I do think the view that the only thing that counts as authentic knowledge is what can be reproduced in a laboratory is very, very limiting.
Perhaps, but it does have survival value. For example, you might recall the group that held as authentic knowledge the belief that the comet Hale-Bopp was actually a spaceship coming back to collect them from their material bodies.
That didn’t work out so well for them.
I think in the last go-around, we came to the conclusion that some things are just a matter of personal temperament. Some folks have a temperament that makes it easy, or at least easier, to take certain truth-claims on faith.
I don’t have that sort of temperament. Such is life – if everyone thought the same way, there wouldn’t be enough broccoli to go around.
I do think the case can be made that agnosticism on the question of the existence or non-existence of Deity is more defensible than atheism, strictly on the inability to prove a negative assertion – can you really prove there are no leprechauns living in your backyard?

When Carter puts atheism on the same intellectual plane as belief in the healing power of crystals, he really hits the nail on the head. Well played, sir. Well played. Richard Dawkins should either stick to biology or move to Taos and join a drum circle, either one. But he should leave the theology to grown-ups who use their heads for more than just hat-racks.

I really wonder why people speak as though belief in God is the default position. Of course if someone doesn’t know the answer to a question, they are going to use their imagination to make up a story to fill the gap. When people can’t understand the natural methods that can create the universe and create life, they will naturally want to use their imagination. Just because lots of people believe in similar types of imaginary answers doesn’t make them real.
This is what makes the idea of non-believers going to hell so abhorrent. People use their intelligence to realize God doesn’t exist, and if it were true that God damns those that don’t believe, that God would be an evil God for creating a skeptical mind that requires evidence, then condemning that person for using what he was given.
Why is it moral that I should go to hell after living a good life, where Hitler gets to go to heaven because he believed in Jesus? It seems rather backwards.

I have a feeling this thread isn’t going to go well–I can already see the battle lines forming. In this case, though a believer, I’m gonna have to get on the atheist/agnostic side of the field.
Really, I think Carter’s essay is a perfect example of where Western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, got off track, and where Eastern Orthodoxy really has it better (and please note, I speak as a Catholic). The problem is a combination of decadent Scholastic rationalism and hair-splitting Roman legalism and authoritarianism.
On the one hand, belief in God is reduced to a set of intellectual propositions, a theological syllogism. It’s not about an encounter with the Living God, or the great wonder and mystery of being; it’s about nice little step-by-step arguments based on reason, etc. Even if one accepts the arguments (and that’s not a foregone conclusion) the god of the philosophers, as Mortimer Adler long ago pointed out, is a long way from the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. In fact, Adler himself was intellectually convinced of God’s existence decades before he joined any organized religion, since as he said, he lacked the living faith. It was not his philosophy, but a brush with death and an emotional conversion experience that led him to enter the Episcopal, and later Catholic, church. As G. K. Chesterton said in Orthodoxy, the mistake is to view religion as a syllogism instead of a poem.
Second is the attempt to strong-arm the philosophy. It’s not enough to say that reason must lead us to belief in God–Carter has to quote Scripture to say that Divine Revelation proves that you can know God without Divine Revelation! See the problem? This is the same beef I have with the Catholic doctrine that holds, dogmatically, that God’s existence can be proved from reason alone. I mean, the mind boggles. One might say, “You must believe in God because we/Scripture/the Pope/the Church/whoever says so,” and whether one accepts that or not, there’s a certain logic in it. One might, conversely say, “If you follow reason where it leads, you’ll inevitably be led to God,” which is at least a “come and see” approach. But to say, “You must believe that free pursuit of reason will lead you to God, because we say so!”; well, again, the mind boggles!
I might point out that Scripture itself undermines this whole concept: “Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” (James 2:19) Kinda undercuts the usefulness of proving something the demons know for a fact, without it doing them any good, huh?
Orthodoxy never took this path. I’m sure the Orthodox Church would see God’s existence as reasonably demonstrable, but it never got into a bind over dogmatically declaring it, or trying to argue that it was that important, anyway. The Easterners understood that God is a great Mystery, and that experiencing that Mystery is more important that sitting around arguing about it, or telling others that they didn’t know what they were talking about.
Basically, as a believer, and having read the theology and philosophy of this stuff since I was a teenage, I don’t think one can conclusively prove God’s existence from first principles. I think belief in God is cogent and coherent (against analytic and positivist philosophers), and that it can be shown to be reasonably likely (with Adler and against most modern atheists); but beyond that I don’t think reason alone can go. If I can show that theism is at least coherent, possible, and not repugnant to reason, I think that’s enough for philosophy to accomplish. Anything beyond that is a matter of personal experience (or lack thereof).
I come back to temperament. God knew when He made us that some were going to be constitutionally unable to believe in Him–after all, He wrote the software. I can hardly believe that God would make people temperamentally unable to know Him, then allow the proliferation of other religions (and secularism) with plausible claims, then hide obvious evidence of His existence (Isaiah 45:15), and then turn around and say, “But you are culpable for not believing in Me! Off with you!” If that’s how God is, I’d like, in the words of Ivan Karamazov, to politely return my ticket!
I have quoted the Koran 5:48 ff to weariness, but I think it’s exactly right. God could have made us all Christians or Muslims or Jews or Buddhist or Rastafarians or Scientologists or atheists or agnostics or cabbage worshippers if He’d felt like it, but He obviously didn’t. Therefore, it must be part of His plan. Instead of fighting about it or accusing each other of vincible ignorance (or worse), we should “vie with each other in doing good”. Can I get an amen (or the secular equivalent thereof)?
I’m starting to think that the browser is part of the issue with CAPTCHA–I tried to do this in Mozilla, now I’m in Internet Explorer. I think John E. on a previous thread was right–it’s an emergent intelligence–and I think it’s taking over our computers….

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
This is pretty weak sauce. It’s been fairly well established that you can’t take the entirety of the Bible as Truth without an avalanche of contradictions debunking your whole claim. So once you’re forced to start cherry-picking the parts that make you feel good, you lose the right to call atheists “vincibly ignorant”.
and the whole “I saw prayer answered” arguement is weak sauce too. how many parents out there have buried their children because God decided their prayers wouldn’t be answered? how many lives have been destroyed because God decided to answer someone else’s prayer? how many children die in poverty without ever hearing the name of Jesus?
so sorry, but when you compare the two sides, it’s not the atheists that come off as “vincibly ignorant”.

Rod, if you “weren’t persuaded by the arguments for God,” then I suspect Mr. Carter would have found you just as defective as he does me. I can only hope that you care about his opinion as incredibly little or less than I do, though I doubt it.
Carter is an ungracious and unserious solipsist with the reasoning of a sociopath. Anyone who thinks a person with different religious views than their own is an incomplete, defective human being is, themselves, a dangerous person, not to be trusted with sharp or combustible objects. It is not because of some (gasp) modern squishy liberal-studies course that I condemn his intolerance, it is through a genuine respect for the lessons of history. When people like Carter say “vincible ignorance,” what they really love and look forward to is the “vincible” part.
And the notion that people just have to believe in SOME “divine presence in the natural world, whether it’s God or Vishnu or Zeus or whatever,” just strikes me as mushy moral relativism. If the evidence for any of them is just as strong as the other, it follows that all of those faiths are just as likely to be true–and the person making the argument might as well convert to Hinduism or Hellenism the very next day.

