I can't tell you how often I hear "proofs" like the one above. I exist, therefore it proves God exists... I'm afraid it's just not that easy. We know how I came to exist, I have parents - they had sex. They also came from the union of sexually active people.
However, that's not what believers are referring to when they make such a claim. They know how you and I came into existence, they don't know how life started in the first place.
Abiogenesis, life from non-life. How did it happen? Theists answer by simply saying "God did it." (Which doesn't answer the question. It is an attempt to explain WHO did it, but the answer still doesn't explain HOW it happened.) Skeptics like myself simply admit the truth - I don't know.
Why are theists so uncomfortable with "I don't know?" Why are those words so difficult for them to say -- oh, but they're not. When you start asking difficult questions about God, the theist will quickly admit their ignorance, and even claim that it's impossible to understand God.
Why the double standard?
Why is it okay to admit you don't know why God would create a system by which the only way to pay for sin was to kill something that was innocent of the crime it's being killed for... but it's not okay for scientists to admit they don't (yet) know how life came from non-life?
Eventually scientists may be able to answer the question of abiogenesis -- although "true believers" will deny it like they deny evolution -- until that time, I'm comfortable with my ignorance.
If a theist believes God created life from non-life, please provide a detailed explanation of HOW he changed dead matter into living organisms, and... if it's not to much to ask... please provide a method we can use to test your hypothesis.
However, that's not what believers are referring to when they make such a claim. They know how you and I came into existence, they don't know how life started in the first place.
Abiogenesis, life from non-life. How did it happen? Theists answer by simply saying "God did it." (Which doesn't answer the question. It is an attempt to explain WHO did it, but the answer still doesn't explain HOW it happened.) Skeptics like myself simply admit the truth - I don't know.
Why are theists so uncomfortable with "I don't know?" Why are those words so difficult for them to say -- oh, but they're not. When you start asking difficult questions about God, the theist will quickly admit their ignorance, and even claim that it's impossible to understand God.
Why the double standard?
Why is it okay to admit you don't know why God would create a system by which the only way to pay for sin was to kill something that was innocent of the crime it's being killed for... but it's not okay for scientists to admit they don't (yet) know how life came from non-life?
Eventually scientists may be able to answer the question of abiogenesis -- although "true believers" will deny it like they deny evolution -- until that time, I'm comfortable with my ignorance.
If a theist believes God created life from non-life, please provide a detailed explanation of HOW he changed dead matter into living organisms, and... if it's not to much to ask... please provide a method we can use to test your hypothesis.
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I find it sad and interesting that a person who claims to not believe in God, and who incidentally believe that he came from nothing and is going ultimately nowhere, actually tries to find purpose in life. Why do you contend so much with the God you claim to not believe in?
ReplyDeleteI have watched some of your “Tough Questions for Christians”, and I should like to answer them. I have not watched them all, but I will present an answer that I think is sufficient. I confess that I still have things that I would like to ask God myself.
ReplyDeleteI am a devout Catholic. I think your questions are actually a tremendous service and that you should keep it up. It forces us all to think more about our faith. I was raised a Catholic and became an atheist in my 20s while I was getting my education. I believe that I sincerely sought the truth and it brought me full circle. The Catholic Faith is very profound and seems to have unlimted depth. I can only scratch the surface, really.
Anyway, I need to start at The Beginning. You may not know this but the Catholic Church gave up attacking science several centuries ago. So we do not have an investment in the literal or “Creationist” truth of the book of Genesis. Genesis is not history per se, but spiritual truth. Genesis is where the fall in the Garden takes place and is where humanity acquires “Original Sin”. Understanding Original Sin is key to understanding Catholicism – and oneself.
In the Garden, Eve takes the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and tempts Adam with it. They eat it and are expelled from this paradise.
