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<\/a><\/p>\nImage by \u201cArtsyBee\u201d<\/span> [public domain \/ Pixabay<\/a>]<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Atheist<\/span> J. Gravelle<\/a> responded to my post<\/span>, Bible on Participation in Our Own Salvation<\/a>, and we had the following intellectually stimulating exchange (his words in<\/span> blue<\/span>):<\/p>\n * * * * *<\/p>\n So my choices would appear to be: an eternity of fire and brimstone, or an eternity spent listening to the likes of our friend Mr. Armstrong tell me \u201cI told you so\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t appear so much then that I can choose a path toward salvation, but rather that I\u2019m left to decide on which afterlife might be the lesser of two Hells\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the oddest description of the glories of heaven that I\u2019ve ever heard.<\/span><\/p>\n If that<\/em>\u00a0is all you can imagine it to be, surely the devil has you in his grips as a blissful fool, thinking (perhaps, like many others) that hell is a great big party with all the decadent, hedonistic rock stars, etc., while heaven is the very epitome of boredom, where we all sit on clouds for eternity, playing harps, and become less and less happy as eternity relentlessly and pitifully grinds on.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure if you\u2019re trying to downplay the carrot or sell me on the stick but, either way, very persuasive pitch for the Hades timeshare. I\u2019m sold\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n May our Lord Jesus open your eyes and enable you to realize that there is so much more to this life and the next than you can presently imagine.<\/span><\/p>\n I appreciate the sentiment, my friend. Sincerely.<\/span><\/p>\n My understanding is that if any two believers pray for something, it shall be done. I\u2019ve asked far more than two of my devout brethren to pray to be given the argument that will (not \u201ccan\u201d, nor \u201cmay\u201d, but \u201cwill\u201d) convince me to embrace their faith.<\/span><\/p>\n Waiting patiently\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Then there is always hope! But Christian belief comes by God\u2019s grace. If you accept a particular argument, it\u2019ll be because God gave you the grace to be open to it and accept it.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to put words in your mouth, but if I\u2019m required to believe before I believe, then I\u2019m stuck.<\/span><\/p>\n The best I could do is pretend to believe. But I think I owe it to myself, you, and anybody else I interact with not to be that mendacious\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n I said no such thing. Almost all Christians (and certainly the Catholic Church) believe that any good thing we do (including faith in Jesus and anything to do with justification or salvation) is because of God giving us grace prior to doing so. I\u2019m simply describing the nature of Christianity.<\/span><\/p>\n There is no necessity that this grace precludes or forbids reasoning<\/em> in the process. It\u2019s not \u201ceither\/or\u201d or mutually exclusive at all. For someone like you, in all likelihood reasoning would play a key role.<\/span><\/p>\n I was just making the important point that reason itself is never all-important or self-sufficient in decisions to be a Christian or a Christian disciple.<\/span><\/p>\n Paul writes at length about the relation of reason to faith in 1 Corinthians. For example:<\/span><\/p>\n 1 Corinthians 2:14<\/strong> (RSV) The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.<\/span><\/p>\n This is why (we believe) atheists make fun of Christianity: because they cannot understand it.<\/span><\/p>\n It is not<\/span> for lack of trying<\/a>, my friend\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n 1 Corinthians 1:18<\/strong> For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.<\/span><\/p>\n Thus, you wrote yesterday [in another thread altogether], in complete conformity with what Paul says, that Christians were<\/span> \u201c. . . the ones with an entire faith built around the supernatural zombie uprising of their magic carpenter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I was a lot like you are, back during my \u201cpractical atheism\u201d days in the early 70s. I wrote in my published conversion story<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n I prided myself on my \u201cmoderation\u201d with regard to religious matters. Like most nominal Christians and outright unbelievers, I reacted to any display of earnest and devout Christianity with a mixture of fear, amusement, and condescension, thinking that such behavior was \u201cimproper\u201d, fanatical, and outside of mainstream American culture.<\/span><\/p>\n Like you, I made fun of serious Christians, and had no intention whatever of joining them. But God had other plans. I felt totally self-sufficient, with no need of God to help me go through life; that is, till I experienced a terrifying deep depression for six months. I wrote about it:<\/span><\/p>\n [I]n retrospect it is clear that God was bringing home to me the ultimate meaninglessness of my life \u2013 \u2013 a vacuous and futile individualistic quest for happiness without purpose or relationship with God. I was brought, staggering, to the end of myself.<\/span><\/p>\n I have always thought (since that time) that atheism \u2014 thoroughly and with relentless honesty, thought through, in all its ethical and metaphysical implications \u2013, must lead one to despair at the ultimate meaningless and futility of a universe without God.