Ask an atheist—but don't expect any straight answers!

[Guest]

I totally support what my fellow Christians are saying here regarding prayer. My husband in fact DID have cancer and died from it. He DID except it was answers from many prayers and all that knew him ( Christians) and understood his position over time also.

I also have multiple sclerosis and have lost 4 babies over the course of time. I certainly prayed over those times. But in retrospect I understand why these things have happened to me. I could write a longer list, but I don't need to.

We as Chrsitians DO view death differently and do accept prayer and the answers to them ,even if in a different diretion than we may have wanted.

I know you do not understand this as we do , nor accept it.


A free will choice you have.....provided by God. Glow

[Guest]

Asimov,

An answer to a prayer or any request isn't always the answer anyone wants. If you ask congress for a million dollars to spend at the casino and they said no you still got your request answered. Its the same with prayer. If the answer is no there is a reason behind the answer.

Jim

Again, that's just a semantical word game.

1. I pray that a patient will recover from his heart condition.
2. The patient dies from a heart condition.
C. My prayer wasn't answered.

To simply imply that

C. My prayer WAS answered, I just got a no

only shows exactly how prayer is NOT an effective method of trying to convince someone that God exists. You guys go on and on about how I wont accept the story anyways, yet I find that it doesn't matter even IF the prayer wasn't answered in the way you wanted, God just does what he wants.

Ok...so how is that supposed to amaze me?

Asimov,
Of course you have enough information. Just answer the question.

No I don't. I know that you said that you were "prevented" from falling by something that you think wasn't there before. I know nothing else from that.

Allyn, I was prevented by being thirsty by something that wasn't there before. Answer me who put it there?

It was a glass of water! And I put it there, ha!

See?

Asimov, I was simply laying out the case for evolution since it's either that or God.

False dichotomy.

If you don't believe non-life created life then you must concede that life created life (since life exists) and had to originate with an uncaused first cause.

Evolution doesn't state that non-life created life. And no, I don't have to concede anything of the sort.

How can you get away from this conclusion in an atheistic worldview? I've heard some of the greatest minds in atheism (like Bertrand Russell) try to tackle this question and fail miserably.

I don't have any belief regarding the origins of life whatsoever since there are only certain ideas surrounding abiogenesis, some of which sound promising. As it stands, I have absolutely no opinion on it whatsoever.

An atheistic worldview isn't contingent on answering everything, JC.

If a child suffers from a crippling disease, death is actually freedom from that disease and the child is welcomed into eternity. God may still choose to heal that child for any number of reasons but not healing the child can serve a purpose that he or she will be thankful for later. I know this from experience.

So either way you're secure in your own belief and you have nothing to offer me that is convincing whatsoever. Why point out "miracles", then?

I totally support what my fellow Christians are saying here regarding prayer. My husband in fact DID have cancer and died from it. He DID except it was answers from many prayers and all that knew him ( Christians) and understood his position over time also.

I also have multiple sclerosis and have lost 4 babies over the course of time. I certainly prayed over those times. But in retrospect I understand why these things have happened to me. I could write a longer list, but I don't need to.

We as Chrsitians DO view death differently and do accept prayer and the answers to them ,even if in a different diretion than we may have wanted.

I know you do not understand this as we do , nor accept it.


A free will choice you have.....provided by God. Glow

You didn't answer my question, though.

Is you having MS God providing you with what you need?
Is a child born with leukemia God providing them with what they need?

If so, then why are you bringing this up as if I should feel something about it?

Either way your prayer is "answered", according to you.

[Guest]

JC wrote:
Asimov, I was simply laying out the case for evolution since it's either that or God.


False dichotomy.

Care to elaborate? Either life came from natural causes or it came from supernatural causes. Feel free to present another option.

Evolution doesn't state that non-life created life. And no, I don't have to concede anything of the sort.

I'm talking about evolution within an atheistic framework. This isn't that complicated. Either life came from life or it came from non-life. If life came from life then you'd eventually need an uncreated first life (we call this first life 'God'). You can disagree all you want but if you have a consistent naturalistic worldview then you must deal with this.

I don't have any belief regarding the origins of life whatsoever since there are only certain ideas surrounding abiogenesis, some of which sound promising. As it stands, I have absolutely no opinion on it whatsoever.

An atheistic worldview isn't contingent on answering everything, JC.

You seem to want Christians to answer everything, yet you don't apply that standard to yourself. This seems pretty convenient when you don't know the answer to something. You say you have no opinion whatsoever on the origins of life, yet you claim to be an Atheist. My friend, that is an opinion on the origins of life. But again, you feel more comfortable throwing out challenges than answering them so I won't press you on this.

