Who's freer athiest or Catholic?

[Planty_Business]

Well, there it is in a nutshell. You fear judgment? But you would have nothing to fear if your life was well spent. For you God only throws people into hell? He does not offer them something better? This is your concept of God for which there is simply no proof. You have created a straw God fallacy.

There is no proof that God does offer anything better, but that’s beside the point.

I would not fear judgment by a just God, but from what the Bible tells me, your God is not a just one. He apparently condemns people who have done nothing wrong, myself included. I would fear a God like that for the same reason I would fear a corrupt dictator who decided that everyone with brown hair should be killed.

This canard is a fallacy. The absence of proof for anything is never proof of absence.

It is, if the “anything” happens to be a God who wants people to be aware of his existence. An invisible God who desires that people know his existence - and has the power to grant such knowledge - is an incoherent concept.

Some of the ancient atomists theorized the existence of atoms, but were told by their critics exactly what you have just said, that atoms could not exist because there could never be any proof that atoms are so small they can never be seen. We know better today. We still can’t see them but we know they exist by other means. Even when there was no proof they existed, they certainly existed, right?

Right, you don’t have to be able to see something to know it exists. I understand that. But God’s existence cannot be detected by other means, as far as I am aware of.

We can know God exists by other means as well, but not by a closed mind and a closed heart.

I don’t see how wanting something more than hearsay evidence and abysmal “logical” arguments for God’s existence means I have a closed mind. A truly closed mind is one that is so open to illogical ideas that it is closed to the logical ones. As for a “closed heart”, heaven forbid my heart be closed to a being who thinks that anyone who dares to not be a heterosexual, or anyone who dares to not believe in him based on “faith”, is worthy of eternal damnation.

This also is false. If it were true, nobody would believe in God any more than they would believe in a round triangle. But billions of human beings have been drawn to the idea of God, not as nonsensical, but as an eminently reasonable concept, even if very much beyond our ability to grasp completely with the mere power of human reason.

Many people throughout history believed in other gods besides your own. Many of then believed in a flat earth. Many of them believed in creationism. Many of them believed in geocentrism. Many of them believed in various superstitions. Are you willing to admit that all of these ideas were reasonable concepts, just because a lot of people (even educated people) believed them? Quantity does not equal quality.

Again, contradictory concepts are not necessarily invalid if our intelligence is not up to the job of grasping the apparent contradictions, as in the case of light’s wave-particle duality.

The difference between God and quantum physics is that the latter seems absurd only on grounds of common sense. Logically, it is sound; science has proven that. God, on the other hand, has attributes by definition that are logically incoherent, not only with his own characteristics but also with the rest of the world.

One would expect that if there is a God, we would have difficulty understanding His nature using the mere powers of intellect, since it is likely that He wants to be known as Person rather than Thing. As Pascal put it, “the heart has reasons reason cannot understand.”

The heart’s reasons are often fallacious. I would gladly know God as a person rather than a thing if he could be proven to even be a thing in the first place. I can’t love another person if I do not know that that person exists.

Also, if there is a God who wants people to love him, one would expect him to provide evidence that he even exists to be loved. If our “puny human intellects” are too weak to understand God, that is his fault for designing us that way, not ours.

Why would you see the Christian God as an “inherently contradictory concept”?

Well, for one thing, there is the contradiction between God’s both willingness and ability to reveal his existence to people, and his refusal to do so anyway. There is also the contradiction between God’s omniscience and his free will. There is a brilliant YouTube user named “TheoreticalBull****” (yes, there is some crude language, but it does not detract from his credibility) who sums up the incoherent nature of the Christian God quite nicely in his videos. “Nonbelief and Peek-A-Boo” is an example.

And why would you expect that if there is a God, He should be perfectly and easily knowable by the unaided use of natural reason or else He cannot exist. We would certainly not see light as non-existent just because it is an “inherently contradictory concept.”

Again, if God has both the power to create humans with an intellect capable of knowing him, and the willingness to make his presence known to humans, there is no reason why he should not have done so by this point.

I no doubt failed to make myself clear. Because we desired to connect with the moon, the desire became father to the deed. So it would be with God. If you desire to connect with Him, you would find a way. Desire has been the parent of much knowledge. Lack of desire has been the parent of much ignorance.

