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

[pocaracas]

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Through my research so far, I've found that this doesn't necessarily point to God. A lot of these points came from some threads on this site...for example I believe Rob presented the dice analogy. I presented the following posts to the Catholic Forum to see what their defense was.

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Objectively speaking, unlikely events, such as our existence, don't necessarily point to God. Even though some parts of the universe are precise...even if a small percent difference would've stopped us from existing, it's not impossible these things could've happened on their own. 

Human existence didn't have to happen, but it did. It ended up being the event that happened out of the many events that could have been possible.

A simple analogy I've found involves the roll of a die 1000 times over. Every last combination of the numbers produced by the die is equally as likely; equally as unlikely. The order being something like "2, 4, 6, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1 etc." or just "2" over and over is extremely unlikely, but just as extremely unlikely as any other outcome. It just so happened that, out of all the possible outcomes, that one occurred. 

I've also seen the lottery or disorders being used as analogies. There are billions of people in the world, each as unlikely to win the lottery or be born with a rare disorder, but it happens. 

Of course, human existence is (probably) much more complex than rolling a die or winning the lottery in a sense. Though if we look at it without immediately assuming that we had to or have to exist, the analogies remain relevant. For all we know, that small percent change in the elements would've led to the existence of radically different beings, rather than us humans.

Some other users also claimed that it could also be possible that the odds of us existing were 100% (without God existing)...but our knowledge is currently too limited to comprehend this. There could be a branch of physics/science that explains this, but we haven't learned it yet.....or our incomplete human minds are overthinking things. These last points here aren't exactly provable so I'm not necessarily defending them past their possibility.

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What kind of surprised me was that no theists really tried to refute it. One person admitted that the teleological argument isn't "absolute" proof of God and conceded that these points show that. 

Actually this person feels that it proves God is highly likely to exist, and that "atheists are putting a great deal of faith in the tiny sliver of a chance that God doesn't exist."  I don't really see how this argument necessarily proves either of these two; I laid out how it's scientifically possible that humanity didn't have to exist...though I suppose the theist mind in this case likely doesn't focus on how we didn't necessarily have to exist, as God's existence would answer that. I suppose other arguments for God's existence may reinforce the confidence in theists, which strengthens the validity of the teleological argument for them. I'll probably ask this guy for some clarification and then see if I can refute him.

Another simply mentioned that (as I said) Aquinas' teleological argument is much stronger than this one. 

The only other person who responded claims that the teleological argument, among every other single thing in the world, points to God, and supplemented that with an analogy on how there's many ways we don't believe in God. Wasn't really relevant to the discussion. I guess this might be another case of jumping to God for an answer rather than attempting to find a logical answer, though to be fair I don't know anything about this person's knowledge.

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To be fair, none of Thomas's 5 ways individually prove that a divine being exists. Instead, they demonstrate the existence of more abstract concepts like subsisting cause, being, necessity, intelligence, etc., and THEN he simply says that, when we say the word god, we mean those things.

1st way: An unmoved, prime mover of everything else that moves. "and this everyone understands to be God"
2nd way: A first/un-caused efficient cause of every other cause. "to which everyone gives the name of God"
3rd way: Necessary being which causes all other being. "This all men speak of as god"
4th way: Perfect being/goodness/truth/beauty which causes the incomplete being/goodness/truth/beauty of everything else. "and this we call god"
5th way: Intelligent and teleological being which directs natural things to their end. "and this we call god"

In other words, if all 5 ways prove what they claim to prove, then when a theist says "god exists", they mean that something exists which is unmoved, un-caused, necessary, perfect, and intelligent, which is the source, cause, and end of all other things. In short, it means that being-itself just simply is, of itself, and that's what we call god.

All 5 ways make an argument from ignorance. They're all flawed.
But no believer has ever been able to acknowledge this.... so I won't waste my time typing out how it is.