If a child suffers from a crippling disease, death is actually freedom from that disease and the child is welcomed into eternity. God may still choose to heal that child for any number of reasons but not healing the child can serve a purpose that he or she will be thankful for later. I know this from experience.


So either way you're secure in your own belief and you have nothing to offer me that is convincing whatsoever.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything other than the fact that your arguments are based on a rather naive and simplistic view of your creator. I fault many Christians for this too so please take no offence. The bible was written using simplistic language and terms to describe God and his actions but this had a pragmatic purpose in that it needed to convey a message to different cultures in different periods in history. But even a cursory look at the universe and how it works speaks volumes about the grand nature of its creator. Don't put God in a box, even if some Christians do.

God doesn't have a body and doesn't sit on a cloud stroking his beard. The scriptures tell us he is light and is infused with every part of his creation. Even his angels are so powerful that every time they appeared to someone in the bible, that person fell to their knees in fear and awe. How much more their creator? So when you ask questions about the mind of God just remember who it is we're contemplating.

[Guest]

Allyn wrote:
Asimov,
Of course you have enough information. Just answer the question.

Asimov wrote:
No I don't. I know that you said that you were "prevented" from falling by something that you think wasn't there before. I know nothing else from that.

Allyn, I was prevented by being thirsty by something that wasn't there before. Answer me who put it there?

It was a glass of water! And I put it there, ha!

See?

How do I know it was a glass of water, and how do I know that you put it there?
Concerning my example - If you don't know the answer then you would not understand even if I gave it to you. But I really think that you just refuse to give the answer.

[Guest]

Everything I observe and study and see points that God is a subjective being, intrinsic to the individual. A creation of their own minds.

Someone mentioned this idea to Glenn Miller once. Here is his response:

"So, how did you come to the conclusion that mankind somehow 'invented' God?

"What historical or archaeological data could you advance for your position? (recognizing that 'religion'--good, bad, and ugly--already was present in earliest recorded history of civilization...there are NO evidences of development at all in the earliest written records of humanity--it is already completely full-blown and well-developed by then...so I cannot imagine how you could identify a point in time in which this 'invention' occurred)?


"Not only can we not identify in historical sources a point of 'invention', we cannot even trace a line of development! The earliest religious practices on record are from ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia. And these ancient religions have very well-developed theologies, rituals, ethical systems, and even institutions. Even the universality of the flood traditions in all ancient cultures (in which a god or gods judged the world with a flood) represents an essentially 'modern' religious outlook.


"You realize that IF God created us with a pre-built notion of an "disembodied consciousness with virtually unlimited abilities", we would be EXPECTED to 'come up with' an idea of "god"--as a means for Him/Her/It/They to initiate personal communication with our species, so any argument that we 'learn' the concept of 'god' from culture or we externalize parental roles/powers to an abstract "Thou" will count in support of BOTH theories...


"Abstraction" alone, by the way, cannot disqualify the concept of 'god', since the same level of abstraction applies to a wide range of related terms that obviously 'exist'--agent, consciousness, minds, justice, love, truth, etc.


"I am curious, therefore, how you would support such a position--with real data.

Glenn also has something he claims to have learned in the second 25 years of his life:

1. There is something 'beyond' the physical universe -- something that 'caused' this one.

The vast, vast majority of the human race has believed this since our beginnings. Since the day we began to write down our thoughts some six to eight millennia ago, we have shown that two things have dominated our thinking from Day One: God and money! Our earliest records of civilization document extensive economic systems and elaborate and well-developed religious beliefs. Long before religion was discovered by the power elite to be useful for social control, kings quailed before the gods and spirits of their lands and the lands of others. The concept of a god was not the invention of the powerful, to control the weak--it was somehow embedded in our thinking from our inception. Even what little data we have before the invention of writing shows depictions of 'supernatural' creatures and pre-historic burial practices evidence a belief in a 'life beyond this one' for our companions. The earliest records we have of religious systems show varied, robust, fanciful and often vain concepts of this 'beyond', but they uniformly point out that we have always believed in something powerful 'beyond' this physical universe.

The situation at the close of the twentieth century is not radically different. The vast majority of humans believe in some 'beyond' reality, which is somehow involved in the events or character of the physical universe. The vast majority of the western world is theistic or supernaturalistic, as are the basic majority of scientists and a sizable portion of philosophers (as shown by polls and membership in related professional organizations). The conceptions of this "beyond" vary widely, of course, but the fact of 'beyondness' is quite widely accepted.

