RE: Ask a Catholic
May 30, 2015 at 12:51 pm
(This post was last modified: May 30, 2015 at 12:57 pm by Randy Carson.)
(May 29, 2015 at 10:06 pm)Spooky Wrote: A question:
Many of us Atheists have read the bible (which likely contributed to some of our "deconversions"). So, does it work both ways?
Suppose I provided you a copy of 'The God Delusion', would you read it? If not, why?
Spooky-
I decided to look into Dawkins' The God Delusion, and I found an interesting review of the book by Dr. Antony Flew.
Dr. Flew, you may recall, was a lecturer at the Universities of Oxford and Aberdeen and a Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Keele and of Reading. Known for his 1950 publication of "Theology and Falsification", Flew was called "the world's most influential philosophical atheist" as well as "one of the most renowned atheists of the 20th Century".
(Until I have been a member of the forum for 30 days, I will not post links to outside material, but you can Google "Antony Flew The God Delusion" to find his full review.)
Dr. Flew, who did become a deist near the end of his life (authoring There is a God), denounces Dawkins for what Flew sees as Dawkins' "scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form." He goes on to say, "[Dawkins'] failure is the crucial index of his insincerity of academic purpose and therefore warrants me in charging him with having become, what he has probably believed to be an impossibility, a secularist bigot."
Well, perhaps The God Delusion is a good, representative overview of atheist perspectives, but in light of such a review, I'm inclined to look at Hitchens or Ehrman first.
What are your thoughts on Flew's review and the other authors I've mentioned?
(May 30, 2015 at 2:08 am)Brakeman Wrote: Why doesn't jesus, who loves you, want to talk to you with conversational words as he did to others in the bible?
Why do you assume He doesn't? Different people have different experiences.
Quote:Where in the bible does it explain that god won't talk to people in conversation anymore, but will begin to only converse with muted feelings and emotions, and images on toast?
You mean, apart from the fact that Jesus ascended into heaven and promised to send the Holy Spirit instead? That might account for a good bit of it.
However, Jesus does speak conversationally with some people, but since this is something that you cannot or will not accept as evidence, why bring it up?