RE: What motivates theists to come here?
August 20, 2016 at 2:48 pm
(This post was last modified: August 20, 2016 at 2:49 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
(August 19, 2016 at 8:33 pm)abaris Wrote:The lame arguments, or more accurately skeptical objections, are those that don't reflect an accurate understanding of those rational demonstrations that support the god of classical theism. Mostly I hear the "Who created God?" response which is both inane and ignorant. This is not to say that there aren't good objections to the rational demonstrations for First Cause, Necessary Being, etc. There are, but those are very rarely raised on AF. These objections include Humes' denial of causality and Kant's denial that experience can access facts about nomena. It is pretty clear that denying causality and/or the validity of experience both come at great cost. As I see it the most compelling objection to the existence of God is the existence of evil.(August 19, 2016 at 4:07 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Some atheists can be nice people, but I see atheism, as an intellectual commitment, bleak and nihilistic and the arguments to support it are what I called lame.Why are the arguments lame?
(August 19, 2016 at 8:33 pm)abaris Wrote: Since I don't believe in the earth poofing into existence with fully equipped humans, I don't consider them lame. The other side arguing away the vast majority of the scientific community seems lame to me.I have no disagreement with you or your apparent rejection of creationism. I see no conflict between faith and science.
(August 19, 2016 at 8:33 pm)abaris Wrote: ...you should know by now that most of our opinions and views of the world are anything but nilistic. Bleak maybe, but that's down to the stupidity of humanity or the powers that be. But never nihilistic.
Not everyone is aware that what they expressly believe about the existence of God, value, and meaning rest on tacit assumptions about the efficacy of reason and the intelligibility of reality that are, at root, nihilistic.