St. Andeol: and the whole “I saw prayer answered” arguement is weak sauce too. how many parents out there have buried their children because God decided their prayers wouldn’t be answered? how many lives have been destroyed because God decided to answer someone else’s prayer? how many children die in poverty without ever hearing the name of Jesus?
Andeol, I don’t think I have the right to expect God to answer the tests I set up for Him. I pray several times a day for God to heal my sister of her cancer. He has not done so yet. Am I to conclude that he doesn’t exist therefore? Does my past experiences of answered prayer — and I’m thinking of two distinct occasions in which the prayers were answered in ways that were to my mind absolutely decisive, and inexplicable outside of God’s direct action — count for nothing because I can’t compel God to do what I want Him to do?
Turmarion’s post is very wise. God is a mystery to be experienced, not a collection of syllogisms to be rationalized over. I could not open myself to the possibility of God until I, through reading Kierkegaard, came to understand the impossibility of proving God’s existence rationally, and the uselessness of a rational proof for God’s existence even if such a thing were achievable.

Evidentiary reasoning has to be used consistently if it is to be used at all. Either God just is, and you can’t look for him, or you look for him because of certain distinct and obvious and diagnostic ways he has to act–in which case, yes, I think the system of conclusion-drawing as described requires all the “tests” of answering prayers ought to be met. If I say “this ocean is there because once I took some water out of it,” it must follow that I can continually prove the ocean is still there by taking some water out of it; other arguments would either have to involve other proofs or by definition no proofs at all.

Following up on what Rod says at the end of the post above, let me add that Dick Dawkins Boy Theologian ought also to leave the theology to people who’s hearts — as well as their heads — are made of something other than stones. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “a village [atheist] is fine if you’re a village, but, if not, not.” Stein’s actual quote was “a village explainer is fine if you’re a village, but, if not, not.” Young Dick Dawkins falls into both camps: he offers atheism as an explanation to a broader public, most of whom, not being village idiots, have mentally and emotionally outgrown the explanation that he himself continues to require.

When people can’t understand the natural methods that can create the universe and create life,
Godlessons,
What are the natural methods that can “create life?” There’s a Nobel prize waiting for you if you can do this in the laboratory.
And what is the natural method that can create the universe? How do you create something from nothing?
Captcha: apostle The

Throughout human history the desire to discover “something” larger/bigger/more powerful than we are has indeed been powerful. From the earliest animist explanations to the later “deity/deities in the sky”, through the monotheistic efforts at defining this urge…how many attempts have humans made to satisfy this urge? Thousands? Millions?
Yet Joe Carter (and to some extent you, Mr. Dreher) posit that not only is there a deity (a possibility I am certainly open to), but that your monotheistic tradition (Christianity) is the proper approach to understanding the deity. Moreover, you posit that your particular path under the Christian umbrella (one that encompasses several thousand distinct and in some cases contradictory paths) is preferable to all others.
Were we able to go back in time and speak with a pre-Christian denizen of northern Europe they would no doubt make a similar convincing claim regarding the polytheistic path they followed at that time. If we then move to India, or Africa, or North America, we would find others who saw an entirely different path as the only “logical” choice from which to approach deity.
Christians today, to one degree or another, insist that all these other ways of approaching deity are wrong, and that theirs is the only true path. Muslims counter that their path is the only true one. Some Jews offer up their path as the only true one.
Three claims that can be neither proven nor disproven, and yet logically they cannot all be true at the same time.
(Let us ignore for a moment the further claims within each faith tradition that a particular sect is “more true” than another sect, lest we make this far too complex for a simple board post.)
I would put to Mr. Carter and other Christians who agree with the statement that non-theists are ‘vincibly ignorant’ to simply offer up an explanation of deity that is demonstrably true. If and when that can be done, the argument will be settled will it not?
Until then does not logic dictate that, since so many conflicting claims cannot all be true, the most logical answer to the question is to view all such claims with suspicion at best?

I think John E. on a previous thread was right–it’s an emergent intelligence–and I think it’s taking over our computers….
I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords…
I could not open myself to the possibility of God until I, through reading Kierkegaard, came to understand the impossibility of proving God’s existence rationally, and the uselessness of a rational proof for God’s existence even if such a thing were achievable.
I’d be perfectly satisfied with a proof by direct, incontrovertible revelation. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.

I found Carter’s post pretty funny. His argument is that God is self-evident and people who fail to perceive this are self deluded. He’s basically stamping his feet and insulting people who disagree with him because their existence (in growing numbers) undercuts his argument.
I could turn this debate technique around and say that the problem of evil and the tortured logic of the theodicies explaining it shows that the non-existence of God is self-evident. I could then say that people who believe in God are failing to face reality.
Great moments in philosophy indeed.

Well put Rob. Especially your rational defense in the comments. I have also come to the conclusion that proving/disproving God is a futile impossibility. I have further concluded that it is thus by design. Hence the basis of all man to God relationship described by the Bible is always Faith. It is often argued that Christ’s was different, but I disagree. Faith has a very strict definition when used in the Biblical context and actually precludes the possibility of prior proof. Per Hebrews 11.
I do see the point of Mr. Carter’s post, and agree it is rather judgmental, however, he clearly admits that most Christians would say that, while Paul would not. He has a solid point in that, it is a curious situation we’re in when: “even Christians are offended by the truths expressed in Scripture.” Very curious indeed.
Finally, stay faithful in your petitions for your sister. I had an interesting vision the other day. I was going from place to place, I was apparently broke, and Jesus was following me around, though I didn’t notice, I was quite busy. On the way to each place I was looking to my sides saying “God help me.” … “God I need help… I’m broke here.” Then I would get to a place where I had to pay this bill, or that bill, and I would cry out, God I needed that help, where were you! Though in my vision I could see Jesus right behind me, pulling out His wallet time after time. Only, when the time came that the help was needed I had already assumed God had failed me. It ended there, but I expect that once I ran completely out of my own money I would finally get the help I was asking for. Only when all other options were exhausted. It seems God usually comes through right at the last minute, and it may well be our own fault. I think it goes along with the Faith requirement. Anyway, I pray that Jesus will pull out His wallet for your sister’s cancer & that you will let Him.

From Mr. Carter’s article: “Claiming that everyone is without excuse for refusing to acknowledge the existence of a God isn’t intolerant or an attempt to impose our beliefs on others; it’s a simple statement of fact—and one that we should have the courage to express freely.”
“A simple statement of fact” should be demonstrably provable, as this discussion of the term “fact” within philosophy suggests:
“In philosophy, the concept fact is considered in epistemology and ontology. Questions of objectivity and truth are closely associated with questions of fact. A “fact” can be defined as something which is the case, that is, the state of affairs reported by a true proposition.
Facts may be understood as that which makes a true sentence true. For example, the statement “Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system” is made true by the fact Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Facts may also be understood as those things to which a true sentence refers. The statement “Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system” is about the fact Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
Misunderstanding of the difference between fact and theory sometimes leads to fallacy in rhetoric, in which one person will say his or her claim is factual whereas the opponent’s claim is just theory. Such statements indicate confusion as to the meanings of both words, suggesting the speaker believes that fact means “truth,” and theory means “speculation.”"
The nature of a fact is such that it can be both proven and disproven. In the above example, the fact put forth that Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system is provable via observation of the known planets in our solar system, and disprovable upon discovery of a larger planet within that system.
The existence of God does not meet this criteria. Not only has the existence of said God not been proven, it cannot (under current understanding) be disproven.
Even the Bible teaches this, in Hebrews 11 (often referred to as the “faith chapter” of the Bible), when it states:
“By faith Enoch was taken away without experiencing death. He could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he won approval as one who pleased God. Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.”
And what is faith according to the Bible? The definition is in the same chapter:
“Now faith is the assurance that what we hope for will come about and the certainty that what we cannot see exists.”
Josh McDowell, an evangelical Christian apologist, admits that the Bible does not offer a proof of the existence of God. As he points out in his earlier edition of “Evidence that Demands a Verdict”, the Bible opens with the presumption of God’s existence.
Is this not a signpost to those who insist on offering a proof of God’s existence? Even the “inspired” writers of the Scripture did not attempt to do that.