This story, for Catholics, is not important as a precise history, but in its spiritual content: it tells us who we are and it tells us about the origins of the moral universe. This is not merely a true story for us, but is truth. Knowledge of good and evil is a description of the human condition. Knowing good and evil is seeing the world from MY viewpoint. You know good by knowing how good things impact you; you know evil by knowing when things hurt. Humans can't know these things any other way. The knowledge of good and evil requires a self-centred nature. It requires that we see the universe through the lense of self interest. It forces us into the box of seeing things primarily from the prespective of how they impact me, and conversely the moral perspective (of how things impact others) is a rational effort. We are born into what is for us a cursed world: we are completely open to the possibility of suffering, and our lives are bounded by death. Our self-centredness all but eradicates our ability for selfless love.
So, original sin leads us to sin through our self-interested behaviour. Death is an inevitability, for how else could we truly know evil without death? In other words, original sin as a concept describes our human condition as we relate to God. To truly know evil we must be cut off in a profound way from God.
Catholic prayers often talk in terms of humans being “in exile”. We see the journey of the Isrealites in the wilderness as a metaphore for our lives, the manna that fed them as the Eucharist which sustains us spiritually while we travel to the “promised land”. Crossing the Jordan with Joshua and conquering the promised land is a metaphore for the spiritual re-taking of our rightful connection to God, the giants and walled cities our own passions which we subdue with spiritual battle (through prayer). This crossing into the promised land is only possible if we follow the ark with the commandments. We believe that the ark and the commandments are the Blessed Virgin and Jesus.
The commandments are a description, in a sense, of our inherited failings. Jesus is the remedy for these. Because of our inheritence we stand the risk of hell at death. This is our choice. This life can be lived as a reconnecting with God or as a turning our back to Him. It is a direct result of our condition that this life is bounded by moral judgement. These bounds end at death, where moral action ceases.
Jesus as Redeemer.
Jesus has redeemed us by His sacrifice. The Catholic perspective tells us that one of the greatest assets of our creation is our freedom. Our true condition is to be in complete communion with God, and since God is pure love, this is the greatest freedom possible. Our freedom was in fact so great that it altered the nature of our destiny; it changed our world. In our “exile” we have a greatly compromised freedom as we are slaves to our selves and our passions (hunger, pain, cold, sickness, fear, etc), but the remnant of our true freedom is choice. To remove this choice from us is to destroy what remains of God's greatest gift to us. This is why the sacrifice on calvary is necessary on many levels. Christ redeems us not by force – i.e. Not by forcibly changing our human nature – but by love. He reminds us that this world is not His kingdom, and He has no desire to conquer it by means of force. He wants to win hearts with love. God requires Jesus as sacrifice not because His anger requires it but because it is the expression of love that is required to affect the changes in our hearts. It is not an angry and vengeful God who has His Son sacrificed, but a God who longs to show us His love. Jesus also by His sacrifice shows us the way. He shows us how we overcome this world thru self sacrifical love: love of God and love of neighbour.
Paul is not redeemed by force, he is, however, converted this way. That is to say that God does nothing to change his nature, nor remove his choice, He uses rather violent persuasion as a means of convincing him.I don't believe divine visions nor miracles remove free will. They likely change the nature of faith profoundly, however.
God becomes, in the person of Jesus, one with us. For, though omniscient, without becoming man God cannot know truly what it is to be human in exile, nor can He know what it is to die. In this way He becomes our brother and we become adopted children of God. He is the conduit through which God's love is available to us. We say in prayer that Christ “pleads for us at the right hand of the Father”. That is to say God “gets” us through Christ.
So we can see that Heaven and Hell are alternative results of our freedom, and that God can do no more than He has done to save us without violating His own creation. It is very profound to me that He asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac – but is only testing Abraham – and then in fact sacrifices His Son for us!
