How Do You Represent Atheists?

[Uber Genius]

Penn Jillette once said something about that "gotcha" that people like using. "You're right, without a higher power I am free to rape and murder as many people as I want. And that number is ZERO! If it's anything OTHER than zero you need help!"

So do you have an opinion about the questions at the bottom of the op? Do you think they process the world differently or the same?

 

[Cubits]

How do we get an eclipse? How can one object perfectly cover another when they are clearly different sizes? Why does the moon not look smaller than the sun in the sky? Why do these look the same size? The sun is approximately 400 times bigger than the moon but the sun is also approximately 400 times further away from the earth than the moon, hence they look exactly the same size. This is why it is possible. Can this be a coincidence? There is a design in everything, the mark of the creator is everywhere we look.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Recently I read an article by a Christian philosopher, Randal Rouser. He is an interesting Canadian chap who engages atheists in a friendly manner. He has written a 20-page scholarly paper entitled, "The Atheist and the Antitheist:
A Critical Analysis of the Rebellion Thesis."

I have shortened it to highlight the main points. After lament the mocking and anti-intellectual tenor of the new atheists view of Christians he says:

"But my interest here is not on how atheists view Christians. Rather, it is on how Christians view atheists. And the sad truth is that Christians, on the whole, are no better than the new atheists. If atheists often caricature Christian beliefs, Christians are all too quick to return the favor as in this graphic from a Christian website.

"Atheism. The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason what so ever into self-replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense.”

Rouser continues to pile on the evidence that Christian leaders over the last 50+ years (although the thesis might hold more strongly earlier), mock and deride atheists as morally corrupt, and rebellious.

Here is a piece of evidence from R.C. Sproul, famous reformed professor and behind a thirty-five year teaching ministry and popular radio show, "Renewing Your Mind."

Sproul describes the following interaction he had with a group of atheists:

"I was invited to a university campus several years ago to speak to an atheists’ club. They asked me to present the intellectual case for the existence of God. I did, and as I went through the arguments for the existence of God, I kept things on an intellectual plane. All things were safe and comfortable until I got to the end of my lecture. At that point I said, “I’m giving you arguments for the existence of God, but I feel like I’m carrying coals to Newcastle because I have to tell you that I do not have to prove to you that God exists, because I think you already know it.
Your problem is not that you do not know that God exists; your problem is that you despise the God whom you know exists. Your problem is not intellectual; it is moral— you hate God.”

Rouser's thesis is,

"If you want to understand people, if you want to know the outsider, the foreigner, the stranger, set aside your presuppositions and prejudices, and welcome them in as a brother or sister or friend: welcome the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the communist, the capitalist, the socialist, the secularist, the feminist, the nationalist, the environmentalist, and the atheist ... the atheist who is your neighbor."


http://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/The-Atheist-and-the-Antitheist.pdf

I advise reading the article.

Do you think that atheists are:

In rebellion?

Fools that ignore important truths about their world?

Blind, by God or their own pride, and can't possibly understand the external world?

Similar to us but with a different set of data about the world. I.E. Differing sets of conceptual knowledge and experiential knowledge?

Why can't we just understand 'atheists' as a diverse group who disbelieve for variety of individual reasons with an array of priorities as to what they value is worthy of belief? To some extent, this is what Christians do too with belief.

Just sayin'...since the epistemological complexities tend to get ignored my most people, believer and non-believer alike. Which is too bad, because many just roll along assuming that the way they see the world is the only real way to see it, and nothing else needs to be considered other than those categories of thought they are already familiar with.

2PhiloVoid

 

[Uber Genius]

How do we get an eclipse? How can one object perfectly cover another when they are clearly different sizes? Why does the moon not look smaller than the sun in the sky? Why do these look the same size? The sun is approximately 400 times bigger than the moon but the sun is also approximately 400 times further away from the earth than the moon, hence they look exactly the same size. This is why it is possible. Can this be a coincidence? There is a design in everything, the mark of the creator is everywhere we look.

Well actually we have three inferences for how things come to exist, chance, necessity, and design.

Now there are certain things that point to design, a certain level of complexity, specification that is narrow, and information. But to assume there is obviously design everywhere is NT an assumption any scientist makes. Even Chrisian ones. But further, you are assuming the person who doesn't share your inference as obvious is faking it. Since it is obvious to them they are in rebellion. And if let's say their experience of God is that he let their parents die in an auto accident when that person was 9 years old and then foster parents molested and physically abused that person, then they would ha some good personal exeriential evidence that God, if he exists, can't be the God of he bible, because God in their experience isn't good.

Now you don't have any of that data in your experience and are free to just wave your hand and say God's goodness like his design is obvious. But is it?