As a believer in the broadest sense, I am not scandalized at all. What I am is disappointed bordering on saddened.
Rod, I find it very difficult indeed to get past what seem obvious: Carter is employing third-grade circular logic. He employs his theism to assert that atheists are (qualifier of choice) ignorant, and supports his assertion with (wait for it) his theistic beliefs.
Your agreement with Turmarion at least implies that you are avoiding that circular logic. Carter appears to revel in it.
Mr. Moto, with respect, I ask: How is characterizing Dawkins (or any atheist) as having heart and head made of stones any different from asserting that I am a devil-worshipper because I am a Pagan? Considering the further rhetoric aimed at myself and my siblings-in-faith, I don’t see any difference.

MH,
Given the increasing number of religious believers in Russia and China, I’m not certain that the net percentage of atheists in the world is actually growing. Russia is returning to the Orthodox Church, just as the visionary children of Fatima predicted.

Franklin Evans,
I don’t think you or other pagans ancient and modern worship the devil and I do think you and other pagans ancient and modern have both more brains and more heart than Dick Dawkins Boy Theologian. So, your point is what?

I think Dawkins has touched a nerve with some.
When theologians bristle at his on-the-face reading of the texts–his critiques of obvious contradictions, scientific errors, “the talking snake,” and so on–and retort that he is being too literal, that he just isn’t reading the books quite right and doesn’t get what they’re really saying…. how are they NOT practicing and endorsing Moralistic Therapeutic Deism?
.

“and the whole “I saw prayer answered” arguement is weak sauce too. how many parents out there have buried their children because God decided their prayers wouldn’t be answered? how many lives have been destroyed because God decided to answer someone else’s prayer? how many children die in poverty without ever hearing the name of Jesus?”
Indeed, in a crisis such as the Haiti earthquake, where numerous devout believers are praying for the well-being or healing of loved ones, the results are often exactly as you describe. Some live, some die. Some are healed completely, others are left disfigured or afflicted. Random events that, if one accepts the efficacy of prayer, must then be written off as either an expression of God’s overarching will or judgment on the sins of the individuals in question (or their relatives). Neither answer supports the claim of a loving deity. What is supported instead is the absence of said deity and the simple movement of events unaided by divine intervention.
A crisis happens. Some of those harmed by the crisis die, others endure long-term suffering, and others heal completely. These outcomes are more due to the severity of the injury and the skill of those treating the injured people than to the intervention of an all-powerful deity.
After all…what kind of deity would allow such suffering to be inflicted on an infant such as this?
http://www.wten.com/Global/story.asp?S=12353287

hlvanburen: Misunderstanding of the difference between fact and theory sometimes leads to fallacy in rhetoric….
A slight and tangential quibble, since this is something I always make a point of when teaching science. I think you should have elaborated more on the misconception that “theory” means “speculation” or “hypothesis”, which is what people usually and incorrectly mean when they say “theory”.
A hypothesis is usually defined as an “educated guess”. That is, given the existing information, it’s the best idea of what’s going on. Of course, it must be empircally proven (scientific method and all), so it’s always just the first step.
A “theory”, in the correct usage of the word, is a conceptual framework developed out of long-standing experimentation, observation, and so on. Atomic theory is a good example. We may not have complete and total understanding of atoms, but no one doubts they exist!
A theory is never considered a 100% perfect representation of reality (nothing is, in science), and it is always open to revision (consider the search for the Higgs boson) or rarely, to rejection (e.g. the geocentric earth theory). In general, though, a theory is pretty much as close to rock-solid as you get in science.
This is why it is so irritating when anti-evolutionists go around scraming that evolution is “just a theory”. What they mean is “just a hypothesis.” If that were true, then their views might have some merit; but evolution, like atomic theory and the Theory of Relativity, is a theory, a wide-ranging, well-demonstrated conceptual framework. Perfct? No. Pretty darn well true, though? Yes.
From what you say, it seems that you’re aware of this distinction, but once more, I thought it ought to be made explicit, since the proper understanding of terms is important in many areas of debate.

Dawkins approach pushes many theists into an ad hominem mode in their response, which is precisely what I think he is wanting. In many ways he plays the same role in this discussion as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Keith Olbermann do in the current left-right conflict in our political system. Dawkins’ assertions are not necessarily new. They have been made for generations in one manner or another. However, seldom have we seen anyone on the non-theist side of the ledger come forward with the attitude of Dawkins.
By attacking the messenger (as Mr. Moto does here and others do elsewhere), Dawkins is successful in distracting/defusing the argument offered against his points. This does not necessarily mean that Dawkins is right or that his position should prevail. It simply means that with regards to provoking an emotive reaction to his words, he is successful in exactly the same way as Beck, Limbaugh and Olberman.

“From what you say, it seems that you’re aware of this distinction, but once more, I thought it ought to be made explicit, since the proper understanding of terms is important in many areas of debate.”
I am aware of it, and I thank you for elaborating on the point. In this instance it is almost the opposite of the evolution/creation debate. Here the theists offer the theory of the existence of god(s) as what they describe as a “fact”, something many of them accuse evolution proponents of doing in the evolution/creation debate. Having it both ways is not possible.
However, the scientific framework as we currently understand it lacks the tools to properly test any hypothesis with regards to the existence of deity. Many, many things are missing, perhaps the most obvious and controversial being the definition of “deity” within the discussion.

Mr. Moto, my point was not what you personally think of Pagans (though I am grateful that you shared that here), but that the rhetoric you choose to employ concerning Dawkins is demeaning and at least implied demonizing. I do not hesitate in dismissing his rhetoric concerning religion because it is nearly 100% ad hominem. I am tempted to dismiss your rhetoric as easily, and for the same reason, but I want to give you the chance to clarify first.

Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him.
Would it be cynical of me to note that the folks who penned that verse were professional guiders of religious seekers and had a vested interest in the idea that people should be searching for God and those writers were just the folks to assist them in that search?

“If one has decided as a first principle that God could not possibly exist…” I think we need to entertain the possibility that for some people, even people who come to recognize it as a first principle in the way they view the world, this is not fundamentally a conscious decision.

Hector, I was going by ARIS which is the only good data I know of on the subject. In that data the trend towards decreasing religiosity is clear. Certainly over the last century in Europe the trend is clear as well. Now if things were as obvious as Carter claims why would that be?
I have a bone to pick with the claim that it is impossible to prove the existence of God. I’ve pointed this out before that the task would be trivially easy if God provided evidence that had no other explanation.
I’m not talking claims of miracles in the past which can be debated. I’m talking about nature continuously acting unnatural in a manner that is obvious it is being manipulated. For example:
Vary the gravitational constant ever so slightly so that the radius of the Moon’s orbit varies over time. Amplitude or frequency module a signal into the variations which when decoded yields the texts of the holy books. If you keep the modulation small enough (one part in a several hundred thousand) it wouldn’t be noticed until you have instruments sensitive enough.
Until evidence of that sort arises I agree with John E that the cynical explanation is more likely.

