Posted on 09/23/2017 8:21:17 AM PDT by Raymond Pamintuan
Atheism, the rejection of the possibility that “God” exists, has become the dominant thought amongst intellectuals in the past century and has been around longer than most people think. For over 2000 years, it was based on philosophical arguments that can roughly be summed up as the atheist saying, “I don’t know how ‘X’ came to be, but you can’t prove it came from God.” This mindset has been highly effective because it places the burden of proof on the theist to prove the positive of God’s existence, which, superficially, is impossible to do – because no evidence exists that provides “proof” that can be independently verified and repeated at a five-sigma (5σ) confidence level and above that God is real.
During the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, atheists were no longer content to use philosophical arguments and started using positive claims that basically said, “‘X’ proves God does not exist.”
Most recently, the highly influential New Atheism spearheaded by Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens has modified the positive arguments, but reinforced and justified a dangerous trend that started in the late 20th century that roughly states, “Because you do not accept that “X” proves God does not exist, you are not credible and must not be allowed to be in a position of influence over others.”
The New Atheism mindset has had an enormous effect among atheists in positions of power in academia: For the “thought crime” of believing God exists, theist scientists have actually been blocked from jobs and tenure, they have been prevented from getting their works funded or published, and many have actually been terminated from their jobs. One now sees university campuses where openly theist professors are becoming rarer by the year,
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
The believer in a moral God must account for one thing, unjust suffering,”””
God can un-do any suffering, literally, as the Author of time. Putting that aside, how many souls, having seen Heaven, a concept the human mind cannot even envelop, would hesitate to live another 10 lives of suffering for the privilege? ??
lemme clarify- the folks on youtube claim to be part of the ‘critical realism’ group- but I doubt any of them have really even looked into the movement to understand what it drives at- they just adopt the phrase ‘critical realism’ or ‘critical thinkers’ but in reality they are the same old Godless partisan laymen that have always been around- I guess they think it makes them sound more legit, more sophisticated, to proclaim they are ‘critical thinkers’- The folks I’ve run across are very bitter- very nasty- The actual founders of movements like ‘critical realism’ no doubt were folks who were at least honestly trying to think critically, philosophically- to tackle hard problems etc- The laymen in forums though are just typical atheists adopting a title they think makes them sound more sophisticated- more modern- more philosophical- they don’t actually engage in critical thinking, and likely don’t even know what critical realism is trying to accomplish
:) it gets better! It’s part of a book, coming soon, called Is Jesus “God”?
Now that is going to be FUN!
https://edwardkwatson.com/is-jesus-%22god%22%3F
Precisely. And that negative is what the entire atheist worldview is based on. "A-theist" means "not-god-ist." It is itself a negative.
And I don't agree with PJ's summary of the atheist world view. It's better summed up as "I see no reason to assume there might be a God, so I don't."
First, the fact that you see no reason to assume there might be a God has no bearing on whether there IS one; it speaks more about you than about Him. Secondly, I can see a myriad -- indeed, a universe -- of reasons to believe there IS a God, so I do.
In the end, both the belief and the un-belief are based on faith. So logic really doesn't go very far in arguing either side of the case.
Prayer must come first. God is the one who can win the argument, in His way and His timing. He may use you to plant seeds, but resist the temptation to engage in long arguments over details they cannot understand. Stick with the Truth, and leave it in God’s hands.
The atheist claim that there is no God is just as much a ‘truth claim’ as the theists assertion.
I agree with you, but that’s not the argument nor my position. Think about what I said. My contention does not automatically confer superiority on a believer of any religion.
The atheist claim that there is no God is just as much a ‘truth claim’ as the theists assertion.
Ask him what science believes was there before the Big Bang and of what started the Big Bang.
If they say there was nothing before the Big Bang, then they have admitted to faith beyond any reason or science and they've justified the God we've always known existed.
my nephew does not believe in God. I look at it as his loss.
He’s a real smart alec about it , too. I find ignoring him is the worst i can do to him, as he wants the confrontation.
I my self was one of those who was angry at god in my youth (16-20) and claimed to be an atheist. it was only when I realized that it was tose who claimed the mantle of preacher in my life who had let me down that I was able to move on. I unfortunately had an antiemetic minister as my confirmation teacher and then quit going to church because Of another pasture who was caught up in the trappings of being a minister and the social impotence that went with it. The more wealthy your parents were or you were the more attention he paid to the person....the final straw was when that anti sematic minister had an affair and abandoned his family five kids and a wife...the man had adopted the kids only four years before this and because I was friends with his daughter I felt for the betrayal of the wife and kids... it took one lonely night and me coming to the defense of another atheist who was having a religious discussion with a campus minister to break through to me that I was just angry at the hypocrisy I had experienced as a kid with some who claimed the mantle of being a minister.
today I don’t confuse the grace of excepting god into your life with that of mans sinful nature. I also realize any minister or plain parishioner is capable of great fall from gods grace.
A good resource if you are going to debate an atheist:
Cornelius Van Til “Why I believe in God.”
Google it this way and it will pop up immediately.
Van Til doesn’t argue the matter; he just cuts the atheist off at the knees!
Thank you for the clarification.
[[ to break through to me that I was just angry at the hypocrisy I had experienced as a kid with some who claimed the mantle of being a minister.]]
That drives a great many away- but it’s really just an excuse for wavering faith in the end- IF we have a strong faith, then it doesn’t matter what others do or don’t do- We believe because We have a strong faith- period- Satan knows whereto get us- He knows how to needle us and cause us to grumble and complain and move away from God- He knows how to use our weak faith against us
[[I also realize any minister or plain parishioner is capable of great fall from gods grace.]]
Yup- they are people just like us- they fall victims to the same things we do- But we can’t allow our faith to rest on their conduct- when we take our eyes off of God, and put it on others- then we tend to grumble and complain and waver- and look for things to feed our anger-
Glad ya made it :) A great many people give up and never reconcile with God
I’ve experienced the same. Family (for me) has always been afforded an extra measure of restraint. I too had a nephew who, when he got into his later teens and twenties, got belligerent to his elders (father, grandfather, and uncles).
He kept pushing for a reaction and finally got it with my older brother who took him to the floor, pinned his nose against the carpet, and told him, “Disrespect me - fine, but insult and disrespect your grampa again and you’ll do all your eating through a straw.”
It surprised me little to hear that he’s gone transgender (the nephew not the brother!).
[[He’s a real smart alec about it , too.]]
A good response would be “If you wish me to respect your belief, then respect mine please”-
I once replied to a colleague who had a biology PhD from an Ivy League school and was a Darwinian fundamentalist athiest, “I don’t have enough faith to believe what you believe.” She was so angry we didn’t speak for some time thereafter.
No, un-belief isn’t based on faith. It’s just a lack of belief. Babies are atheists, until people fill their heads with tales. We are all born atheists.
When an atheist sticks their nose in my business I only ask them one question.
“You say you don’t believe, so why do you care”?
Yet, these are biological constructs which would not exist in the world at all beyond certain levels of abstraction, the most highly developed of which, is the human's.
Plus, if God can do anything, it seems just as plausible that in allowing for human abstraction He chose not to know in advance what certain outcomes would be as, otherwise, what would be His point in bringing it about at all?
I'm also not sure if He might eventually clear out "Hell" altogether.
I don't really like making assumptions about God's motives. (Those other seeming ones mentioned above being merely speculation based on the sense of reason that He has given me.)
I'll take a look at Glen Miller's site and get back to you.
Thanks for responding.
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