Knowledge has never been dependent on our willingness for that knowledge to be true. To say that “If you really want to know that God is real, you will find him” is a cop-out.

 

[exnihilo]

Just a quick rundown of some more obvious problems I see.

I would not fear judgment by a just God, but from what the Bible tells me, your God is not a just one. He apparently condemns people who have done nothing wrong, myself included. I would fear a God like that for the same reason I would fear a corrupt dictator who decided that everyone with brown hair should be killed.

Not honoring your creator, if that is what you mean, is wrong. It is harder to see this in our modern culture which valued radical equality and has no respect for authority or position in the world.

It is, if the “anything” happens to be a God who wants people to be aware of his existence. An invisible God who desires that people know his existence - and has the power to grant such knowledge - is an incoherent concept.

Not incoherent. You have just defined your expectations for what God should do to reveal Himself to you. You have played God. That would be a sin if there is in fact a God since He makes the rules, not you or I. Many other people do find His revelation sufficient. So you certainly cant say that it is impossible since at least some do.

Right, you don’t have to be able to see something to know it exists. I understand that. But God’s existence cannot be detected by other means, as far as I am aware of.

You cant see Gravity. You cant even detect it literally. All you can do its detect its effects. You can detect God’s effects in the existence of the world itself and immaterial objects.

Many people throughout history believed in other gods besides your own. Many of then believed in a flat earth. Many of them believed in creationism. Many of them believed in geocentrism. Many of them believed in various superstitions. Are you willing to admit that all of these ideas were reasonable concepts, just because a lot of people (even educated people) believed them? Quantity does not equal quality.

Some of these were reasonable concepts given the knowledge of the people at that time. If you study Christian Theology you’ll find that we people’s knoweldge of God has improved over time as well. The earlier knowledge was not wrong, just imperfect. The current knowledge is also imperfect. But that does not mean we have no knoweldge.

 

[rinnie]

Here is another way to think of it also. Where is there freedom in Hell?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Planty

Are you willing to admit that all of these ideas were reasonable concepts, just because a lot of people (even educated people) believed them? Quantity does not equal quality.

When the mass of mankind take to a certain notion, such as God, it is not to be taken as automatically invalid just because it cannot be proven by demonstrable scientific means. Even science does not go that far what with all the hypotheses about the origin of the universe for which there is no scientific evidence. But the idea of Creation will not go away even though we cannot prove through science how Creation happened. So it is with God. Only by forcible denial by the intellect can God be excluded. The heart is not so sure.

your God is not a just one. He apparently condemns people who have done nothing wrong, myself included.

You have never done anything wrong? Whew!

**The heart’s reasons are often fallacious. I would gladly know God as a person rather than a thing if he could be proven to even be a thing in the first place. I can’t love another person if I do not know that that person exists.

Also, if there is a God who wants people to love him, one would expect him to provide evidence that he even exists to be loved. If our “puny human intellects” are too weak to understand God, that is his fault for designing us that way, not ours.**

Again, for you, intellect is the key to knowledge. You never can know a person (never mind God) with your intellect alone. The heart has to be open along with the intellect. Since you have closed your heart to God, it is to be expected that intellect will follow suit and do all in its power to justify the closing of the heart.
**
Knowledge has never been dependent on our willingness for that knowledge to be true. To say that “If you really want to know that God is real, you will find him” is a cop-out.**

No, it isn’t. It’s a cop-out to say that if a thing is true it must be easily recognizable and self-evident. No great discovery has ever been easily recognizable and self-evident. Ask Newton, ask Darwin, ask Einstein.

God is all the less recognizable and self-evident because atheists close their hearts to them, and then order their intellects to justify that act based on criteria that simply do not stand the test of logic.

**The heart’s reasons are often fallacious. **

They are also often valid. Ask anyone who has opened his heart to God.

**Well, for one thing, there is the contradiction between God’s both willingness and ability to reveal his existence to people, and his refusal to do so anyway. **

God has revealed himself many times throughout history. Ask Abraham, Moses, David, and so many other prophets and saints. He revealed Himself fully in the person of Jesus Christ. He reveals Himself to us today through the Catholic Church. But you are free to deny His revelations. He will not force Himself upon you … but He will take you at your word. If you want nothing to do with Him, through all eternity you will never have to worry about having anything to do with Him.

That is how much He honors the free will you deny He gave us.