Carter’s argument is the kind of thing you say when you are in a group of like-minded people, and everyone has had a drink or two. I know we liberals said similar over-the-top things about Bush and those who supported him during his presidency, especially when we were alone, with none of our conservative friends to hear. “He’s so wrong! He just IS! He is just so . . . wrong. You know?” (Well, we said more and stronger things than that, but this is a family blog.) And we’d all nod in hearty agreement, and then get another drink. We were bloviating, not making real, defensible arguments. Just like Carter is in this piece.
Tumarian has written several insightful things on this topic. God as a poem or mystery, and not a set of syllogisms, sounds about right. Tumarion is also dead-on, I think, when he says so much of whether a person is a believer has to do with temperment.
The intersection of prayer and faith or belief is very interesting to me. Growing up Catholic I learned that God always answers our prayers, just not in the way we might like. As an adult that is a fairly terrifying prospect, when you think about the kinds of things adults pray about. I think of my sister, a Catholic with a serious prayer life. She had wanted 5 or 6 kids at least, had one, and then was hit with serious health problems including cancer. Then her son was brutally attacked by a dog. But all ended well — her son recovered, the cancer went away. And to our great joy she became pregnant again. And then the baby died at 37 weeks of pregnancy, despite all her prayers. And now she is puzzling over “what God is trying to tell her” with all the calamity that has occured in her life.
Those of us who have not lost a child can’t really understand how cataclysmic it is. My observation (as a mother with two living children who had an early miscarriage and never had a fully-developed baby die) is that you never get over it; you find a place for the terrible sadness in your life, and carry on, but that sadness is permanent. The acute pain may fade with time, but there’s a hole that just never can be filled.
So my sister prayed and prayed about having another child, became pregnant, and then he was gone, right before he was to have been born. My upbringing taught me that God “answered” her prayer. I shudder when I try to understand what that answer was.
I know lots of people (Rod included, with his sister) have similar stories of genuine prayers over life-and-death issues not necessarily being answered as one would wish.
I ask this respectfully — I really do — to anyone whose faith was shaped, in whole or in part, by answered prayers: if those prayers had not been answered as you had hoped, or if things had not turned out well after much sincere prayer, would you still have your faith?

To all of those leaving comments: I believe you have missed the point Joe Carter was trying to make. Joe Carter is fully aware of his contradictory statements and false assumptions. The ignorance of his statements is willful and intentional with that sole purpose to insult the intelligence of those that garner respect for furthering knowledge. This is an attempt to slow down the progress humans have made in the last 500 years (especially that last 100). All the evidence and truth in the world will not change Joe Carter’s mind for one simple reason, he is afraid of losing his religious beliefs. Joe Carter‘s religious beliefs require him to deny, reject, and fight against evidence and truth when they contradict his belief system. This is why Joe Carter deserves only pity or mockery.

I ask this respectfully — I really do — to anyone whose faith was shaped, in whole or in part, by answered prayers: if those prayers had not been answered as you had hoped, or if things had not turned out well after much sincere prayer, would you still have your faith?
After the Sago mine disaster in West Virginia–when the community feared that all those miners had died, then early official word was of a “miracle” that had saved all but 1 of them, then the horrible truth came out that all but 1 were dead–members of the community found themselves doubting “whether there was even a Lord anymore.”
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/04/mine.explosion.wed/index.html
And not to seem uncharitable in the face of their shattering grief, but I found myself asking…. why NOW? If suffering and unfairness is all it takes to get them to conclude that there might not be a God, what took them so long? Had they believed their whole lives that the suffering and unfairness aimed at other people worldwide had meaning and did not at all invalidate God, as long as they themselves were protected?

TTT, that seems to me to be the initial point of religion. The world is full of powerful forces which can harm or destroy us. Humans have a tendency to look for agency and initially it would seem there is some agency behind these forces. Maybe if you ask it nicely it will leave you alone, and when it doesn’t there must be something you did to cause it to harm you.

I’m a Captcha victim as my last post was held.

HL, definition of deity is the problem, an insurmountable obstacle for any step in logic or reasoning that follows it:
A deity is a concatenation of attributes, each attribute constrained and/or informed by the culture, language and shared experiences of the definer(s). An incomplete list of attributes:
Form (human, animal, etc.)
Gender (of a living form, but not necessarily)
Hierarchical setting (monotheists put all living things under the deity, polytheists have leaders and subordinates, animists are fun to watch, etc.)
Avatar pairings (representation in nature, etc.)
One can also observe that non-theists (Buddhists, etc.) have abstract constructs with some of the attributes. Then there are sort-of-theists (like myself) who believe in deific entities but reject most (in my case, all) human referents as valid descriptors. In my case, I reject anthropomorphism, and consider animal avatars useful semantically but not experientially.
Shorter me: definition of deity is wholly (ahem) subjective.

This is just a more articulate form of the tired old soundbite, “the fool has said in his heart there is no god.” I find it very lame, tiresome and offensive. And yet I’m the one who’s considered shrill, strident, militant, fundamentalist etc. etc. simply because I don’t believ ein the Christian god and don’t want him shoved down my throat.

As someone who has been an atheist and then a believer and now a “don’t really care,” I find the article something between amusing and offensive.
It reminds me a little of conversations about racism or sexism. Anything you say to argue that you’re not a racist or a sexist is taken as evidence that you are.
When people say that atheists “really know better” and “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” and whatnot, there are two ways to take that.
If the believer is saying that because he thinks Scripture requires him to believe it, … so be it. God would know, after all. What is there for the skeptic to say? Are you going to believe God (as you have chosen to interpret his message) or some guy?
OTOH, if you’re trying to make that sort of a point from some natural argument, it’s both offensive and arrogant. You can’t possibly know what an atheist knows or why he knows it. You can’t possibly know if he’s willfully suppressing things, choosing not to believe, or anything like that.

Rod,
This post demonstrates your repeated, fatal weakness as a thinker and human being.
Again and again you blithely opine about the validity of the internal mental states of other people (today’s version is “I believe that atheists really have to work to stay blind to evidence, however circumstantial, for a divine presence in the natural world”) — which means that when you read something like this –
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/05/what-have-atheists-lost
– specifically, Drum’s second-to-last paragraph (beginning “But there’s probably little chance of discussing this profitably…”) –
– YOU SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE HIM.
You, Rod Dreher, know better than Drum what he’s feeling, and you know better than I do what I’m feeling; et cetera, et cetera.
Please strain yourself to try to perceive how obnoxious and arrogant it is of you to have an unshakable conviction that Drum (and me, etc.) is being either dishonest or cowardly, i.e., he’s either lying about what he feels, or is too weak to face what he truly feels — RATHER THAN THAT YOUR OWN PAUCITY of whatever characteristic(s), e.g., intellect, imagination, empathy, courage, is responsible for your compulsion to invalidate his claims about himself.
This is why your role in the Templeton project, and more generally any of your writings dealing with disbelief, and/or science being incompatible with religion, are my least favorite aspects of your writing: you feel perfectly comfortable invalidating, by fiat, an entire side of the supposed conversation.
Marifasus

And #$%%, holy cow, are your last two sentences annoying:
“Then again, I had to be epistemically open to the possibility of God in order to consider the evidence in front of me. If one has decided as a first principle that God could not possibly exist, nothing can change a mind so closed to lessons from experience and observation.”
I was raised Catholic, with a devout mother and grandmother. I tried fervently throughout childhood to believe. I was a dutiful, enthusiastic (but never deep-down believing) altar boy. I was epistemically more than open to the possibility of God — I _wanted_ to believe. It’s utterly false that I’d decided as a first principle that God couldn’t possibly exist.
Yet, as I got older — and by the time I was in my mid-teens, unambiguously and (so far) unshakably — I realized I felt the way Drum describes in that second-to-last paragraph of his.
But apparently that’s an invalid testimony.
-M

“If one has decided as a first principle that God could not possibly exist, nothing can change a mind so closed to lessons from experience and observation.”
Um, both Rod Dreher and Joe Carter are starting off with a premise that is, for many non-believers, simply untrue: That our non-belief is a matter of choice, a decision. For most of us it is just an inability to believe- one’s brain just won’t do it. We haven’t “decided against God” or anything even remotely similar.
I wonder how many times one has to repeat that…perhaps one example of invincible ignorance is the inability of religion writers to process or respond to this fact- non-belief, for many of us, IS NOT A CHOICE. Do forgive the caps. Now carry on discussing the terrible choice that atheists have made to be atheists.

