The Argument from Nonbelief

Struggling Sinner · May 29, 2013

The atheists who try to disprove God set up a straw man argument. What they are attacking isn't the Christian God but a caricature of God created by them. It's like criticizing football using the rules of tennis. It's interesting that they usually only attack Christianity and not the false gods of other religions. Ironically related to this, atheism is what the early Christians were accused of because they would not worship the false gods of the Pagans.

Chany · May 29, 2013

Struggling Sinner said:
The atheists who try to disprove God set up a straw man argument. What they are attacking isn't the Christian God but a caricature of God created by them. It's like criticizing football using the rules of tennis. It's interesting that they usually only attack Christianity and not the false gods of other religions. Ironically related to this, atheism is what the early Christians were accused of because they would not worship the false gods of the Pagans.

Great rebuttal. I like the part where there's no explanation.

chilehed · May 29, 2013

Chany said:
I am looking for good counterarguments for the argument of nonbelief (or the problem of divine hiddenness). It’s about the only argument that seems reasonable against the existence of the theistic God.

1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable nonbelief does not occur.
3. Reasonable nonbelief occurs.
4. No perfectly loving God exists (from 2 and 3).
5. Hence, there is no God (from 1 and 4).

Premise 1 is a given for any mainstream Christian, so cannot be challenged reasonably. 4 is a deduction and 5 is a conclusion, so neither can be challenged because the argument is logically sound. That leaves us with 2 and 3 to challenge.[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

#2 is necessary to the argument, but if it's true then 3 begs the question.

Crandaddy · May 30, 2013

MKJ said:
Your post takes all kinds of things for granted - what is love, what is the good, how are they connected.... A little syllogism cannot address those questions. And it is very difficult to answer them without accepting a theistic principle. Since that is what the syllogism is meant to prove, that will not be all that useful.

Well of course anything approaching a rigorous argument would be far more ambitions than a simple syllogism, if that's what you mean, but this hardly seems the right place to launch into a protracted technical treatment of the nature of God as perfect love.

My point is simply that the term God as understood by orthodox Christians would have to entail that he's perfectly loving. If any wish to inquire of me what that means, I can do my best to explain what I understand by it.

WarriorAngel · Jun 1, 2013

If God wasnt perfectly loving, He would not have kept Adam and Eve - and have been done with it.
Knowing all the souls He was to create from them, He kept us - at a distance [which again is loving being we took on 'imperfection' which cannot be near His perfection.
Then as promised, He came, He lived with us, became one of us, and died for us.

Struggling Sinner · Jun 1, 2013

Chany said:
Great rebuttal. I like the part where there's no explanation.

I can remember thinking that I knew everything when I was 18 years old.

Chany · Jun 2, 2013

Struggling Sinner said:
I can remember thinking that I knew everything when I was 18 years old.

This is a thread I made to combat the Argument by Nonbelief. It is not an echo room for Christians to say how foolish and wrong atheists are. You made a claim about a straw man argument, but did nothing to support the claim.

Crandaddy · Jun 2, 2013

Welcome to CF, MilesDelta!

MilesDelta said:
What does it mean for a god to be perfectly loving?

Well, a god can't be perfectly anything, because a god can't be God. God proper is beyond generic and specific categorization (i.e. he doesn't belong to any category for the indefinite article a to pick from). God is not a name that we give to just some being floating about somewhere out in the cosmos. The name God properly refers to the ultimate foundation, source, origin, and end of everything that exists. What this means, inter alia, is that whatever good may be found anywhere in the created order may rightly be called good only because it is ordered in its goodness to a supreme end that is in itself absolute perfection. This absolute perfection to which (to whom, more properly) all that is good is ordered is what we rightly call God. Therefore, since love is good, it follows that perfect love is to be found exclusively in God.

How do you show that?

Can anything actually be good unless it is ordered to something that is actually perfect? And further, can anything actually be good unless it is ordered to something at least analogous to a rational will? I don't think so.

truefiction1 · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
How do you know Adam and Eve existed?

because I know them. Adam is me.

truefiction1 · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
Truefiction1: Am I to understand that you have no mother and father and were created from dust? Am I to also understand that you are the father of all of humanity? You must be quite old!

No, You are to understand my statement only in an allegorical sense. But we (humanity) are indeed Adam and Eve, and baptism into Christ (new Adam) is our only cure.