 

[benedictus2]

This reminds me of the NonStampCollector YouTube video Titled: Free Will - “God Style” PART 2.

(for various reasons I didn’t want to post a direct link. a partial dialog is below. ).

It’s starts off with a citizen that didn’t pay his taxes getting a visit from some one from the tax collector informing him he has done wrong in not paying taxes and the punishment for not paying is time in prison. But the tax office has just implemented a new “free will” policy. So he has free will whether or not to pay. If he doesn’t pay he will still go to prison. The citizen had a hard time understanding how that was still considered free will.

Citizen:It’s not a free choice really is it? You just admitted that you are going to send me to prison if I don’t pay my taxes.

Tax Employee:The word free only implies you are capable of choosing and nothing else. fair and unfair is not the issue because you are still free to choose.Personally speaking I choose to pay my taxes. I don’t want to go to prison so I choose to follow the tax office’s commandments. Having no free will means you are an inanimate object, like a robot or a table or a rock or a chair or something. In other words you are incapable of choosing. You’re not saying you’d rather be a robot or a chair arn’t you.

Citizen:Well why don’t you say it’s the law to play tax. Why don’t you say it’s compulsory. You’re just playing word games saying I have the free will to choose but if I don’t choose the way you want me to you are going to penalize me by throwing me in prison. It’s not a fair choice is it.

Tax Employee:Hmmm…It sounds like you are arguing that you don’t have a choice because you are under duress. But you do have a choice because you are not under duress to pay taxes. Disobeying the tax laws is pleasurable, I know. Because you get to keep the money for yourself and the tax office’s punishment is not immediate.

Citizen:Yeah, but at the same time you are saying I have free will to pay taxes or not but one of those choices is going to lead to you punishing me for having made that choice. How is that different to a law. Why don’t you call that compulsory.

Tax Employee:Because it’s not compulsory. The tax office doesn’t want mindless robots just paying taxes, paying taxes, paying taxes. We want you to pay taxes because you want to and you choose to. We have more respect for people than that. Just making them pay with no choice? The tax office free will policy is loving. As you already know failure to pay taxes leads to a prison sentence…

Citizen:Yeah, that’s what I’m saying!

Tax Employee:…Let me finish. If you choose to pay taxes you will be relieved of your prison sentence and allowed to remain free. The system is based on positive reenforcement, not punishment. Do good and be rewarded or do bad and nothing happens that wasn’t going to happen any way.

Citizen:Well…okay…yeah, I get what you mean. It’s not really punishment then is it…What do you think I should do?

Tax Employee:Well, you better pay don’t you think. If you don’t I’ll call the cops.

Citizen: How long is the prison sentence?

Tax Employee:Forever. Until you die. And there are guys in there who will punch the out of you every day.

Citizen:Hmmm…well given that choice…and thank you for giving me that choice. I appreciate you not trying to force it on me…I think I’ll…well, it’s actually not as easy as it looks. Can I have a few days to make up my mind?

Tax Employee:Of course. Take as long as you want. But, I might call the cops at any time. And when they arrive it’s too late and it’s prison for the rest of your life.

Citizen:Okay, I understand. Thank you for revealing this for me. It’s so kind of you to give me this good news.

This exchange is certainly funny but not for its humour and neither for its wit but rather for its idiocy.

It would behoove atheists to study that which they aim to dispute. Otherwise, they look like Don Quixote tilting at illusory windmills. Nay, they don’t look like, they are Don Quixote tilting at illusory windmills.

The ignorance in this post is profound and expected.

 

[The_Fly]

How is a Cathiolic more free than an athiest?

True freedom is found in being free for something and not from something.

The two thieves on the cross show the two ways in which man chooses to be free however only one of those ways is towards true freedom. Gestas wanted to be taken down because he saw freedom as being free from the cross while Dismas saw that true freedom was on the cross and being crucified alongside him.

Without God you can have everything and nothing at the same time. Yet with God you can have nothing and everything at the same time.

 

[benedictus2]

This reminds me of the NonStampCollector YouTube video Titled: Free Will - “God Style” PART 2.

(for various reasons I didn’t want to post a direct link. a partial dialog is below. ).

It’s starts off with a citizen that didn’t pay his taxes getting a visit from some one from the tax collector informing him he has done wrong in not paying taxes and the punishment for not paying is time in prison. But the tax office has just implemented a new “free will” policy. So he has free will whether or not to pay. If he doesn’t pay he will still go to prison. The citizen had a hard time understanding how that was still considered free will.