So faith is the path back to our original freedom. Faith, because to see God as He truly is in His entirety would be an act of force imposed upon us, violating our freedom. When we require God to reveal Himself to us, we are presupposing a lot about Him that we can't possibly know. Think of how plants react to the sunlight. They have a real and direct reaction to it, but what they have is nothing near understanding of the Sun. We surely stand in some analogous way in our relationship to God. For it is impossible for us to see Him and not already be transformed into something we are not. People who demand that God show Himself in some way are supposing they know what that would be like. God loves us as we are, and approaches us in a perfect way – thru Jesus. For God, only one sacrifice matters: that of the human heart. The heart that sacrifices its selfishness for love is a heart that is turned to God. Importantly God needs to be sought within. God reveals Himself through the Spirit which makes its home in a heart that hungers for God. So He does reveal Himself, but in His own way.
Now Thomas the apostle insisted upon seeing Christ's wounds in order to believe. The belief Thomas acquires through this is not equivalent to belief for those who have not seen. Relying upon the physical is a less profound movement of the will than the turning toward the God who dwells within us and meeting God through prayer and the sacraments. I might recomend The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila as a great resource about the transformative nature of prayer.
Death.
Now in light of this, we can't with any certainty say who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. We can understand that God's justice is perfect. He is able to weigh the heart of each individual and ask of each heart “Where is your treasure?”. We cannot say where a heart turns at death. Nor can we judge those who are outside of our faith. Our faith is, for those of us who know it, a help to reaching heaven, but it is not a curse for those who do not know it. For surely no one believes that Abraham, Moses and the prophets are burning in hell. Rather, we believe that God's justice is perfect, and that any heart that is loving is making a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. The purpose of the Church is to provide a way that is sure and free of error (and even this is not enough to redeem many people!).
So it is possible for God to be all love AND for a person to burn in Hell – through God's desire that His creation not be violated in its essence. God's love provides the greatest possible sacrifice – His son Jesus - in order to save all of us, and His justice ensures that only those who choose to burn in Hell will go there.
Our freedom is restored to us by our turning away from sin. Sin is really nothing more than our attachment to this world. Original Sin is the cause of sin. So when we sin it is a little misleading to say that God is “offended”. What happens is that we are turning away from God and reattaching ourselves more firmly to this world which is bounded by death. Catholics believe in venial sin and mortal sin. Venial sin is your garden variety weaknesses and mortal sin is grave sin done committed with full knowledge and responsibility. Mortal sin is the moment of truly turning one's back on God – and slamming the door shut. It, if unconfessed, results in damnation.
Catholics believe in a “place” called purgatory. The souls of the dead who die with an amount of attachment to this world spend time here in some form of purification. This makes sense in terms of perfect justice, as it would seem strange that Mother Teresa, and a sinner who repents on his death bed, would receive the same reward. It is believed by Catholics that the majority of us will do some time in purgatory before seeing God. It is possible to remain in Purgatory until the end of theWorld.
The Bible.
Catholics hold the Bible and Church teachings we call “Tradition” on equal footing. That is Tradition tells us how to understand sacred scripture. Tradition is always growing and evolving as our unnderstanding of Christ grows and evolves by the work of inspired individuals. It is Church Tradition that draws a lot of protestant fire. They cite the Bible's instructions against “traditions of men”. However, Catholics believe our Tradition to be inspired. We believe that the Church is one body, continuous through its history, and so the Church is a living thing. Our hierarchy (priests, bishops and the Pope) contain and pass on this Tradition, by living it out. The Pope is the final authority and is held to be “infallible” - not in the sense that he cannot be mistaken, but in the sense that his authority on Church teachings is final.
So we turn to Traditon to interpret the Bible, and the Bible to verify Tradition. We see the Old Testament as a pre-figure of the Christian age, and mine it for understanding of our relationship to God through Christ.
A tough question for atheists.
ReplyDeleteIf there is nothing supernatural then there is only nature. Nature is known by science and everything in nature can be described in scientific terms of cause and effect. What of thought? Thought, understanding, knowing. Does this occur within nature or not? If not within nature then it must be supernatural in some sense.
My tough question to atheists:
Is thought natural or supernatural?
Michael - Thought is natural, thanks to advancements in neuroscience, we can even tell which parts of the brain are responsible for which thoughts. Thought has only been observed in living brains... there is no reason to think anything supernatural is involved.