AMDG · Jun 2, 2013

Didn't archeologists find female remains which might have been "Eve" ("woman") that they named "Sarah"?

Struggling Sinner · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
I am aware of study of a mitochondrial "eve" that lived aprox. 200,000 years ago. That is certainly not the Eve of the Bible that is the only and first female. The origins of anatomically modern humans from one maternal source would probably explain the homogenous make up of human DNA in general.

And how are you so sure of this? But first you say "certainly" and then you say "probably".

So it seems that you aren't so sure of yourself.

.

Struggling Sinner · Jun 2, 2013

Crandaddy said:
Welcome to CF, MilesDelta!

Well, a god can't be perfectly anything, because a god can't be God. God proper is beyond generic and specific categorization (i.e. he doesn't belong to any category for the indefinite article a to pick from). God is not a name that we give to just some being floating about somewhere out in the cosmos. The name God properly refers to the ultimate foundation, source, origin, and end of everything that exists. What this means, inter alia, is that whatever good may be found anywhere in the created order may rightly be called good only because it is ordered in its goodness to a supreme end that is in itself absolute perfection. This absolute perfection to which (to whom, more properly) all that is good is ordered is what we rightly call God. Therefore, since love is good, it follows that perfect love is to be found exclusively in God.

Can anything actually be good unless it is ordered to something that is actually perfect? And further, can anything actually be good unless it is ordered to something at least analogous to a rational will? I don't think so.

Chany · Jun 2, 2013

Stay on topic, please, about the particular argument.

truefiction1, your argument has a couple of flaws in it.

1) The case of those who witnessed Jesus and other miracles. People saw miracles, undeniable proof that God existed, yet turned away. By your logic, these events should never happen because they present an undeniable proof of God and these people would have no freewill, yet they turned away.

2) The case of Paul. He was presented with a pretty compelling case for Christ. Apparently, God did not care about Paul's freewill.

3) Your statement appears to (I could be wrong) assume that every Christian must accept God by blind faith, at least to an extent. I disagree with this notion. One, it eventually reduces things to a coin flip. Two, reason is a valid way to know God.

This is not the argument by the existence of evil; it argues by the existence of reasonable nonbelief. That is, it assumes the nonbeliever to have disbelief on no fault of his own; therefore, freewill cannot apply.

truefiction1 · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
So you have not actually answered my original question. How do you know Adam and Eve existed?

To me, and I speak only for myself, Adam and Eve existed as actual people within the historical ancestry of the Hebrews, who had kept detailed genealogical records which we have no reason to doubt are reliable. But what is more important to me are the critical lessons -- things we need to understand about ourselves -- that are to be gleaned if we understand Adam and Eve to symbolically represent realities about ourselves. In this way, Adam and Eve become quite "real", and the truth of who they are, which is who we are, is undeniable.

Chany · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
How do you know that the genealogical records are correct?

What records are they?

Also, don't be overly-skeptical.

AMDG · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
You are right. I am not sure. How do you propose to prove that this is the Biblical Eve?

Don't think anyone is trying.

Chany · Jun 2, 2013

Can we really stop talking about Eve?

It really has nothing to do with the argument, rather than possibly proving the existence of reasonable nonbelief.

Struggling Sinner · Jun 2, 2013

It's a waste of time asking non-experts questions like this since most of us can only articulate our own personal reason for our faith. Someone's lack of ability to articulate in words why they believe in God is not a proof against the existence of God. Another thing is that a lot of the atheists who ask questions like this begin with the assumption that God does not exist. There is no way to prove to someone that God exists when the first conditional rule in their mind is that he does not exist. It's not about proving or disproving God's existence but about whether or not an atheist, who wants to believe he is right, can be persuaded with a good argument. So the question asked by an atheist is rhetorical.

But I recommend this: FINDING GOD THROUGH FAITH & REASON - DVD

Here's a sample of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTwueNhKbEo

I have this video series in a DVD set, and Fr. Spitzer uses visual aids which this YouTube video doesn't show since on YouTube it's only in audio. So it's better to own the actual video series which is available through EWTN's religious catalogue.

Chany · Jun 2, 2013

MilesDelta said:
No, we can not stop talking about Eve. The existence of Adam and Eve were given as evidence. If they did not exist how can we use them as evidence?

Once again, this is a thread about a specific argument against the existence and how to rebut it; it is not a general thread about the existence of God. How does the existence of Eve tie into the argument by nonbelief?

The Argument from Nonbelief

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