Citizen:It’s not a free choice really is it? You just admitted that you are going to send me to prison if I don’t pay my taxes.
v
v
v

Citizen:Okay, I understand. Thank you for revealing this for me. It’s so kind of you to give me this good news.

Here’s a re-jigging of the above.

ThinkingStampCollector presentation of Atheist Reasoning Part 5

It starts off with a man who was ill and dying after eating too much junk food. He happens now to be obese and is ill with diabetes, as a consequence of which his right leg was cut off but the wound is not healing.

Doctor arrives and gives him the grim forecast.

Doctor: I’ve told you before that if you keep going the way you have been going, you will end up like this.

Atheist Patient: But you told me I am free to eat what ever I want and do whatever I want.

Doctor: Yes that is true.

Atheist Patient: But you lied then because as you can see, this is where eating all that stuff and not exercising has got me

Doctor: But I never told you to eat all that stuff and be a couch potato. I told you it’s up to you whether you want to be healthy or you want to just simply enjoy your food and be as lazy as you please. You are free to do either.

Atheist Patient(getting really aggressive now): Well obviously not since my preference for eating junk and the sedentary life has put me in this hell. You can hardly call that a free choice.

Doctor: You could have eaten healthy and exercised. That was one of the choices.

Atheist Patient ( ranting and raving by now) : (expletives …) It’s not really free then is it. I either eat healthy or I end up in this hell. How can you call that a free choice?

Doctor: I may need to get a psychiatrist to assess your mental health. It seems it is not only diabetes and obesity that’s afflicting you. There is a a possibility that yours is a very rare variant of diabetes as it seems it’s also affecting your ability to think…

 

[benedictus2]

True freedom is found in being free for something and not from something.

Brilliant!! Very Fr Barron-*esque. *He likes to give Andre Agassi as an example of this.

 

[benedictus2]

Contrast that with God. God is, by definition, a supernatural being. If he does exist, he exists in a realm beyond any scientific study. Thus, the claim that God exists is not a scientifically testable or falsifiable one, though it may be philosophically or logically falsifiable (I do not think that the Christian God exists for the latter reasons; it seems to me that the Christian God is an inherently contradictory concept, thus it is not a valid one).

Why is it an inherently contradictory concept?

Also, to say that only those that are scientifically testable are true is itself not scientifically testable.

I never said that I deny God’s existence on the grounds that I cannot see him. I deny God’s existence on the grounds that I have no logical reason to think that he does exist, even presupposing the possibility of the supernatural.

If you presuppose the possibility of the supernatural, on what grounds do you deny the possibility of God’s existence?

Reality does not conform to what you want, even if what you want is eternal life or a decent reason to stay alive.

But that is only because you think matter is all there is. Which cannot be proven to be true. So you are actually espousing an ism incapable of being proven to be true as well.

Until he can be demonstrated to exist, yes, he is in my court - and the court of all other human beings.

Now that is downright absurd. Whether a Supernatural Being is in your court or not does not depend on your criteria. Because after all, if it is indeed the case that He is a Supreme Being, puts Him beyond your purview and therefore outside of everyone’s court.

As a member of the jury of humanity, I find God to be not guilty of existing until proven guilty.

Well if that is not the most arrogant and stupid statements I have ever read.

In case you are unaware, there is another jury of humanity who has determined that God exists. What makes you think that you speak for humanity - you itsy, bitsy tiny bit of humanity?

That would be justified if God could be proven logically without any sight of him required, but he hasn’t, so far. Until then, “faith” isn’t a decent reason for me to believe in something.

So what is your objection then to the teleological proofs? They’re considered logical proofs of God.

First of all, atheists don’t need any proof that God doesn’t exist.

Yes, that is true. They take it as given because they can’t prove it. So they deride the believers for their scientifically unproven assumptions while they strut around brandishing their own equally unproven one and claim to be in possession of the higher intellectual ground, blissfully unaware that they are the emperors on parade - naked as the day they were born.

We aren’t the ones making a truth claim here - religious people are, by saying there is a God.

Hmmm. Let’s go by history. Human beings by nature have always been theists - whatever they may conceive their gods to be.

So really, it is the atheists who are making a novel claim so proof actually sits in your court.