And, I might add, the statistical trend toward belief in a 'beyond' is increasing. While some speculated fifty years ago that "science" would somehow remove all the 'gaps' and mysteries out of the universe (somehow assuming that belief in God's existence was somehow dependent on His/Her/Its/Their usefulness as a premise in a scientific theory!), the reverse has actually happened. Science has actually found some 'beyondness' right under our noses, some very real 'holes' in our physical universe! As I write this, the science of human consciousness has essentially called for a new paradigm of reality, to allow for the 'beyond' elements of consciousness; particle and quantum physicists have become convinced that a few types of elemental physical particles pop in and out of existence, from some virtual universe 'below the threshold of existence' (!), mathematicians and philosophers are talking about the non-physical "existence" of 'abstract entities' and 'ideals', and the astrophysicists of the Big Bang camp are staring "creation out of nothing" and "intelligent design" in the face and waxing mystical...

Now, I know that you don't normally arrive at truth by counting noses, and I can already hear in my head my mother, saying the familiar "Well, if everyone jumped off a cliff, Glenn..." Yet when faced with this almost uniform collective belief (of the entire human race) in a 'beyond', I also remember my dad offering the wisdom of "If you find yourself driving facing heavy traffic coming your way on both sides of your car--you are probably on a one-way street, headed the wrong direction!"

At a minimum, this argues that it would be very unwise to dismiss belief in some type of "beyond" out of hand. This is certainly enough data to make the reality of some "beyond" at least possible and maybe even probable.

But even my own simple experience supports the notion of some causal "beyond". As an executive, I know you don't make quality products out of nothing and without massive forethought, labor, and oversight. I know products don't create themselves and that manufacturing plants do not unfold smoothly by themselves from the basic laws of physics(!). Every tangible thing I have ever seen has been an 'effect' which was somehow distinct from, yet a result of, a 'cause'. Even these cause and effect relationships show the core meaning of "beyond" because a cause is somehow 'beyond' its effect, and the effect is somehow 'dependent' on its cause. "Beyondness" could simply be some kind of causal priority, causal 'distance', or even separateness. So, this notion seems reasonably intuitive to me.

And, as problematic as it might seem at first philosophically, the notion of a First Cause (to start the whole thing) that is itself "un-caused" seems much less problematic than some "infinite regress" chain of causes extending infinitely backward--but never having something to actually start it (entirely apart from the implications of Big Bang cosmology of an actual beginning of the universe).

As I write this at the keyboard, I may even be an analog of this notion. According to much current thinking in consciousness studies, my consciousness has elements in it that are 'beyond' the physical universe as we have historically considered it. And this 'beyond' agency is somehow influencing the physical nexus of my brain, and then my fingers, and then these keys, to produce this sentence. This seems reasonable enough and clear enough of a notion for me.

The level of precision of this concept of "beyondness" is somewhat lacking, but doesn't seem to be any worse that everyday concepts like "person", "volition", "cause", "despair", "logic", "wisdom", "good", "individual", "force", "field", "light" and so on. The fact that I cannot give really precise definitions for many, many of the basic elements of life, science, and experience in no way counts against their reality! And most 'important' words are almost impossible to define precisely without apparent contradictions (e.g. "light", "existence", "life") or circularity (e.g., "force" and "matter", "essence" and "attributes").

Accordingly, even before I get to any possible historical evidences of this 'beyond' and the scores of philosophical arguments for the existence of a "beyond"(and the endless debates about these!), it seems that a simple belief in some kind of 'beyond' is quite reasonable. This belief seems to be part of our thinking (evidenced by its trans-cultural ubiquity in human history), one that is still growing in influence, and one with concepts that find general illustration and practical support within our experience (i.e., "beyondness", First Cause, causality, dependency).

[Guest]

Asimov

Yes, my prayers are answered. I will not comment on a child with Leukemia because I am not them.I don't pretend to know relationships in a personal vein between others and God.

But I am sure God is working in their life and all those connected with the child because I believe He created us all and listens to us all. .. I think many folks here have answered YOUR questions but it appears to me you double talk and skirt the questions posed to yoiu.

I think you are just playing games now and all the folks here that have treated you with respect are not being treated with the same resoect back from you. Just my thoughts, others may not agree. Thats ok, it's my opinion and I stand on it.

. Glow

[Guest]

I’ll throw in my $0.02. I don’t expect to shake any foundations with this, but here it goes.

