Why are you an Atheist? - Catholic Answers Live - 12Nov2018

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Damian said:
Yes hope is doubt, no disagreement there.
So you are using faith to talk about the which possible outcome, known outcome, you choose to hope for over the other.
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Christian faith is always in the context of relationship, not in merely in outcomes, not merely in hoped-for rewards. In faith, persons exchange trust in each other.
We do not have faith by merely wanting something to be true by force of will.

You insist on reducing faith to the evidentiary. That is not what Christian faith is.
 
goout said:
You insist on reducing faith to the evidentiary. That is not what Christian faith is.
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But you still seem to be equating “faith” to “hope” here. Hope is not unjustified to believe the desired result you want is a possible result. It’s just a desire to want a specific possible known result out of all the known possible result, regardless of how rare or likely the result you want to be is. But it’s all a documented/experienced possible result. In reference to relationships, I have an experienced history of a loving relationship with my better half. It has also been communicated to me what I need to do to maintain that loving relationship as well. So based on historical evidence of the relationship, I know the standard character of her and know what can maintain or destroy the relationship. All that is experienced in reality with an actual person. How do you have a relationship with a literary figure that never manifests in reality in any detectable way to actually have a relationship with them? It’s like saying you can have a relationship with Shakespeare’s Puck character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
 
You can’t redefine faith and hope then say that faith is ridiculous because you defined it to be so.
 
Damian said:
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goout:
You insist on reducing faith to the evidentiary. That is not what Christian faith is.
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How do you have a relationship with a literary figure that never manifests in reality in any detectable way to actually have a relationship with them? It’s like saying you can have a relationship with Shakespeare’s Puck character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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The same way you realized a relationship with your wife.
You seek. You ask. You put yourself out. You trust, you risk, you love. And in doing that you discover the other.
 
So you believe that a relationship with a written figure is the same as having a relationship with an actual person?
 
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I’m defining words as I understand them to be used so that you can understand how I see the issue between the two words. What’s been presented from the religious side is that hope and faith are the same thing. I disagree since we already have the word, “Hope”. So how do you actually understand the difference in meaning when someone uses the word “faith” instead of “hope”? Otherwise what’s the point of the redundancy?
 
Damian said:
So you believe that a relationship with a figure written about is the same as having a relationship with an actual person?
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No of course not. Words on a page are not persons.

I believe God is real, you do not. The relationship I have with God through Jesus Christ transforms my life. That living call and response is faith.
This relationship is the most intimate and personally dynamic. And the deeper my response, the more dynamic it is.
 
Faith is total belief in any outcome, i.e. “I have faith that this roll will be a 6.” Hope is wanting a certain thing to happen, i.e. “I hope that this roll will be a 6.” Neither involves anything impossible. One is about being sure of a certain outcome, one is wanting a certain outcome.
 
Can you demonstrate that this deity exists in reality in some detectable way, other than just asserting it?
Otherwise, change out god with Thanos, and its the exact same meaningful statement.
 
So its a knowledge claim, not a hope claim.
Like how I believe/know that a value of 1 to 6 will result from a 1d6 dice roll.

However, you are claiming a knowledge claim of a random known result. That would be an unjustified belief based on known possible results then.

Or are you stating that, in the context of relationships, because people have the ability to have all the ranges of emotional connections to others for a relationship, we can know our better half loves us instead of hates us. Even though they have the ability to hate us.
 
Damian said:
Can you demonstrate that this deity exists in reality in some detectable way, other than just asserting it?
Otherwise, change out god with Thanos, and its the exact same meaningful statement.
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There are proofs for the existence of God.
But those will not satisfy you as a materialist, since you rule out the existence of God for lack of material evidence (which is defacto absurd, but…).

If you don’t believe and are convinced in your own beliefs, then why are you here wasting huge amounts of your life debating with fools?
What are you looking for?

You deserve to muster the self awareness to answer this question, because it is truly glaring.
 
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If I were spending most of my days thinking about, talking about, consumed by, anything, I should get on my knees and worship it, because that’s what I am doing: worshipping. We can’t hide what we worship.
Might be sex, might be drugs, might be shopping, might be work.

You are on a Catholic forum, consumed with God.
Have you considered letting it go, dropping to your knees and admitting what you are doing with some personal honesty?
You resist the imaginary, but you cannot imagine the joy, and the peace, and the love that comes from asking Christ into your life.
 