It doesn’t matter how pervasive belief in God is in society, it is still the job of theists to prove their position, not atheists.

Well no. Theists came first. So therefore it is atheists who have to defend their position. Atheism is a novel invention.

Even so, I have reason to think that the absence of evidence for God is evidence of absence.

But there is plenty of evidence for God. It is not that there isn’t any. But it is the kind of evidence that your philosophy (scientism, materialism, empricism) demands. Which is a ridiculous demand considering that if God does exist, scientific proof would not be the way by which we can prove His existence by the fact that we claim Him to be Super - natural.

Second, yes, to be honest, I would rather God didn’t exist than exist. If God did exist, I would be at the mercy of a being who would throw people into hell merely for not comforming to his arbitrary standard of heterosupremacy. It’s a good thing he doesn’t.

I shake my head every time I see such profound ignorance on display. Now, it would not be so bad if you are not out to dispute theism (Christianity in particular). I think, it would bade you well if you spend time studying that which you hope to debunk. Otherwise, you just sound like an empty can rattling in the wind.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

benedictus2

So really, it is the atheists who are making a novel claim so proof actually sits in your court.

Correct. Eve did not have to prove to the serpent that God does not exist.

But the serpent had to try to prove that God was not Supreme by tempting Eve to believe she could be God’s equal.

The modern atheist goes the serpent one better … by trying to prove man has created God … supplying such proof in itself a hopeless task.

 

[rinnie]

The more I think about this, I have to change my answer.

I believe that if you want to be free in this world and the next you choose God. Simply because there is nothing in this world worth more then a FREE CLEAR CONSCIENCE.

Now if you want to reject God and fight him and against him the rest of your life, you are not free at all. You are constantly anxious to what you can do, and how you can destroy him in the minds of others.

SO by accepting him and his love for you, you are free in your heart and full of love and happiness and contement. But if you reject him you are not free from him at all, You are fighting him every single minute of your life, and created your own hell here on earth.

 

[rinnie]

benedictus2

So really, it is the atheists who are making a novel claim so proof actually sits in your court.

Correct. Eve did not have to prove to the serpent that God does not exist.

But the serpent had to try to prove that God was not Supreme by tempting Eve to believe she could be God’s equal.

The modern atheist goes the serpent one better … by trying to prove man has created God … supplying such proof in itself a hopeless task.

Exactly Adam, Eve and the Serpent believed that God existed. That was never a question.

 

[Planty_Business]

Sorry I hadn’t responded earlier; I hadn’t had Internet access for the past few days. Now, to untangle this massive web of criticisms…

Not honoring your creator, if that is what you mean, is wrong. It is harder to see this in our modern culture which valued radical equality and has no respect for authority or position in the world.

Respect for authority is earned. Your God has no right to expect my respect simply by virtue of being my creator. If he created me, he created me such that it would not be in my nature to believe in him, much less respect him.

Not incoherent. You have just defined your expectations for what God should do to reveal Himself to you. You have played God. That would be a sin if there is in fact a God since He makes the rules, not you or I. Many other people do find His revelation sufficient. So you certainly cant say that it is impossible since at least some do.

I never said that it is impossible for some people to believe that God exists on the basis of revelation; I agree that a vast number of people do (although many also believe for cultural reasons or because they find Christian apologetics compelling; I do not).

To expect God to be just is not “playing God”. If a being wishes that I know that it exists, if I am in danger of eternal damnation if I do not know that it exists, and if that being has the ability to let me know that it exists, for that being not to let me know that it exists - despite knowing that it would be in my nature to reject the arguments for Christianity because I find them logically lacking - would be completely irresponsible. Yet that is apparently exactly what your God has done. By criticizing my reasonable standards of evidence on the grounds that I am “playing God”, you are making your hypothesis unfalsifiable.

You cant see Gravity. You cant even detect it literally. All you can do its detect its effects. You can detect God’s effects in the existence of the world itself and immaterial objects.

Well I don’t know what you mean by “immaterial objects” (if you are referring to mind-body duality, that is a topic for a different thread), but I and the many atheists who have refuted cosmological arguments for God’s existence see no reason to think that God has had any effects in the existence of the world.