<\/span><\/p>\n Reaching that despair, one is then more open, as I was, to receiving the truths of Christianity and being willing to follow Jesus as His disciple. We think we can do it all on our own, but we can\u2019t. We may be able to for a time, but it\u2019ll all come crashing down in due course.<\/span><\/p>\n I neither deny the sincerity of your search, nor assert that you are \u201cstupid.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I think it comes down to not being \u201cable to understand [spiritual things] because they are spiritually discerned\u201d (1 Cor 2:14).<\/span><\/p>\n Also, it has to do with acceptance of false premises and building entire worldviews on top of them, and (I would say), a sot of hyper-rationalism that places reason [or one brand of it: empiricism] as the center of all things (as if nothing else can determine truth or reality), which is itself an axiomatic position that cannot be \u201cproven.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s how I view atheism: bad reasoning, based on several false premises; rather than primarily a moral problem (though in some cases it could very well be that as well).<\/span><\/p>\n So no doubt you will say that you have tried very hard and God won\u2019t reveal Himself to you. It may be that you have to believe without proof (i.e., as you presently define same).<\/span><\/p>\n A capacity I lack. One of Pascal\u2019s \u201cso made\u201d, I suppose.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve waited more than a half century for my own Damascus Road experience. No reason I can\u2019t be patient for a few more decades\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n This is what God requires of you. Such knowledge is interior \/ intuitive \/ experiential and comes from God\u2019s grace.<\/span><\/p>\n You will know that you know that you know. I\u2019ve experienced it. Many millions of others have. I know it seems ridiculous to you now, but I can only report what my own experience has been: which is in harmony with the Bible\u2019s descriptions of it (Paul\u2019s conversion, etc.) and classic stories like St. Augustine\u2019s (Confessions<\/em>).<\/span><\/p>\n If you have limited by your chosen epistemology, what constitutes<\/em>\u00a0proof, then it may be that you have \u201cforbidden\u201d it to occur, due to your self-imposed, arbitrary epistemological limitations.<\/span><\/p>\n This is the question. What is proof? And how can you be absolutely<\/em>\u00a0sure that your definition is the correct one?<\/span><\/p>\n I would say that you need to look at Jesus. What do you think of Him? Even if you think He is made up . . . is He the type of person Who is worthy to be followed and emulated?<\/span><\/p>\n I could \u201cplay Socrates\u201d with this sort of thing all day long:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. What do you expect such a Damascus Road experience to be?<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Perhaps just like Paul\u2019s? A blinding light, knocking you off your desk chair? But why would you expect it to be exactly the same experience? On what basis?<\/span><\/p>\n 3. On what basis do you determine what is sufficient \u201cproof\u201d of God\u2019s existence?<\/span><\/p>\n 1 -3) God Himself.<\/span><\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t answer my questions.\u00a0It\u2019s not specific enough: especially the third and fourth questions of my #2 and #3. <\/span><\/p>\n With due respect sir, yes it does. Again forgive the tautology, but God Himself would be evidentiary of God Himself, just as a dragon in my garage should be quite compelling evidence that there\u2019s a dragon in my garage.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGod Himself\u201d has<\/em>\u00a0appeared: Jesus. That was quite visible, physical, and tangible (and was part of history), including many miracles and a Resurrection and appearances after that, seen by upwards of 500 people.<\/span><\/p>\n But you reject Him. So when God does what you ask, you still reject it. You do because the problem is excessive skepticism and premises gone awry at some point.<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Granting God\u2019s existence for the sake of argument, why do you think He \u201cowes\u201d it to you to provide some sort of empirical proof to you?<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n You certainly do<\/em>. It\u2019s the presupposition behind all of your statements about lack of proof of God; insufficient evidence for you to believe. You clearly think he \u201cowes\u201d you some extraordinary manifestation and undeniable evidence; else you will simply refuse to believe in Him. And lacking that, you blame Him.<\/span><\/p>\n No sir, I do not. I don\u2019t presuppose the proof lacking, I\u2019ve found the proof offered lacking\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n * * *\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nor do I \u201cowe\u201d anything supernatural the benefit of the doubt for which we lack empirical evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n This is presupposing the necessity and exclusivity (?) of empirical evidence: which itself<\/em> has to be established. I dealt with those considerations in my questions 5-7.<\/span><\/p>\n 5. Why should proofs be restricted to empirical ones?<\/span><\/p>\n What else, especially near the magnitude of the god claim[s] do we accept without empirical evidence?