Design is a good argument for God's existence, do get me wrong. I'm engaging people on how to engage atheist.

 

[Cubits]

How to engage an atheist?
First of all i'm no Uber Genius, unlike yourself good sir but here is a list of maybe a few good pointers of how one may engage an atheist:-

1. If you were to enter a room with a dinner table set before full of good things, like milk, honey, beef, steak, ice cream and chocolate but there there was no chief present, would not presume that the table and the food had been prepared by someone?
We have here upon this earth a table set before us full of wonderful foods and yet who has set this table before us? Nature is blind and cannot see, can nature see our needs and requirements?

2. Even our phones and newspapers tell us that Jesus Christ existed because we are 2017 years from what? His existence in bodily form upon this earth.

3. If you were to speak to yourself in the womb and were to tell yourself that there was a more wonderful life to come, would you believe it? After all, all you have is darkness around you, how could there be another existence? But then while in the womb, you may say to yourself; well what are these appendages for that are growing and what are these eyes for? Why do we acquire a lifetime of knowledge sir if the end result is just a heap of salt and minerals? What it not make sense that the knowledge would be put to some use and purpose after this ends and we proceed onto the next?

These are some things that i might discuss with an atheist

 

[Uber Genius]

How to engage an atheist?
First of all i'm no Uber Genius, unlike yourself good sir but here is a list of maybe a few good pointers of how one may engage an atheist:-

1. If you were to enter a room with a dinner table set before full of good things, like milk, honey, beef, steak, ice cream and chocolate but there there was no chief present, would not presume that the table and the food had been prepared by someone?
We have here upon this earth a table set before us full of wonderful foods and yet who has set this table before us? Nature is blind and cannot see, can nature see our needs and requirements?

2. Even our phones and newspapers tell us that Jesus Christ existed because we are 2017 years from what? His existence in bodily form upon this earth.

3. If you were to speak to yourself in the womb and were to tell yourself that there was a more wonderful life to come, would you believe it? After all, all you have is darkness around you, how could there be another existence? But then while in the womb, you may say to yourself; well what are these appendages for that are growing and what are these eyes for? Why do we acquire a lifetime of knowledge sir if the end result is just a heap of salt and minerals? What it not make sense that the knowledge would be put to some use and purpose after this ends and we proceed onto the next?

These are some things that i might discuss with an atheist

First of all, did the avatar give you any clues about what my nom de plume meant? No...not even one clue? Hmm, unfortunate.

1. Your analogy assumes the very thing we are trying to prove. It is a circular argument known as God of the gaps.

This is a poor way to argue. Fine tuning and the Kalam are good ways as they don't employ manipulative rhetoric (propaganda) and are not fallacious.

2. So if we let culture vote, which is what "Anno Domini," is doing then the majority of people in the world would say Jesus was not God. Do we really want to use a vox populi (appeal to the masses) argument to argue for the truth of any matter. By the way that is also a classic logical fallacy.

3.I do think that transcendent arguments for meaning are powerful. But instead of assuming God created us which will not play with the biological accounts atheists hold, why not turn the tables and ask them what objective meaning could anyone have given atheism?

 

[DrBubbaLove]

I'm not an atheist (yet) but I find the line of thought that atheists ...hear and experience God, yet turn away...very frustrating. Speaking for myself, I have looked and prayed for something...some sense of God, for a long time and haven't seen it. I continue to try, and have begun to take a look at the logical arguments for the existence of God (or any supernatural being/s) with more interest because if there is a god, there hasn't been any indication yet in my experience .

We often seek too hard for either God whispering to us to give us a sign or message. We overlook what C.S. Lewis says should be the trumpet blaring in our ears - the pain and suffering in this world. A reality that makes little sense absent the potential for a better future for us.

In the introduction to "The Problem of Pain", Mr Lewis addresses that in a world/universe so cold/brutal/painful that we should marvel many humans still take three huge jumps in view/understanding of our reality (seemingly evident/true for all human history) that seem explainable inexplixable (defies logic/reason) absent "Revelation" (capital R - from God - as in designed into us). Those three things being common elements in many religions and Christian having a fourth (historical figure Christ/God). Those three things are a sense of awe (towards something unknown/unknowable - IOW God/gods/spirits); a sense of what we ought/ought not do (morality); and in many forms(not all) of religions combining the two in the concept of God(or gods) where He is the guardian/standard of what is Good (morality). His argument is the world/universe as we can view it should not naturally lead us to those beliefs, yet there they are and seemingly always have been. (so Revelation).

Anyway the intro is not long and worth reading. The entire book is only 90 pages or so. A rather less theological/philosophical approach and more of realist view of Christianity.