“I believe that atheists really have to work to stay blind to evidence, however circumstantial, for a divine presence in the natural world”
Me, I’m amazed at how easily “believers” conflate their religion’s explanations for the natural world with the actual natural world, especially when human understanding continues to force that religion — and all religions — to modify the explanations as science progresses.
But that’s just me.
And I think Rod and this Carter soldier in the Culture Wars have it all wrong. The evidence is what proves to me that religion(s) fail any test of validity. It takes remarkable hubris to believe that ones religion can explain the incomprehensible universe around us.
On the other hand, if you want to reduce “belief” to an innocuous statement that “something” out there exists or existed, fine. I’ll sign up for that, but please stop calling it “god” and stop capitalizing it.

I agree on offensive and arrogant.
I am reminded of the local lady who is a victim of an abusive priest. In the 20+ years it took her to get recognition from the diocese of what had happened to her, she lost her faith in God……….any God.
In my own case it was the teachings of the church which in so many cases are so inhuman, (The Brazilian girl and her family come immediately to mind), that made me lose my belief in the RCC, and then led me to question my whole belief system.
I do not understand the faith of Helen’s sister, because she is still searching to understand what God wants of her. I am afraid such circumstances would tell me that God had nothing to do with it.
So maybe it is all in the way we view the world. I am much happier in the knowledge that this is all blind luck, and that no malevolent God is guiding what misfortunes might come my way. The older I get the happier I am knowing that you make what you can of this life, and when it is over, it is over.

This post demonstrates your repeated, fatal weakness as a thinker and human being.
Could you please hold the judgments of my character? We could do without that sort of thing around here.
Again and again you blithely opine about the validity of the internal mental states of other people (today’s version is “I believe that atheists really have to work to stay blind to evidence, however circumstantial, for a divine presence in the natural world”)
Look, I don’t know you or your own experience. I am perfectly willing to state that one can be an atheist and be brave, moral, and most other good things. What I have encountered in dealing with most atheists is a refusal to admit anything into evidence which would falsify materialism. There is always an explanation that makes divinity or spirit unnecessary, therefore non-existent. At some point, I can’t help but wonder how hard one has to work to maintain an atheist’s faith. Similarly, I think it’s fair of atheists to criticize us theists for working hard to maintain our faith, or appearing to, in the absence of evidence for what we believe.
I was raised Catholic, with a devout mother and grandmother. I tried fervently throughout childhood to believe. I was a dutiful, enthusiastic (but never deep-down believing) altar boy. I was epistemically more than open to the possibility of God — I _wanted_ to believe. It’s utterly false that I’d decided as a first principle that God couldn’t possibly exist.
Well, that’s you. For those atheists who have decided as a first principle that God couldn’t possibly exist — Richard Lewontin comes to mind — my statement stands. There are different ways of arriving at an atheist position, some more honest than others. Same with a theist position.

And do note that I find Carter’s claim unpersuasive, and say so.

I don’t understand the vehement Christian bashing of atheists when a good 2/3 of the world thinks Christianity and its god is hogwash.
That’s the nature of religion though… completely illogical and loving it.

“I am perfectly willing to state that one can be an atheist and be brave, moral, and most other good things. What I have encountered in dealing with most atheists is a refusal to admit anything into evidence which would falsify materialism. There is always an explanation that makes divinity or spirit unnecessary, therefore non-existent. At some point, I can’t help but wonder how hard one has to work to maintain an atheist’s faith. Similarly, I think it’s fair of atheists to criticize us theists for working hard to maintain our faith, or appearing to, in the absence of evidence for what we believe.”
I think that there are a number of theists who are equally unwilling to admit anything into evidence which would falsify theism (whatever form it might take). Whether it goes back to the idea of positional bias, cognitive dissonance, epistemic closure, or simple stubbornness I do not know. But, having traveled among some evangelicals for a good portion of my life, I find that they can be every bit as bull-headed as the most outspoken atheist.
But then, is that not simply another outworking of human nature?

Rod,
Thank you for your reply. As for your two main points:
1. If you want to do a worthy job with this issue, then at some point you’re going to have to face the fact that there are plenty of atheists like me, Drum, and others who’ve posted to this thread, who aren’t members of the category of atheist you’ve pegged and treat to the point where you verge on using them as straw man. That is, you’re going to have to qualify it with tedious phrases like, “I know a substantial number of atheists aren’t like this, but…” But I think that would substantially reduce the potential importance you want such statements to have, and I doubt you’re going to do it.
2. You ask me to refrain from judgments of your character. In a case like this, even at the cost of being banned, my answer is “no,” for a very specific reason.
In plenty of your innumerable posts on this broad subject, you’ve rendered a judgment on the characters of disbelievers to the effect that their disbelief disqualifies, bars, prevents, retards, etc., them from plumbing/experiencing the full depths of what it means to be human.
I don’t know if you’re happy to face up to the fact of that judgment or if you want to avoid it, but you’ve clearly said and implied over the years that disbelief compromises people’s human potential. I’m saying that your willful blindness on this issue compromises your human potential. You stop, I’ll stop. (Though, I should try to not bother saying it again, since I don’t expect this to be an area where you make any progress.)
-M.

Where are all these atheists who are so certain about the impossibility of there being “something out there”?
Do they have a web page?
Captcha: maroons of

Your idea that atheists start with a first principle that God could not possibly exist, is staggering. Have you never actually talked to any atheists? Most of us view the idea of God as equivalent to your idea of leprechauns – assuming you don’t believe leprechauns actually exist, did you reach that conclusion adopting a first principle that they can’t possibly exist, or would you be open to evidence, and have adopted that conclusion based on reason and logic? That’s how we are with the idea of God.
You describe your own conversion to belief as a “leap of faith,” then describe it as exactly the opposite. You based your conclusion on evidence, in this case the evidence of apparently answered prayer. That’s a start toward a reason-based approach (and the opposite of a faith-based approach), but your bar for convincing evidence is set way too low. If I adopted an approach like that, I could just as easily believe in Zeus, Yahweh, Osiris, leprechauns, fairies, any number of things. Coincidences happen, and they happen all the time.
[Note from Rod: I do not believe that all atheists start out epistemically closed. I believe that many of them become that way at some point, just as most religious believers become closed off to the possibility that God does not exist. So what? -- RD]

I am reminded of a discussion I had some time back with an old friend who holds to what can charitably be called a liberal view of god, the Bible, and religion. The topic of Abraham and Issac came up in our discussion, and I asked him what he would do today if he saw a fellow taking his son up on a hillside to slaughter him in obedience to God’s command. Immediately he said he would call the police and then do whatever it took to stop the fellow. Such an idea was totally and completely unacceptable to him.
Having both come from more conservative, literalist backgrounds we started talking about how so many people could accept that God would speak to Abraham and demand a child sacrifice, but then say they would reject out of hand anyone claiming today that they had been similarly commanded. We both noted that most of these people simply stated that “God doesn’t work that way today” and left it at that.
We went on for some time about other stories and traditions in Christianity where otherwise logical people were capable of performing a complete logical disconnect with respect to these stories just to keep from having to acknowledge any possibility that the stories were anything other than literally true. The argument always seemed to hinge on the belief that if one of these stories was accepted as being allegorical then the whole salvation story would come tumbling down like a house of cards. (It is this point that drives so many of the people who insist that the creation story of Genesis must be interpreted literally.)