Asimov has been asking for proof of the supernatural. Even though the supernatural has been proven beyond a doubt for me, unfortunately I won’t be able to give him what I expect he is looking for. I can only say on what I base MY belief in the supernatural, namely my experiences, which include:

- People healed before my eyes of real ailments in response to prayer, some of them personal friends with whom I had contact before and after the event.
- The experiences of close, trustworthy friends who have witnessed/participated in the casting out of demons.
- Seeing my own child calmed from a “night terror” in response to a silent prayer.
- A person (a stranger) who was praying for me was given very specific knowledge about a situation I was in without me telling him about it.
- Deliverance from unwanted habits.
- A lifetime of “coincidences” that when put together confirm (to me) the existence of God and His faithfulness to keep His promises.

None of this will hold much weight with a skeptic because my testimony is weakened by his unfamiliarity with me and my character and his distance from the events themselves. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t give a stranger preaching on the street corner much credence either. My point here is that the basis for my belief in God is not a major, documented, provable event, but rather a lot of littler, very personal events. I can also say that I didn’t experience any of this stuff while watching the news or reading “Science” magazine. God has revealed Himself to me over the course of a couple decades of seeking Him. I spend a lot of time in gatherings of other believers, and even then these sorts of things are rare in my experience. “The Lord confides in those who fear Him; He makes His covenant known to them.” (Psalm 25:14) My fear of the Lord has caused me to seek Him, and He has made Himself known to me. That’s my experience. Your mileage may vary.

[Guest]

How do I know it was a glass of water, and how do I know that you put it there?

You don't.

Concerning my example - If you don't know the answer then you would not understand even if I gave it to you. But I really think that you just refuse to give the answer.

No, I can't give an answer when I haven't any information.

[Guest]

And, as problematic as it might seem at first philosophically, the notion of a First Cause (to start the whole thing) that is itself "un-caused" seems much less problematic than some "infinite regress" chain of causes extending infinitely backward--but never having something to actually start it (entirely apart from the implications of Big Bang cosmology of an actual beginning of the universe).

Uh, why do we need a cause for the universe? You're creating a false dichotomy here, SoaringEagle.

Why is it either "first cause" or "infinite regress"?

[Guest]

Care to elaborate? Either life came from natural causes or it came from supernatural causes. Feel free to present another option.

Why can't it be both? Maybe God created the universe with the intention of creating life, but using the fundamental forces of nature in order for it to come to be. Thus he is a supernatural being using naturalistic methods to create life.

I'm talking about evolution within an atheistic framework.

Sorry, but what? There is no atheistic framework of the Theory of Evolution. The ToE is a scientific theory, that's that.[/b]

Either life came from life or it came from non-life. If life came from life then you'd eventually need an uncreated first life (we call this first life 'God'). You can disagree all you want but if you have a consistent naturalistic worldview then you must deal with this.

I don't see how it is a big jump to think that life "came" from non-life. I wonder, how do you define life, JC?

Since all life as we can empirically observe is composed of non-life, where is the problem?

You seem to want Christians to answer everything, yet you don't apply that standard to yourself.

Where did I say that I want Christians to answer everything?

This seems pretty convenient when you don't know the answer to something. You say you have no opinion whatsoever on the origins of life, yet you claim to be an Atheist. My friend, that is an opinion on the origins of life. But again, you feel more comfortable throwing out challenges than answering them so I won't press you on this.

No it isn't, it's an opinion on the existence of God. Expressing sincere belief in Abiogenesis and postulating all the ideas as truth would be an opinion on the origins of life. And since when does Atheism = No Supernatural?

You seem to do a lot of lumping there, JC.

I don't have a mythology to fall back on when talking about the existence of life since we don't have much data on the subject. I can't form any real conclusion that isn't mere speculation if I have no data.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything other than the fact that your arguments are based on a rather naive and simplistic view of your creator.

I don't have a creator.

But even a cursory look at the universe and how it works speaks volumes about the grand nature of its creator.

If you presuppose one, sure.

Don't put God in a box, even if some Christians do.

How am I putting God in a box? A few people offered me some instances of supposed miracles, asked for my comments on them. Then I do a little more digging and find out that what they have said is pretty irrelevant since they think God is doing all these things in their lives anyways.

I'm not faulting them for being secure in their beliefs, that's fine. It doesn't point to an objective God, though, only a subjective one.

God doesn't have a body and doesn't sit on a cloud stroking his beard.

Yea, thanks.

The scriptures tell us he is light and is infused with every part of his creation. Even his angels are so powerful that every time they appeared to someone in the bible, that person fell to their knees in fear and awe. How much more their creator? So when you ask questions about the mind of God just remember who it is we're contemplating.

I'm not asking questions about the mind of God. I'm asking questions about his supposed interactions with people who believe in him.

What does that mean, light?
What do you mean, infused with every part of his creation?