Hi.
- Thread starter Elwirfo
- Start date
WizardofOz
New member
Welcome :e4e:
Did you want to discuss these questions here in your intro thread or were you going to start another?
Why would an atheist be interested in God? Are you missing something in your life, if so what?
I'm going to guess the Settled View has struck again.
The Settled View is a view of the nature of God in which God knows the future exhaustively. This is exclusive of the view of the nature of God where God knows the future partially, and free will can change the future, called the Open View.
The Settled View is a view of the nature of God in which God knows the future exhaustively. This is exclusive of the view of the nature of God where God knows the future partially, and free will can change the future, called the Open View.
RCLady
New member
"Indeed," St. Augustine once said, "man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible." No.......you didn't miss your window of childhood indoctrination. You simply resisted the truth.......preferring your intellectual pride to the simplicity of the Catholic faith.........
James 1:5
This Charming Manc
Well-known member
Elwirfo
New member
Mostly, it is because Religion permeates the society I live in. My suburb has a church on every corner. My family, mom, grandma, worry about my soul. I see the sincere emotional distress my supposed fate causes them.
I believe you and my family are deluded and this affects our culture and society in a negative way. At the very least indirectly by making beleif without good reason an OK thing, which can lead people to believe they are justified to hurt others.
I seek challenge to my views, while challenging yours. I truly want to help the religious mind get back to rationality just as you may wish offer me a pleasant after life or "save" me from something (hard to talk like this when I don't know which version of Christianity my audience holds).
Elwirfo
New member
I think I meant "reasons" not the the concept of reasoning. Reasons could include logical arguments and/or evidence.
Elwirfo
New member
The Catholic faith is simple? I like listening to the Catholic radio station and it doesn't sound very simple. For example, I hear ex Catholics who want to come back to the church call in to the show, and it can often get very complicated, at least it sounds complicated.
Another complicated issue is "natural family planning" where you use our modern understanding of the menstral cycle to get around using a condom. Maybe I need more education on this one, but it still sounds like attempted birth control.
Intellectual pride? I am the master of admitting my errors. I get stuff wrong all the time, just ask my wife. When I talk about indoctrination, I mean that I rarely attended church as a child, like once a year. And my single mom was too tired or too liberal at the time to preach to me. I was pretty much ignorant of religion in general until I met my somewhat Christian bride. I was however, a VERY gullible child. I would have been east pickings if my mom wanted me to be a believer. I didn't develop a skeptical mind until my late 20's. I was not really what you would call intellectual.
Last edited:
Elwirfo
New member
I would be happy to hear some arguments for god here. If you could start with your definition if god that would be great. For example, does your god answer prayers, have omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, all powerful, all loving, send people to hell (ECT?), exist in triplicate, inspire a perfect text, allow free will, always tell the truth, create the universe in 6 literal days, etc?
You could follow with the proper way to salvation and maintenance of that salvation.
Then give your personal testimony on when you first came to believe and any other big reasons that strengthen your beleif.
Otherwise, If I tried to explain why I don't believe, I would probably be arguing against a straw man version of you, wasting both our time.
Elwirfo
New member
I don't understand why people claim that god knowing the future kills free will. It just means he can see our free choices ahead of time. Maybe god is in some dimension where he can look to any point in time simultaneously. This would mean god would have seen the entire timeline for Adam and Eve before he pulled the Poison apple trick. Maybe he didn't like that sequence and thus interferes thus altering the timeline. This creates a new timeline of free will that he instantly sees the end result of again. This process would continue until said god gets the closing scene he is looking for. Each "tweak" (godly interference) could be inserted out of chronological order or in several places at once. Either way, we are the free choicers that he gets to observe.
Think he got it all preloaded into Jesus's time and before? Or will there be more corrections to the path of our timeline? Ooh! I wonder if he could undo one if these tweak's? Do we experience each version? Or do the Tweaks create alternate universes? Or is god experiencing time with us and has to make the tweaks in order and can't go back? I love this stuff!
As a non-believer in the supernatural, I should not believe in free will because we are all just chemicals in motion. But I think it is like the math puzzles where you go half way to your destination each time and never reach it. It only works in geometrical constructs of the mind. In reality we make it to our destinations and we also have free will.
Why ought I to bother sharing my thoughts with you?
Belief is simply not based solely on reason.
Your family should be concerned for your well being, but you might explain to them their concern is misguided. You can explain to them that if God wants you he will call you.
Jesus said, "No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:44)
In the meantime enjoy your life and ask your family not to nag you.
JosephR
New member
I like your way of thinking, I agree our creator is outside I time and in prolly more then one dimension above us, so if He chooses to change time we will never know it
And yes if you keep halving into infinity you will never reach point b, but geometry starts with an infinite plane, lol and we can not conceive infinity
also we never really touch anything, just the push of gravity on our cells reacting or pushing against another's , I feel u like science, so do I Posted from the TOL App!
Elwirfo
New member
Interesting comment. Thank you for engaging with me! As I said in a previous response, I meant "reasons" not the concept of reasoning. I dropped the s.
So your beleif is also based on revelation or faith then?
I would say that my belief is based largely on personal insights.
Of course, this implies that I observe my surroundings and listen to the ideas of others.
I have experienced many epiphanies.
Yay! for mom & grandma!
RCLady
New member
"The truth is", as Bro. Peter points out, "that for those who truly believe in God, accept His full truth (the Catholic Faith), don’t compromise it and want to do the right thing, it’s not hard to reach Heaven. As Christ said, “My yoke is sweet and My burden light” (Mt. 11:30). The reason that so few make it is not because it’s that hard, but because they refuse to believe the simple and easy things He has revealed, and do the simple and easy things He has commanded. Those who do what God wants and believe what He says realize that they are much happier than they were before."
It's not complicated.
Is. 7:9
Natural Family Planning is birth control and has always been condemned by the Catholic Church. The Vatican II sect, which teaches NFP is not the Catholic Church but the end-times Counter Church (i.e. the Whore of Babylon mentioned in the Apocalypse).
| NFP: A Birth Control Deception | |
You are the master of admitting your errors, yet you won't admit the biggest error of your life: resisting God? What else but pride utters to God the words: "I will not believe. I will not serve." The fact that you were not taught certain things as a child will not be sufficient at the Day of Judgment. The truth of the existence of God is written on the hearts of each man..............
Romans 2:14-16
As the Haydock Bible and Commentary correctly explains about this verse,
“these men are a law to themselves, and have it written in their hearts, as to the existence of a God, and their reason tells them, that many sins are unlawful: they may also do some actions that are morally good, as by giving alms to relieve the poor, honoring their parents, etc. not that these actions, morally good, will suffice for their justification of themselves, or make them deserve a supernatural reward in the kingdom of heaven; but God, out of His infinite mercy, will give them some supernatural graces” which if they continue to cooperate with they will get more graces and eventually be exposed to the Catholic Faith, which they must have to be saved.
Welcome to TOL.