<\/span><\/p>\n Stuff like falling in love, the fact that we exist and that our thoughts are our own (how do we know they are not delusional or that we are not in a dream?), hunches, intuitions, the very presuppositions of science and empiricism, which are not themselves empirical. We have to start there. We have to trust that our senses are trustworthy, and that the universe operates by orderly laws, that follow a pattern (uniformitarianism). The latter is not itself an empirical thing. It\u2019s an abstract law that has to do<\/em>\u00a0with material objects.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Are you saying that empiricism is all there is, in terms of epistemological criteria for knowledge?<\/span><\/p>\n No, I\u2019m saying until it\u2019s shown we\u2019re capable of transcending the temporal, that\u2019s the arena we\u2019re left working within.<\/span><\/p>\n You still assume it without proof, and it is impossible to do otherwise, by the very starting assumptions of empiricism, among other things. You already accept a number of things without evidence or proof, yet you refuse to extend the same \u201ccourtesy\u201d or \u201cepistemological likelihood\u201d or plausibility to God.<\/span><\/p>\n 7. Don\u2019t you know that empiricism is a species of philosophy, that starts with non-empirical axioms?<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019d quibble with the grammar in that I\u2019m not sure philosophy is prone to speciation. We\u2019d need to drill down on a specific God claim to determine whether any non-empirical axioms were required.<\/span><\/p>\n This is a whole \u2018nother discussion. I would recommend reading philosophers of science on this point. It\u2019s not really a controversial one. Logical positivism itself is widely considered to have died in philosophical circles, some sixty years ago now. Michael Polanyi, one of my favorite thinkers, played a big role in knocking it off. Good riddance!<\/span><\/p>\n [ A slight time-out here: If I said I had a dragon in my garage, I think a fair reaction from you would be to raise an eyebrow and ask that I show it to you. If, instead of opening the garage door I launched into an epistemological tangent about \u201cWell, how do we really know that we know what we know?\u201d I don\u2019t think it would, in any way, contribute to the merit of my dragon claim. ]<\/span><\/p>\n There is no serious history in the field of philosophy of defending the existence of dragons, whereas there is such for the existence of God, construed roughly in classic theistic and even monotheistic terms. This is always my answer to the stock atheist recourse to fairies, Santa Claus, unicorns, the Easter bunny, leprechauns, etc. It\u2019s great fun, but it\u2019s a silly pseudo-argument.<\/span><\/p>\n 8. How can you be so sure that you are not repressing knowledge of God that is really there deep inside of you?<\/span><\/p>\n Were I doing consciously repressing, by definition I\u2019d know, because I\u2019d be conscious of it.<\/span><\/p>\n At first<\/em> you would, but as time goes on, we can easily forget. Many people have had experience of this, in cases of, e.g., severe traumas. Oftentimes we bury them so as to avoid any further pain.<\/span><\/p>\n Conversely, you would certainly know if you were fabricating knowledge of a god that wasn\u2019t there. We\u2019ve come this far without calling one another liars, I\u2019ve no intent to start now.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not a matter of lying, but of repressed knowledge. Once it goes into the unconscious or sub-conscious realm, the person is far less blameworthy.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s a relevant factor to consider.<\/span><\/p>\n 9. How can you be so sure that what Paul states in Romans 1 is not correct:<\/span><\/p>\n Romans 1:19-20<\/strong> (RSV) For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.<\/span> I bear no burden to prove anything in the Bible wrong. The onus is on those who assert it is correct.<\/span><\/p>\n But challenging you in terms of not knowing for sure that it is untrue is a valid point.<\/span><\/p>\n Etc., etc. There are a host of such questions that could be asked. As soon as you ask more of your questions, more questions of this socratic sort are immediately produced.<\/span><\/p>\n If you think inquiring and inquisitive minds and intellectual curiosity are confined to atheists, you are wrong. :-)<\/span><\/p>\n I assure you, my friend, I do not\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n Good.<\/span><\/p>\n * * *<\/span><\/p>\n [ Firstly, I\u2019d use \u201cevidence\u201d vs. \u201cproof\u201d, the latter being reserved for mathematicians and bartenders. ]<\/span><\/p>\n I wouldn\u2019t know how to go about \u201cfollowing\u201d the dead, either hypothetical OR historical. Emulated? Perhaps, only insofar as helping somebody who needs assistance, sure. My own self-interests though (in wanting to live in a world where people help one another) get me that far, sans any prerequisite emulation or deification.<\/span><\/p>\n But (at the severe risk of opening more cans of worms) you certainly won\u2019t find me, say, traveling to Mauritania to tell the slaves there to obey their masters. Nor would I counsel anybody else to pluck out their own eyes, cut off their hands or, if we need a less gruesome example, smite any fig trees\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re not aware that the hand and eyes thing are<\/span> examples of hyperbole<\/a>: very common in ancient Hebrew culture?<\/span><\/p>\n
\n [20] Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse;<\/span><\/p>\n