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I opened with acknowledging that the arguments/logic for a deity are internally consistent. Those are all logical proofs. But that is not evidence of it actually being there. You seem to mistake logical proofs for actual evidence of something being there in reality. That is not what is to be justified in a belief claim in reference to reality. You can have all the internal logical proofs you want for something. However, if your belief claim is in reference to reality, you have to demonstrate that claim in reality some way. What reality demonstrates to be there is when you have justified belief about your idea/logical proof/hypothesis statement about reality.
Such as: There might actually be a meteor coming to strike our planet now. We have actual demonstrated evidence of meteors existing and that they can strike planets. Are we justified in believing that particular meteor actually is there? No we are not. Not until we actually detect it, that is when we are justified to believe it is there.
However, due to the logical argument of mathematics of physics and that we have detected meteors to exists, we are justified in looking for that meteor and we are justified in knowing where to look for that meteor.
That’s the difference it seems. You just need a logical proof of something to exist in reality without ever finding in reality, I actually believe you need to find it in reality before you are justified to believe that. This is backed up by the numerous times our logic was found broken, due to our ignorance of reality, when we tested our logical conclusions against reality. You don’t seem to understand that mathematical models fail all the time, scientific hypothesis fail all the time, logical proofs fail all the time, when we test them against reality. Every failed scientific experiment was exactly this. An internally logically correct statement to make about reality and then, once tested against reality, the test failed.
You can be logically correct and still factually wrong because, you don’t know everything about reality. That’s the arrogance of religion. They believe they can define something into existence and believe its justified to believe that about reality when reality has demonstrated 100% of the time that there is 0 evidence, so far, that indicates that claim to be true.
 
goout said:
If you don’t believe and are convinced in your own beliefs, then why are you here wasting huge amounts of your life debating with fools?
What are you looking for?
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To see if my internal model of reality actually breaks. I could have bias, I could have overlooked a process I’m not implementing, etc. So why go to someone who already agrees with me? I need to talk to people that are fundamentally opposed to this conclusion about reality and process for justified belief.
 
goout said:
You resist the imaginary, but you cannot imagine the joy, and the peace, and the love that comes from asking Christ into your life.
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Anyone can love an idea. But when that idea claim is in reference to reality, I need my internal model of reality to match reality as accurately as possible; regardless of how I feel about it, regardless of how it socially makes my life better, etc. Comic book nerds support each other all the time and band together over their love of comics and find meaning and joy over the philosophical issues that are discussed through the series as well. Still doesn’t actually make Thanos exist though.
goout said:
If I were spending most of my days thinking about, talking about, consumed by, anything, I should get on my knees and worship it, because that’s what I am doing: worshipping. We can’t hide what we worship.
Might be sex, might be drugs, might be shopping, might be work.

You are on a Catholic forum, consumed with God.
Have you considered letting it go, dropping to your knees and admitting what you are doing with some personal honesty?
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Sorry but worship is not in the bone for me as it were. I don’t find bending the knee to be an ethical thing to do or an idea to live up to or promote.
Worship, to me, means to give up your doubt, reasoning, analytical and moral analysis, etc. and just let that thing you are worshiping rule over you. Making you a serf and a slave to its whelms and desires. And since you’ve shelved all moral assessment of the whelms and desires of this thing, you are no longer acting as a moral agent, but a trained pet following orders of your master. Makes my skin crawl.
 
Damian said:
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goout:
You resist the imaginary, but you cannot imagine the joy, and the peace, and the love that comes from asking Christ into your life.
Click to expand...
Anyone can love an idea. But when that idea claim is in reference to reality, I need my internal model of reality to match reality as accurately as possible; regardless of how I feel about it, regardless of how it socially makes my life better, etc. Comic book nerds support each other all the time and band together over their love of comics and find meaning and joy over the philosophical issues that are discussed through the series as well. Still doesn’t actually make Thanos exist though.
goout said:
If I were spending most of my days thinking about, talking about, consumed by, anything, I should get on my knees and worship it, because that’s what I am doing: worshipping. We can’t hide what we worship.
Might be sex, might be drugs, might be shopping, might be work.

You are on a Catholic forum, consumed with God.
Have you considered letting it go, dropping to your knees and admitting what you are doing with some personal honesty?
Click to expand...
Sorry but worship is not in the bone for me as it were. I don’t find bending the knee to be an ethical thing to do or an idea to live up to or promote.
Worship, to me, means to give up your doubt, reasoning, analytical and moral analysis, etc. and just let that thing you are worshiping rule over you. Making you a serf and a slave to its whelms and desires. And since you’ve shelved all moral assessment of the whelms and desires of this thing, you are no longer acting as a moral agent, but a trained pet following orders of your master. Makes my skin crawl.
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Like you are doing here on the Catholic Answers forum?
Here you are worshipping. You are spending hours and hours here with religious belief, prioritizing your life around it.

What should make your skin crawl is that you deny what you worship.
 
That type of worship makes my skin crawl. You seem to be using the term worship different from how I see religious people “worshiping”.
 
Damian said:
I’ll correct the error and update my internal model of reality.
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If your internal model of reality is not subject to update, that sort of makes you God. Your model of reality should break,at some point. Or rather be continually reforming.
Just like your relationship with your wife. Evolving, flourishing, developing, into ever deepening knowing of each other.
 
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