Rod wrote: “At some point, I can’t help but wonder how hard one has to work to maintain an atheist’s faith.”
Yeah…no. I was actually with you until this point, Rod. As an atheist I don’t posses anything that can be regarded as faith in anything in the religious sense in which you use the word. It’s been said, only partially tongue in cheek, that atheism is a faith in the same way not collecting stamps is a hobby. The moment someone says something akin to, as you have, “I don’t have enough faith to be atheist” you are pretty much howling into the wind or preaching to your choir.
I was with you, seriously, for a moment there. If one wants to seriously maintain an atheist view of things, then you have to have this sort of continuously running skeptical machine running into your brain about not only what you accept to be true, but what other are claiming to be true as well. Simple, mindless atheism is as useful as blind religious faith.
But the moment you equate atheism and religion as basically the same thing, well, you make a misstep that is not really worthy of most of the things you post here.

BobN: It takes remarkable hubris to believe that ones religion can explain the incomprehensible universe around us.
Which religious person believes their religion “explains” the universe? Not mine. That’s not how true religion works. Do you even understand religion?

so many people could accept that God would speak to Abraham
I blame Hollywood for that. How many of these folks imagine a scene wherein the voice of God booms from the heavens in a Charlton Heston sort of voice to someone out in a field with no other folks around? I bet not many would be as open to the idea of a guy standing in line at the checkout and being the only one to hear a voice coming from behind the impulse-buy display.
The Lord works in convenient ways…

“I am perfectly willing to state that one can be an atheist and be brave, moral, and most other good things.”
What do you mean “MOST”? Are you saying that atheists are incapable of one or more “good” characteristics? I think this is an incredibly important issue.

Rod: Which religious person believes their religion “explains” the universe? Not mine.
Not your particular flavor of Christianity, not this century.
That’s not how true religion works.
I don’t get you. Some days “religion” means your religion, down to the denomination. Some days it means Christianity. Some days it means the Abrahamic triumvirate. And now and then it means any religion. Some “true religions” most certainly do work that way and virtually every single major religion — at one time or another — operated that way.
Do you even understand religion?
That was rude. I’ll just be polite and bite my tongue.

Hilarious. I would argue that believing in all that religious nonsense is truly a a sign of a mental handicap. The fact that they feel the need to attack non-believers only proves the weakness of their own “faith”. Delusional and pathetic.

Rod,
How amusing that an individual who believes in mythological gods/goddesses would have the arrogance to label as “ignorant” individuals who base their beliefs on Reason, Logic, Science and Common Sense…
Humanity has created thousands of deities through the millenia, all of course the Only True gods/goddesses…
I hope someday you see this reality and that the truth shall set you free of your intellectual bondage…
Peace.

Typical religious insanity. But that’s to be expected from arrogant Christians thinking their speaking for God.

Art, you may not have been around on Rod’s previous blog during the PZ Myers Host desecration incident. The discussion in that thread make this one look calm by comparison.
However, in that thread one answer to the moral flaws of atheists is that they lack a love of God which Christians require in their morality. The other flaw is we lack a reason to not stomp baby ducks, but John E made a utilitarian case for not doing that.
Oh and we were accused of howling with demonic rage, but that was one of the more over the top comments.

At some point, I can’t help but wonder how hard one has to work to maintain an atheist’s faith. Similarly, I think it’s fair of atheists to criticize us theists for working hard to maintain our faith, or appearing to, in the absence of evidence for what we believe.
My weren’t you feeling charitable today
See Rod understands how hard it is because obviously atheists have to work at it like Rod does.

Joe Carter is the religious equivalent of Richard Dawkins. The both of them are equally offensive. Anyone who thinks Dawkins is offensive but thinks Carter should get a pass is a hypocrite, plain and simple.
Joe Carter is NOT the person you want to use to market Christianity.

Isn’t this more a concern with pluralism? The counters to atheists from scripture are also counters to muslims, buddhists, hinduists, western non-christian esoteric spiritualists and so forth. But I think atheism has become a bit of a fly trap of visible opposition, clouding that multiple views run in rather complex lines.

“After all…what kind of deity would allow such suffering to be inflicted on an infant such as this?”
A Deity that recognizes, from a vastly different perspective than our own, the brevity of human life, and the superiority of eternal life in the place of said perspective. Pain, suffering, and death are only such unforgivable sins from the perspective of one who believes life to be short and death to be the end. These arguments are always circular. The anti-theist rhetorically feigns the existence of some “deity” without being bothered to feign the other stipulations of that existence. Trivializing the question along with their own credibility on the topic.
Jesus wept for Lazarus, or did He? It could be said that He only wept for the unbelief of his students. Maybe frustration? His followers were mistaken in their theory that Jesus’ power to heal only applied to the living. Jesus explained that Lazarus only slept. So, when an anti-theist proclaims such things as death, or even suffering, as evidence of their philosophy, they have failed to recognize that death is but sleep for the theist. Suffering, though often evil and tragic, is temporary. Life is but a vapor for the Christian theist. For the anti-theist, it is everything.

Jesus wept for Lazarus, or did He? It could be said that He only wept for the unbelief of his students.
It could also be said that it was just a story and didn’t really happen…

Witnessing prayers answered, now that would truly be wonderful. And where are these miracle prayer people? Are they curing AIDS, how about striking dead every adult that robs a child of sexual innocence, or maybe they are causing amputations to re-grow. No? How about curing cancer, stunting the destruction of natural disasters, or finding missing persons? Oh right, sometimes deities say no and prefer to keep it on the down-low. Or maybe the prayers of John Floyd Thomas Jr. were just better.

Sigh–thread went like I figured. So much for the Koran 5:49….

MH,
Just to be clear, I _disagree_ with Mr. Carter. I know a lot of atheists, including much of my immediate family. I was raised atheist, after all. I’d say that many of the people I know are in a state of invincible (as opposed to vincible) ignorance. Invicible ignorance, of course, is also _inculpable_ ignorance. It’s not necessarily your fault (I’d say that for most of the people I know, it isn’t their fault) that they don’t have the capacity for religious belief. Faith is a gift; it’s given more to some of us then others.
I do think that belief in God is more reasonable than atheism, and I think highly of the ontological proof, for example, but let’s be serious here. If someone doesn’t understand the ontological argument, it’s hardly his fault- it’s a fairly abstruse bit of logic that even Aquinas didn’t fully understand, and it’s not a sin to be unable to appreciate the ontological argument. I believe in God for various reasons- some logical, and some experiential.

So what does God have against amputees anyway? If prayer worked wouldn’t at least some of them have had their limbs regenerated? How about missing eyes? The only concrete proof that a prayer answered is anything more than random luck has never happened. It makes one think doesn’t it?

