Posted on 02/24/2012 10:12:20 AM PST by SeekAndFind
He is regarded as the most famous atheist in the world but last night Professor Richard Dawkins admitted he could not be sure that God does not exist.
He told the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, that he preferred to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. The two men were taking part in a public “dialogue” at Oxford University at the end of a week which has seen bitter debate about the role of religion in public life in Britain. Last week Baroness Warsi, the Tory party chairman, warned of a tide of “militant secularism” challenging the religious foundations of British society. The discussion, in Sir Christopher Wren’s Sheldonian Theatre, attracted attention from around the world. As well as being relayed to two other theatres, it was streamed live on the internet and promoted fierce debate on the Twitter social network.
For an hour and 20 minutes the two men politely discussed "The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin" touching on the meaning of consciousness, the evolution of human language – and Dr Williams’s beard.
For much of the discussion the Archbishop sat quietly listening to Prof Dawkins’s explanations of human evolution.
At one point he told the professor that he was “inspired” by “elegance” of the professor’s explanation for the origins of life – and agreed with much of it. Prof Dawkins told him: “What I can’t understand is why you can’t see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing – that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”
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(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Amen! What really can fry our noodles is knowing that God knew before anything ever existed, who would come to saving faith. Before the foundation of the world, Scripture says, he knew us.
That’s the chance you take when you create beings with free will. If God designed us so that we’d have no choice but to come to Him, our wills wouldn’t really be free would they?
Atheism is moronic.....it requires a God to not believe in.
The migration to agnostic can be expected as God draws them unto himself.
Salvation of atheists is one of our Lords greatest pleasures and Glories.
The roots of atheism are almost always moral not intellectual.
Read chapter 9 of Romans and find out.
Face to face. Every. Single. One.
When the end of their mortality approaches they ponder more, they start to think what if.....most atheists are not stupid.....just ignorant and blinded by the god of this world....Satan.
You think God takes chances? He knows what we will do, how we will do and even when we’ll die, right? There’s no chance involved.
Well, for starters, I was asking a person, not the bible. I read Romans 9, and could not pick out the part that explains why. Some help with that chapter would be appreciated.
The more an atheist thinks—any atheist—the closer he will come to realizing he is in fact an agnostic.
The more an agnostic informs his thinking with reliable data, the more he will realize that both logical and empirical evidence demonstrating the truth of God’s existence are greater than the opposing arguments.
That’s a good question, and like all difficult questions it is likely answerable in many forms. The obvious answer is probably the best, although it’s the one atheists and agnostics don’t like—that we can’t know the mind of God.
But to dislike this answer doesn’t change the truth of it.
And a very important point to remember is that our ignorance of God’s mind is not only quantitative in nature but also qualitative.
Proverbs 3 tells us “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,” which is another part of the answer to your question.
‘But to dislike this answer doesn’t change the truth of it.’
What if what you perceive to be the truth, is not?
...but he still wouldn’t be able to prove it to someone that doesn’t believe the same as he, right?
Atheism is every bit as much a “faith” as is the belief in God.
First we must establish whether we truly understand our own assertions.
Are we clear on the meaning of the words “prove” and “believe?”
For example, do you believe there are minds other than your own? Can you prove it? If not, why do you believe it, and what exactly does that mean?
I think your question might be incoherent. If not, can you illustrate it with an example?
I think your question might be incoherent. If not, can you illustrate it with an example?
“Why do you think He creates souls He knows will never come to Him?”
If God were to create only souls who will come to him, these souls would be automatons. They would have no free will, and therefore would be incapable of having faith.
But our knowledge of God includes knowledge that he wants faith to exist and that he wants it to have a major role in the world. This explains how the question in quotations above is a bit incoherent.
When it comes to these conversations, I have to admit that I do not know why I believe what I do. It’s just the way I was built I guess.
Proving in this instance, to me, is being able to make another person believe something you believe.
You believe there is one truth, what if there isn’t?
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