Some of these were reasonable concepts given the knowledge of the people at that time. If you study Christian Theology you’ll find that we people’s knoweldge of God has improved over time as well. The earlier knowledge was not wrong, just imperfect. The current knowledge is also imperfect. But that does not mean we have no knoweldge.

Pray tell, what new knowledge of God has the Church accumulated in the past roughly 2,000 years? To me, “knowledge of God” is about as nonsensical a phrase as “knowledge of Horus”.

benedictus2:

This exchange is certainly funny but not for its humour and neither for its wit but rather for its idiocy.

It would behoove atheists to study that which they aim to dispute. Otherwise, they look like Don Quixote tilting at illusory windmills. Nay, they don’t look like, they are Don Quixote tilting at illusory windmills.

The ignorance in this post is profound and expected.

It would behoove Christians like you to 1) explain what was faulty in NonStampCollector’s analysis of Christian eschatology, rather than simply make bald assertions, and 2) refrain from arrogant ad hominems like the bolded sentence.

 

[benedictus2]

benedictus2:

It would behoove Christians like you to 1) explain what was faulty in NonStampCollector’s analysis of Christian eschatology, rather than simply make bald assertions,

Analysis? What analysis?

When someone analyzes something, one at first attempts to understand the object of the analysis. All NonStampCollector did was ridicule something he is totally ignorant about. I actually posted a similar exchange that cuts to the point of his ignorance.

To explain it’s error to someone who does not even have a vague comprehension of proper Christian theology would be like explaining physics to a 3 year old who do not even have the rudiments of basic plus and minus.

So yes. If you are going to refute something, please have a good grasp of what you are refuting.

and 2) refrain from arrogant ad hominems like the bolded sentence.

It is not an* ad hominem.* You might want to check what that term actually means.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The Catholic and the atheist are both free. One is free to submit to God. The other is free to deny God his submission.

That God has not made himself so clearly God that an atheist would have no choice but to submit is the wisdom of God. God will not take away our freedom. We remain free to choose Him or deny Him.

But to deny Him and then say that He gave no reason to believe in Him is absurd. Men have found abundant reasons to believe in Him.

They have also found abundant reasons to deny Him. But the reason given, that He does not show Himself up close and personal, is not a reasonable reason. More likely the reason people deny God is that they have problems with obedience to a higher authority, or that they plan to live a life style that would be crimped by Christian morality, or that they have been conditioned to deny any reality but the one they can “falsify,” or for some other reason that is known to the atheist even if to no one else.

When proud and arrogant Reason demands that God be reasonable to Reason, you have an unreasonable proposition. Since God is supra-rational, God can only be experienced by the intellect and the heart together … that is, by the whole person. The heart can say “Yes, I submit,” even when proud intellect says “No, I cannot grasp Him.” By degrees, the heart can lead the intellect to an understanding it could not fathom on its own. This way of knowing God, of course, will not appeal to the atheist, who has already ordered his intellect to supply reasons why it should say No to God and mean it without reservation.

In my own case, when I was an atheist, I found that the enormous beauty of sacred music was for me impossible to explain. The more I listened to it, the more I realized that this music was drawing me into a wonderful world of thoughts and feelings that atheism itself could never explain. And although I have heard music that could have been inspired by the Devil as well, I have never heard music that could be inspired by Nogod.

Atheism is entirely without inspiration. I have detected no positive energy at all in atheism. The negative energy I do detect is the hatred of God or the very idea of God.

As Voltaire said:

“The atheists are for the most part impudent and misguided scholars who reason badly, and who not being able to understand the creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis of the eternity of things and of inevitability….That was how things went with the Roman Senate which was almost entirely composed of atheists in theory and in practice, that is to say, who believed in neither a Providence nor a future life; this senate was an assembly of philosophers, of sensualists and ambitious men, all very dangerous men, who ruined the republic." (from Voltaire’s essay On Atheism).

Negative energy unleashed and running wild. Nothing has changed.

 

[exnihilo]

Respect for authority is earned. Your God has no right to expect my respect simply by virtue of being my creator. If he created me, he created me such that it would not be in my nature to believe in him, much less respect him.

Did you honor and respect your parents? Or as a 4 year old did you demand they earn your respect?