“It could also be said that it was just a story and didn’t really happen…”
Not only could, but is said. Said by those who do not believe. Carter (along with Paul) refers to the position of God deniers as inexcusable. Not just Paul, the Bible is riddled with examples of the foolishness of unbelief. However, it also makes mention of the the foolishness of belief to those who do not believe (1 Corinthians 2:14).
As a Christian theist I have often pondered the strictly intellectual conclusions that anti-theists come to. Not agnostics, or even atheists, but anti-theists, the ones who attempt to discredit theists.
They put so much effort in trying to disprove something that is not disprovable. The one I can’t usually fathom is not the “death and suffering” question. As I already mentioned, there is a chicken & egg aspect to that which makes the claim reasonable based on perspective. Certainly not decisive, but reasonable.
The point I intellectually cannot find reasonable is intellect itself. Self awareness. Something greater, and more complex, coming from something lesser. Life coming from absence of life, and not just life, but awareness of the sort that each of us experience daily. Hence, the common conclusion. It takes more faith to be an atheist than a theist.
I’ve heard the scientific arguments, entropy only applies to the system as a whole and that small parts of the system may for a time demonstrate advance while the order of the whole system follows the laws and continues to degrade.
That argument is not remotely persuasive IMO. It insinuates that a googol years ago there was even more order than now. Sure, you may consider matter compacted to the point of subatomic solidity is more order than the function of the human brain. I simply would not.
That matter has existed for all time, whether super compressed or not… that this universe simply is. Whether it has a finite dimension or not. These things are beyond reason without some intelligence greater than us involved & yes, that intelligence itself is also beyond reason. Which is precisely how the God of the Bible describes Himself. With collectively exhaustive detail to a degree not within the intellectual grasp of those desert nomads that are supposed to have “invented” Him. The Bible is full of examples of their stupidity, but God’s behavior, in the midst of such ignorance, is consistent with an intellect far superior to the collective human race.

Death is but sleep for the theist. Life is but a vapor for the Christian theist.
Put them in a burning building and they’d act just the same as everybody else.

reticon wrote: “Life is but a vapor for the Christian theist. For the anti-theist, it is everything.”
Damn skippy it is.
Which is why, (to toss back to early threads about Nietzsche), why Nietzsche felt Christian virtue was hardly virtuous, was life denying and needed to go away and replaced by something else! I don’t agree totally with that wacky German, but when I read a believer say something like that, I gotta say, Nietzsche was onto to something.

Do you even understand religion?
I have never understood religion. Its always been a completely alien concept to me.
this is the reason why I find Joe carter’s comments to be so offensive. He clearly wants me to respect his worldview. But he refuses show the same respect for my worldview. Joe Carter is a very rude person.

Hector, no worries. I didn’t get the impression you agreed with Mr. Carter. I kind of like the idea of being invincible in at least one dimension.
It’s understandable you think belief is more reasonable than atheism. I would say that ones own position always seems more reasonable than the other position. As we always accept our own axioms and question the axioms of others.
Turmarion, I still think it went better than the PZ Myers thread. Isn’t Koran 5:49 the death to unbelievers passage? I much prefer being called willfully ignorant.

Scott, considering all that has been said about the importance of the word “Faith” what will happen to that kind of faith, that by definition requires belief without seeing, if you were to witness a missing arm growing back?
If you guessed faith would be rendered impossible, then you would be correct. As was mentioned before, God is not in the habit of submitting to our “tests”. He is no dog and pony show. A millisecond of a glance at His appearance would do nothing short of making you, me, and every other human being His slave, and that is precisely what He does NOT want. He wants the kind of relationship that is impossible without this boundary. Without the shadow of doubt there is no room for faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God.
I reiterate, if God were to appear to any of us, we might as well die right there because the purpose of this world & the opportunity to give God what He asks from us would be irreversibly ruined. He is not being tested, we are. If you demand proof the only proof you’ll get is the penalty of your arrogance (The sign of Jonah, which I believe is to meet Jesus in His glory after having rejected Him, 3 days, resurrection… it’s a bit involved). To that penalty I hope there is a mercy that we know nothing about, but then the penalty would still be knowing all that we could have done. If you humble yourself and seek God like a lover seeks her love, you will find Him and experience the meaning of life on this planet. Otherwise, there is really no meaning to be had, which is a bit of a hell in itself.

the Bible is riddled with examples of the foolishness of unbelief
And books about Jupiter and Bacchus would have called you a fool too. If the Australian Aborigines had had books, they’d have been about the Rainbow Serpent saying the same thing. You talk about “unconvincing arguments,” but the idea that this book about magic and ghosts must be true because it says it is and it says anyone who doubts it is wrong, is really REALLY unconvincing.

reticon wrote: “They put so much effort in trying to disprove something that is not disprovable. The one I can’t usually fathom is not the “death and suffering” question. As I already mentioned, there is a chicken & egg aspect to that which makes the claim reasonable based on perspective. Certainly not decisive, but reasonable.”
Well you don’t get anti-theists really. Its not that one tries to disprove the disprovable. That is like trying to disprove Thor. Total waste of time. Where the atheist strictly speaking doesn’t believe in god, the anti-theist is opposed to the conclusions of theistic religion. So the anti-theist argues against the moral and ethical values of religion. For the anti-theist, the question of the exist of a particular god is largely settled.
As for your statement quoted above: try saying that to a starving person, or a someone horribly sick, or someone badly injured. Tell a child with bone cancer than questioning a “loving” god that their terrible suffering is really not that bad if you just put it in perspective, which they cannot do not being a god. Therefore they should just stop complaining.
I have deep reservations about the kind of theology you present, which dismisses suffering because it is temporary. Well yes, it is, but that does not make the suffering any more profound or worth belittling. Nor does it make the “question of evil” as it is sometimes called, “baffling”. It is not unreasonable to say that a being that has the knowledge and power to prevent horrible suffering, but doesn’t, is an immoral and unethical one.
Saying “well god is just so smart and so perfect, we cannot judge his actions or inactions” is to essentially say our moral and ethical decisions are ultimately meaningless and anything we do is meaningless. Either we can judge moral and ethical issues for ourselves, as imperfect as our decisions might be, or we cannot. To say that it is “baffling” to ask why all powerful “loving” god would allow someone to suffer horribly is to miss the point and, I would say, an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

BobN: It takes remarkable hubris to believe that ones religion can explain the incomprehensible universe around us.
Rod Dreher: Which religious person believes their religion “explains” the universe? Not mine. That’s not how true religion works. Do you even understand religion?
Well, that’s how YOU believe true religion works. There are indeed many theists, many Christians, who believe exactly that. Their worldview is ordered in such a way that, to them, their religion explains everything within the universe. So much so that if their religion cannot explain it, it doesn’t exist.
You will admit, at the least, that yours is not the only valid religious experience to be had, won’t you?

“Turmarion, I still think it went better than the PZ Myers thread. Isn’t Koran 5:49 the death to unbelievers passage? I much prefer being called willfully ignorant.”
Amen to that! Ignorance is curable. Death…not so much.

Reticon,
The Christain religion is unworkable. If you don’t believe in the Christian God you burn in hell forever, if you believe it’s free beer for eternity. That argument makes the contract void as it’s taken under duress. Even god wouldn’t believe that you love him as he offered the contract under duress and thus you had no choice. You can’t make a decision on your own once you know what the religion states.

