possibility of there being a God. A few ideas which can make agnostics reconsider their own views are things like the complexity and near impossibility of the universe, and human beings, coming into existance without a higher power, i.e. God, interacting in those processess, the complexity of the human iris, the beauty and splender of nature and creation in general.
Also, the morality side of theism can often hit home with quite a few agnostics as well. For example, the aspect of human beings having a moral conscience can be a very effective argument in these discussions (although at times going down the “morality road” can initially backfire, and lead to another “barrage” of attacks based upon the “supposed hypocrisy” of individual Christians with regards to their evil/sinful actions. Thankfully this can simply be answered by explaining that Christianity believes that everyone is a sinner and commmits evil which is the exact reason why Christ had to die on the cross for all of us. Expanding on the point of a person’s actions not negating the truthfulness of their statements/teachings/beliefs can be done by a simple example. Let’s say a mathematics teacher teaches his class that 2+2=4 and then goes out and cheats on his taxes by saying that 2+2=5 in order to get a bigger tax return from the government. The mathematics teachers actions do not negate the truthfulness of his teachings that 2+2 does, in fact, equal 4. And so it is with Christianity. The Catholic Church can teach that lying is a sin. Now if the Pope, or one of the Bishops, goes out and lies, this does not negate the infallable teaching of the Magesterium that lying is, in fact, a sin).
What I have found to work the best with agnostics, though, is the proposition of there actually being absolute truth in the universe and that absolute truth having to come to us from a higher being, which is God. Most agnostics are truth seekers at heart, they are just unsure right now where to find the fulfillment of that longing in them for absolute truth.
This line of reasoning can also open up the proverbial door of explanation of why divine public revelation is also necessary with regards to the truth about religion and God (divine public revelation being Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition). The fact that there are so many individuals, even Christians, with very different viewpoints and beliefs about God can be used to show why God would have to reveal Himself through revelation, and also why such public revelation needs to be infallably interpreted by the Magesterium of the Catholic Church so that men may know, with complete certainty, how to be saved from the fires of hell and enter into heaven after the course of their earthly life has ended.
(Continued in next post)