To expect God to be just is not “playing God”. If a being wishes that I know that it exists, if I am in danger of eternal damnation if I do not know that it exists, and if that being has the ability to let me know that it exists, for that being not to let me know that it exists - despite knowing that it would be in my nature to reject the arguments for Christianity because I find them logically lacking - would be completely irresponsible. Yet that is apparently exactly what your God has done. By criticizing my reasonable standards of evidence on the grounds that I am “playing God”, you are making your hypothesis unfalsifiable.

It seems you are defining justice just as you are defining what is sufficient proof. What is your expectation of proof?

Well I don’t know what you mean by “immaterial objects” (if you are referring to mind-body duality, that is a topic for a different thread), but I and the many atheists who have refuted cosmological arguments for God’s existence see no reason to think that God has had any effects in the existence of the world.

Immaterial or abstract objects such as numbers or possibly beauty.

Pray tell, what new knowledge of God has the Church accumulated in the past roughly 2,000 years? To me, “knowledge of God” is about as nonsensical a phrase as “knowledge of Horus”.

Through philosophy and theology the Church has been able to better understand God. Of course better understanding does not here mean in the same way medicine understands something like the heart. But if you believe in immaterial things, which I’m sure you do, then you must also believe that you can have a better understanding of those things.

Despite Stephen Hawkins rather ridiculous claims philosophy is still considered important and a field of study at any respectable university. Theology is also a field of discipline. So to reject either is to suggest that modern universities are teaching nonsense. I actually might tend to agree with you on that regarding politics, econ, and maybe even popular modern theology.

 

[benedictus2]

Despite Stephen Hawkins rather ridiculous claims philosophy is still considered important and a field of study at any respectable university. Theology is also a field of discipline. So to reject either is to suggest that modern universities are teaching nonsense. I actually might tend to agree with you on that regarding politics, econ, and maybe even popular modern theology.

It is not only considered important - it IS important.

The scientist’s first assumption is philosophical - that the world they are interacting with is intelligible.

The problem with Hawkings and Dawkins and their like is that they go beyond the purview of science and the scientific method and make of it an ism - empericism, scientism, materialism. The methodology is good, the “ism” is not.

And in actual fact, it was the Church who first came up with the empirical method.

 

[Planty_Business]

When the mass of mankind take to a certain notion, such as God, it is not to be taken as automatically invalid just because it cannot be proven by demonstrable scientific means. Even science does not go that far what with all the hypotheses about the origin of the universe for which there is no scientific evidence.

Which origins theories are you referring to here? I agree that multiverse theories and such are not scientific in the strict sense of the word, but neither are intelligent design or divine creation theories. That is the key problem with the KCA, for example; even if the first and second premises were valid, positing “God did it!” as an explanation is not scientific in the slightest. Scientists don’t pretend to know how the universe came into existence (the Big Bang theory only tells us how the universe as we know it exists in its ever-expanding form, not how matter and energy began to exist), but religious people do.

But the idea of Creation will not go away even though we cannot prove through science how Creation happened. So it is with God. Only by forcible denial by the intellect can God be excluded. The heart is not so sure.

If by “the heart”, you mean my emotional intuitions and the emotional intuitions of other atheists, yes, the heart is so sure. Granted, neither the heart nor the intellect can be sure of anything short of mathematics or logic, but I am as reasonably certain that no gods exist as I am that I am a descendant of homo erectus.

You have never done anything wrong? Whew!

Oh please, you knew the point I was making: My being an atheist is not “doing something wrong”, nor is homosexuals’ acting in accordance with their nature and desiring marriage to another person of the same sex, for example.

Again, for you, intellect is the key to knowledge. You never can know a person (never mind God) with your intellect alone. The heart has to be open along with the intellect. Since you have closed your heart to God, it is to be expected that intellect will follow suit and do all in its power to justify the closing of the heart.

I haven’t “closed my heart to God” any more than I have closed my heart to Horus!

I don’t expect to be able to know God with the intellect alone, but an intellectual basis for even thinking God exists is a prerequisite to knowing him with the heart.

No, it isn’t. It’s a cop-out to say that if a thing is true it must be easily recognizable and self-evident. No great discovery has ever been easily recognizable and self-evident. Ask Newton, ask Darwin, ask Einstein.

Right, and the “great discovery” of God’s existence has still never been made. Belief in God has a neurological basis, and it is not the result of some great discovery any more than belief that the position of Mars in the night sky affects affairs on Earth in very specific ways is the result of some great discovery.