GrantL, you’ve failed to recognize the difference between life: a beating heart and working bodily functions, from life: the potential, possibilities, and experiences of a sentient being. While it is true that the first one does become a lesser factor, the second is probably more important to a believer. Especially when that being has yet to know what it means to love her creator. Jesus gave Himself to die, and thereby was life denying, His own that is. Your Nietzsche philosophy proves the point. For an anti-theist life is everything, and apparently, in his case, the source of all virtue. Which would necessarily make a God who creates a universe where all life ends perhaps the opposite of virtue. What a brilliant irony, to discover that when you close your flesh eyes for the last time you’ll wake up in eternity and find that the God you hated so much did not “invent” death. The creation claiming the creator to be without virtue. Reason seems to dictate that the creator is the definition of virtue regardless of the creation’s opinion on the matter.
“Put them in a burning building and they’d act just the same as everybody else.” – Wow, more evidence of vincible ignorance.
Glad to be so popular, even with the peanut gallery. Nice to chat with you all. Shalom.

HLVanBuren: “After all…what kind of deity would allow such suffering to be inflicted on an infant such as this?”
Reticon: “A Deity that recognizes, from a vastly different perspective than our own, the brevity of human life, and the superiority of eternal life in the place of said perspective. Pain, suffering, and death are only such unforgivable sins from the perspective of one who believes life to be short and death to be the end. These arguments are always circular. The anti-theist rhetorically feigns the existence of some “deity” without being bothered to feign the other stipulations of that existence. Trivializing the question along with their own credibility on the topic.”
Interesting. This is the usual argument that Christians offer when faced with this question. They take the matter of God, set it outside of human understanding, and then state that because his understanding is greater than ours we cannot begin to explain why such things happen.
Yet they then turn to human logic to try to explain God’s existence, insisting that the same logic which lacks the ability to explain the apparent random suffering seen daily on our planet is somehow sufficient to explain the existence of God.
Trying to have it both ways, are we?

Reticon: “What a brilliant irony, to discover that when you close your flesh eyes for the last time you’ll wake up in eternity and find that the God you hated so much did not “invent” death.”
Actually, he did “invent” death, at least according to the Gospel of John. From chapter 1:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”
According to the Bible, man lacks the capability of creating. Only God can create. Therefore anything that is created (invented) comes from God, not man.
Further we have the following account from Genesis chapter 1:
“Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it (R)you will surely die.”
The penalty of death was instituted by God, not by man. According to the Bible man did not set the rules by which he was to live in the Garden. The creator of the garden, God, did that.
So, according to the Bible, you are wrong when you say that God did not invent death.

reticon wrote: “What a brilliant irony, to discover that when you close your flesh eyes for the last time you’ll wake up in eternity and find that the God you hated so much did not “invent” death. The creation claiming the creator to be without virtue. Reason seems to dictate that the creator is the definition of virtue regardless of the creation’s opinion on the matter.”
Whoa..ok lets break this down a bit shall we?
First, I do not “hate” any gods. I don’t have any reason to believe they exist. Evidence for them all, so far, is wanting. To say I hate the god you believe in is rather like saying I hate Thor or Vinshu. I cannot hate that which I do not believe exists. I take issue with the moral and ethical values as defined in some religions, but I do not “hate” a god. That would just be crazy.
Second, you have just applied the old, tired line of “what will you do when you die and realize the Christians where right? What then huh? How do you like THEM apples!” But I can turn it around on you by asking “What I an irony when you close your fleshy flesh eyes and then wake up only to face Odin who is about to cast you off into the underworld because you did not die bravely in battle!” In other words, it’s a totally meaningless argument and only a mildly interesting thought experiment to which Bertrand Russell gave the best answer.
Your last statement is near nonsensical. You have cannot claim a being, which by your own previous definition is unknowable in any real sense, is the “definition of virtue.” Because if we take your previous statements to be true, you cannot possibly know what virtue is. If moral and ethical issues cannot be understood by use poor, limited, walking meat sacks, and if said issues can only be truly understood with the unique and singular “perspective” of the one and only god…then what virtue is is simply beyond our understanding, and thus renders your claims inert.
You’d have to be able to tell us what virtue is. I mean, god might just as well think destroying cities and killing children qualifies as virtue, right? He sure does in the old testament, for example. You argue we cannot say god ordered genocides of the old testament are NOT virtuous because we don’t have the non-meat eyes of god, right?
So how you can claim such a being, which by your own definition we cannot know, can be the definition of virtue? As you have constructed your argument you might as well have said “god is the definition of jabberwacky.”

A millisecond of a glance at His appearance would do nothing short of making you, me, and every other human being His slave
Then why did Adam and Eve disobey God?
I’ve heard the argument that knowing God exists negates free will, but the story of Adam and Eve shows that this is not true.
If you humble yourself and seek God like a lover seeks her love, you will find Him and experience the meaning of life on this planet.
Well, here’s the problem with that analogy – if the lover, in this case me, decides that it isn’t worth the trouble to look for the God who seems determined to hide from me, then that God, supposedly a lover, will condemn me to eternal hellfire.
That is a cruddy sort of lover, downright psychotic, I’d say.
Otherwise, there is really no meaning to be had, which is a bit of a hell in itself.
I’ll make my own meaning in that case, thanks very much…

hlvanburen is correct as well, reticon. If one takes the biblical texts at their word, the almighty uses death as a punishment for disobedience…and he does come across as a trifle rash a that. The crime for eating fruit (or metaphorically, gaining knowledge if one is not a literalist) is to be killed. Like, ouch, dude. Have a kit-kat.

The Bible is full of examples of their stupidity, but God’s behavior, in the midst of such ignorance, is consistent with an intellect far superior to the collective human race.
Counter-argument: the story of Noah…
God’s described behavior – destroying the project that isn’t working out as planned, is not consistent with an intellect far superior to the human race.

As is often the case in such discussions there have been some incorrect extrapolations:
1. “…sufficient to explain the existence of God. Trying to have it both ways, are we?” – Just because you haven’t included the word prove your acrobatics in replacing it with “sufficient to explain” has not gone unnoticed. No, I’ve already said that God is purposefully unprovable. Faith by Biblical (not dictionary) definition can only exist for things unproven. Are you a politician? 1 in 10 would have caught your elaborate rhetoric.
2. “offered the contract under duress and thus you had no choice” … I have a choice to believe or not to believe. Again, faith by the Bible definition is necessarily a choice. If I did see any amputated limbs growing back then perhaps I would be under duress. As I already stated, to the point of slavery. This is probably why Jesus said “blessed are those who have NOT seen and yet believe.”
3. “Therefore they should just stop complaining…I have deep reservations about the kind of theology you present…” … I have deep reservations too in the version of my theology that you have extrapolated. Whoever believes that is most likely a sociopath.
4. “Do you even understand religion?” … I think religion is what results from a group of people basing a club on spiritual opinions. Then inside the club vying for positions of power and perhaps profit. There is often a foundational core of guidelines the club is based on, however many in the club will know little about those, and be more interested in the social status.
Considering the high caliber of intellect here I’m suspicious that the inaccurate extrapolations were matters of strategy instead of sincere contributions to the debate. However, I’ve answered them anyway for the benefit of the doubt. I must now get to work. Cheers.

reticon wrote: “Jesus gave Himself to die, and thereby was life denying, His own that is. Your Nietzsche philosophy proves the point.”
uh no. Not what Nietzsche was saying at all. Perhaps you should you read him, yah?

reticon, I do hope you will respond to my point that Adam and Eve, who had direct knowledge of God’s existence, nevertheless still had free will and were not under duress to the point of slavery…

Good grief. I can always tell when PZ Myers’ or some other atheist fundamentalist site has linked to something I’ve written. The quality of atheist commentator on the thread takes a tailspin, and suddenly it’s like a convention of Gareth Keenans from “The Office”. Thread closed. It’s a mercy killing. You’re welcome.