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

[vorlon13]

Can I just say, I think it's kinda grim that the first thing you're reaching for when it comes to support for theism is arguments, and not... you know, evidence?

Arguments are not evidence, and in fact in cases like this they're most often what people use because they don't have evidence. Theistic apologetics largely just try to arrange gaps in knowledge into a god-shaped hole because they don't actually have anything to fill it. Why god must exist, because they have nothing to show that he does.

And here you are, buying into it. My suggestion to you would be to raise your standards.  

Maybe I should've put more clarification into that post. I'm not going to just use arguments (from either theists or atheists) as pure evidence, but I'm going to be looking for evidence to supplement them, to see for myself if a/theistic arguments hold any ground.

At this point I'm more or less neutral rather than buying into theistic arguments, with my mind beginning to lean away from the Church if anything -- due to how valid atheist explanations/evidence against God seem to be, and due to the many apparent logical fallacies I'm beginning to see within religions.

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I would like you, Balaco, to consider the following paragraph written by a traditional Roman Catholic priest and theologian (emphasis mine):
       

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt57.html

Note the last two lines.

Now, if you have a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, who is highly educated, acknowledging the fact that the Catholic Church's Magisterium has contradicted itself, how can you possibly continue to believe that any of it is true?  Especially, with Francis now allowing unrepentant, public adulterers to receive the Holy Eucharist, the so-called Blessed Sacrament, the "Sacrament of Sacraments"?

The so-called "genetic fallacy" applies in multiple instances here.  Muslims, even educated ones, are not converting en mass to Christianity, and nor vice-a-versa.  Therefore, the arguments of so-called Christian apologists are not convincing.  However, even the Iranian Academy of Sciences accepts Darwinian evolution:

http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13901.aspx

What does that tell you?

Let me make sure I understand your points.

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The Roman Catholic Church prides itself on being correct on every last one of its claims and teachings (and from what I understand, the Church uses this as a primary basis for its "validity"). The Pope is traditionally seen as being absolutely infallible in all of his teachings. Yet here we see blatant examples of apparent contradictions in the Catholic Church. We see Pius IX not merely altering Catholic teachings from what Leo XIII asserted...we see him absolutely condemning his teachings and calling them evil. Even today, Francis is now going against previously "solid" Church teachings.

In short, the fact that the Catholic Church has ever changed its teachings or has ever had contradictions renders the Church as invalid -- considering it insists that it has never changed its teachings.

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If I'm gathering this all correctly, I think I may have to agree with these points. To be fair I haven't looked into the Catholic perspective/counterarguments of these points as of posting this response, so I'll have to see if they have any validity.

And then when we see in Holy Scripture the Apostle Paul superseding and overruling some of Jesus' edicts and strictures.


On who's authority did Paul take it upon himself to do that ??


Surely not Jesus' as Jesus would have simply preached the correct doctrine in the first place.