ReplyDeleteSo if they scanned my brain they could find, say, the cause of my belief that tomorrow is Sunday?
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletemichael said...
ReplyDeleteIn other words, is my belief that tomorrow is Sunday based in logic (ground and consequent) or in cause and effect? If it is brain chemistry that causes this belief, then my sense that I have made an inference is just an illusion, but then if the event of my belief is based, as we normally feel, in ground and consequent then it is not part of the grand causality of things and happens outside "nature" as the term must be defined by an atheist.
For surely there is only one cause for every event
My second tough question for atheists:
ReplyDeleteDo you have the courage to LISTEN?
Or are you all prisoners to your intellect? Would you ignore someone who loves you calling out to you?
For in your heart is a voice shouting "LAZARUS COME OUT!" urging you to leave the tomb, to be unbound.
If the answer is "No, I will not listen, I refuse to try", why?
Isn't it only lack of courage? What do you risk by listening?
Or is rage the stone blocking the tomb? Or some other emotion?
For it is profoundly NOT reason that entombs you. Reason is the bindings that tie your spiritual being, but the decision to do so is something else.
You dismiss, FOR NO REASON, that there may in fact BE a voice calling out to you.
Atheists: Do you have the courage to LISTEN?
My third question for atheists is actually a challenge: a challenge to question things THEY take for granted.
ReplyDeletePeople who believe in God, what are they like? Prejudiced? Ignorant? Brain-dead zombies? Do they think? Do they hunger for the truth? Have they taken the time to ask tough questions about their beliefs?
Do atheists NEED for christians to be ignorant to justify non-belief? Do atheists have to live with a prejudice of their own in order to feel safe? What happens when Christianity is a well-informed and defensible choice?
Isn't it true that atheism is meaningless without someone else believing in God? Don't you need to have something to profoundly reject to be an atheist? Someone to object to? Something to be angry about? A society to reform?
Doesn't atheism borrow the priest's stole, the evangelist's stump, the trumpet of self-righteousness?
Are all christians less intelligent than all atheists? Or would a list of the most brilliant and productive humans to ever walk the earth be littered with christian thinkers?
Finally is christianity REALLY a sham? Is it true that, if you looked beyond the many failed christians, you would not find others who lived lives of genuine inspiration? Wouldn't you find that the failed christians failed to be christian? The inspired succeeded? Is that inconsistant? Isn't failure a universally human characteristic? Why does it implicate christianity?
My challenge to atheists is: stop letting emotion guide your reason. How does Attacking straw man assumptions about christianity make you enlightened?
A response to some disingenuous things written in "Tough Question #31". Here, this blog's host posts an email from a fan who describes all the supposed previous references from which the Christ "myth" is supposedly drawn. It's a very compelling - and misleading - post. A little homework on my part revealed the following:
ReplyDeleteMythra: born out of a rock
Lao-tse: born at the age of 62
"Baccus"(sic)(actually Dionysus) born of an afair
Hermes: born of Maia, a Pleiades, no similarity to Christ's birth
Fo-hi: survivor of a mythic flood who married his sister
"Rameses" (sic) actually not a figure in mythology, but an actual Egyptian Pharaoh
Apollo: A Greek and Roman sun/ light god. Nothing I can find suggests anything like a nativity story.
Samson: actually a much better prefigure of John the Baptist than Jesus.
Baldur: a norse god whose story is only recounted in the 12th century - thus AFTER Christ.
Hercules: born of an affair with a mortal woman
Quetzalcoatl: a virgin birth, but as a New World god, totally removed from early christian history, and therefore from the formation of the supposed "myth" of Christ
Finaly Osiris, who has some intriguing similarities to Christ, but far more disimilarities.
The email lists 10 distinct indicators to show how ALL of these "myths" are actually the source of the Christ story. A small amount of research would show that this is utter nonsense, yet it stands as an argument to show how christianity is a fraud
The host of this blog posted this misinformation without looking into it at all.