God is all the less recognizable and self-evident because atheists close their hearts to them, and then order their intellects to justify that act based on criteria that simply do not stand the test of logic.

Now you are just being condescending and spouting gibberish. Funny how common that seems to be among some Catholics participating in this thread.

They are also often valid. Ask anyone who has opened his heart to God.

Well, I do know many people who would say they have opened their hearts to God, but the reasons they have given are not valid. There are also people who I do not know personally but who have also stated that their primary reasons for belief in God are “reasons of the heart”. William Lane Craig is arguably the most eloquent defender of Christianity on logical grounds - though that this not really saying much, to me - yet he says he believes in Christianity based on the witness of the Holy Spirit, apart from the evidence. So yes, Christians do have reasons of the heart, but I do not find them valid, especially when they are given by people whose careers have been partially dedicated to examining the reasons of the intellect for belief in God.

God has revealed himself many times throughout history. Ask Abraham, Moses, David, and so many other prophets and saints. He revealed Himself fully in the person of Jesus Christ. He reveals Himself to us today through the Catholic Church. But you are free to deny His revelations.

To even suggest that my atheism is a result of “denial” is intellectually dishonest. At any rate, I would gladly accept the testimonies of the supposed witnesses you cite if there were decent reasons to do so. I am not content with personal experience evidence in the case of such an extraordinary claim as that an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving creator of the universe exists in an immaterial realm beyond our detection.

He will not force Himself upon you … but He will take you at your word. If you want nothing to do with Him, through all eternity you will never have to worry about having anything to do with Him.

That is how much He honors the free will you deny He gave us.

The video that ThinkingSapien cites demonstrates how absurd your notion of God’s being virtuous by honoring this sad excuse for free will is.

 

[formerlysure]

Let me offer an analogy. Some view marriage as a “ball and chain”. However, in a healthy marriage, two people bring out the best in one another, provide one another great emotional support, and meet such needs beyond what either might have ever expected. They are freed simply because so many needs are met. There is no ball and chain, no restriction as they are choosing to love and are getting what they want.

Or imagine a child. Is an orphaned child who nobody takes particular interest in more “free” than a child raised in a structured and faithful family with bedtimes, homework times, a chore-chart on the refrigerator? The child who is free is the child who has the support of that framework - the love of devoted parents, and the freedom to be a child because someone else is doing the job of being an adult.

As yet another analogy, imagine a new job with countless small tasks. Would you rather have to start with no rules, no policies, no software or systems in place such that you are “free” to set up all the filing, figure out how to create the documents, determine everyone’s job descriptions and so on, or are you more “free” to do what you are there for- what work you wanted to do for the employer that is of greatest interest to you - if some of these other things are already figured out and organized?

I find my faith - abandoned for many years - recently taken back up - the most freeing thing I have. I married and lived many years with an atheist - nothing was freeing about that. There was no sense of security, and without it, I could not feel free at all - I felt fear.

 

[mystagogia]

The atheist’s freedom is always an illusion based on a misunderstanding. The atheist describes himself as free from the constraints of religion, folkways, simpletons, prejudice. etc.

The misunderstanding is that religion is an oppressive tool created by man to oppress other men.

Atheists chain themselves to a humanistic narrative of skepticism to achieve this. This is an emotional attachment with a large investment to the gods of Science and Reason. The entirety of the atheist view hinges on worship of these gods.

They become slaves to them. They routinely overestimate the power of these gods, and this overestimation becomes the basis of their faith.

The Catholic is ironically more skeptical. Catholic beliefs hinge upon moral teaching and historical events. The Catholic cannot be proven wrong. His terms of debate preclude that.

Lack of falsifiability is the first thing an atheist will charge on the Catholic. But he won’t realize he’s got the same exact position. Overestimation of his gods, Science and Reason, has rendered him in the exact same position. Atheists are just as invulnerable to falsifiability as Catholics. They’ll just concoct a path out of their troubles that hinges upon an imagined future action of Science and Reason.

Catholics won’t concoct such paths, however. No need exists. Catholics are not out to prove the ingenuity of Man.

That means Catholics have a freer range of action, and of thought. They are healthier, they reproduce more. Darwin’s got a winner with staunch Catholics. But not with staunch atheists. Telling, no?

Atheists are limited by their need to oppose evil gods and to advance good gods.

Catholics have one God.

Simplifies the problem and leads to freedom.