Atheists, tell me, a Roman Catholic: why should I become an atheist?

[Pat Mustard]

I can't deny that it puts a lot of things into perspective...how the religious mold their lives according to what they believe God commands, trusting in faith a lot of the time rather than human logic. Aside from being raised/conditioned into the faith, I guess another reason why it's hard for me to drop it is due to the fact there's billions of other followers of a developed religion. I should probably look into some more theist accounts on why they believe in God, and continue to look into the main arguments (logical/teleological/cosmological/moral) and likely bring them up here.

You are committing a fallacious reasoning known as Argumentum ad populum.
I still marvel at how lots of people are unaware of this fallacy.





What?! How people witness what they say?
Eye-witness testimony is well known to be the least trustworthy of all evidence.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr06/eyewitness.aspx
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/10/h...ists-weigh



1) "look for there existing ANYTHING" - of course, how else could anything exist? Only through the existence of something else!! Of course, makes total sense!
2) "causes and effects" - proof that energy is being exchanged. Paraphrasing a famous physicist, "no god is required"
3) "contingency" - I had to check with a dictionary, it means "a future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty.". So, the world is a complex one and our simple simian brains cannot grasp all the details. Big news!
4) "corruptible composition" - how do they come up with these terms? I have no idea what this is supposed to pertain to.
5) "intrinsic purposes" - Last time I checked, purpose was something in the domain of conscious creatures. What does 'intrinsic' mean in here?

Ah... all this nonsense points to some "first cause", which is magically "uncreated, simple, infinite, etc" and conveniently call it "god"... thus transforming it into a very complex entity, with all the baggage that comes with any religion (all religions claim to have one of their gods as the creator of everything, right?)

It's always interesting to note the chronology of things - First came belief in gods, then came these arguments to keep people believing under the illusion of firm reasoning.





Oh, the horrible personal cost!


Just because someone believes in something very dearly and is ready to suffer and even die for that belief, it does not mean that the thing being believed in is real.
Texts claiming to portray the tales relayed by those who were there... reminds me of the Red Book of Westmarch:
"
The Red Book of Westmarch is a [...] manuscript written by hobbits[...]

It is a collection of writings in which the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were recounted by their characters, and from which Tolkien supposedly derived these and other works.
"

Add pinch of magic... and... yeah... it's the same thing.

This guy seems to feel like God's existence is undeniable due to the fact that cause and effect is a concept. Doesn't really seem definitive enough for me.

yeah... it's not definite. But, for many, it's enough to strengthen their own belief, so it's a valid tactic.
If I was a believer and found that argument persuasive, I'd naturally try to convey it to you, hoping that you too would find it persuasive.

It looks to me that Balaco is running a parallel discussion on his quandary both here and at forums.catholic.com. The post he quoted which you replied to Pocaracas is this one here, by a poster e_c.

And after scanning through that thread, and reading this one, I must say kudos to Balaco for keeping an open and honest debate going through his indecision of faith.

---

Oh, Balaco, I'd like you to ask e_c regarding his assertion that early christians wouldn't die for a lie if islam is also true as millions also died for that (some of whom are dying this very day), or if nazism is true (considering the thousands of Waffen SS and Wehrmacht recruits who died in the sincere belief that Hitler was right).

Just because people are willing to give their lives for an idea, that doesn't give it a free pass on showing the idea is right.