RE: Atheists, what are the most convincing theist arguments you heard of?
March 13, 2017 at 12:58 pm
(March 13, 2017 at 10:01 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: The Great Commission is to share the Good News of Jesus Christ - to share to our own personal experience and point the many changed lives of others. Apologetics were never meant to convince non-believers to come to faith. That is the work of the Holy Spirit speaking through the sublime. Our God is a wounded God. His compassion was born of agony and injustice. He gives comfort and counsel to us in our times of need. The role of apologetics is just to demonstrate that the trust we put in the hope of our hearts is reasonable.
Many of you are not convinced. Similarly the skeptical objections are not persuasive. I see only various combinations of non-sequiturs and straw men. What remains, for me, is not some abstract 'argument from ignorance' but rather the abiding presence of an ineffable Other, the all-encompassing love that reaches out to me even though I deserve nothing. As John 4:19 says, we love Him because He loved us first. That is His invitation to all those who, like me and so many others, see beauty, knows compassion, and whose hearts cry out from the darkness.
Not that everyone is tuned into it as such but this atheist is more than happy to acknowledge the presence of an ineffable otherness within. I value its participation and inspiration at all times. It makes the world a more complex and also satisfying place to conceptualize an otherness within. Its happiness is key to my own. It tends to keep alienation at bay and provide a robust answer to existential questions. But I would never seek to write over what it has to offer with anything off the rack or which pretends to be authoritative. Only the mystery itself will do. I accept no substitutes, holy books included. That is an overly intellectualized approach for my taste, I'm willing to be more humble than that.
