RE: Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?
November 25, 2016 at 11:04 pm
(November 25, 2016 at 9:55 pm)Balaco Wrote: Brought this particular post up to a Catholic website and got this response I'd like to hear a counterclaim of. Pretty sure I can tell what you guys are going to have to say but I'm interested anyway. These answers seem dependent on love of and belief in the loving nature of God...so I'll probably just have to continue my research on the existence of God.
1 and 3 don't really answer the question and I get the impression that the person answering did not understand them. The questions imply that there is no evidence that there is a god, or that there is one that does not pay us any attention. Explaining that god's apparent abandonment of humanity shows how much he loves us doesn't make sense.
2 was basically "I'll check it out after I die." Not really an answer and again seems to misunderstand the point.
4 would lead you to wonder why the Islamic martyrs today are not sufficient proof of Allah's existence. Why would they die for a lie?
5 makes a claim that cannot be substantiated, though the wording implies that this is a matter of faith. I'd ask for a list of those miracles. I also wonder what kind of list I would get if I asked a Muslim or Hindu or another Christian denomination, and what any of those would say about this person's list. Any bets that a good number of those miracles would be explained as the devil trying to lead people away from god's truth?
It's common for theists to give vague answers, or answers that rely only on their holy book, or to contend that their claims cannot be disproven. Consider how they would react to the same explanation given by someone of a different denomination or faith, and see if they can explain how one might establish the truth of any such claims. Turning to philosophy or metaphysics or intuition when dealing with an atheist may seem to work, but not so much when they're dealing with someone who uses their same approach and they realize that there is no consensus on how those methods can be consistently applied in order to get to the truth.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould