I have some atheistic questions. All the proofs I've read about the existence of God only stress the existence of a god(like the Prime Mover, Creator, Designer, etc.). Though this does not tell us which one is the one true God(or gods for that matter). All gods of all religions are just claims of humans(prophets). How do we know that their god is the true god? Do we measure by the number of believers and/or the length of the existence of the religion?

-- janeiro (janeiro_a@rocketmail.com), April 01, 2004

Answers

bump!

-- janeiro (janeiro_a@rocketmail.com), April 01, 2004.

additional question, does the number and greatness of the miracles performed by the founder and his/her believers of a religion proves that their god is the true god?

-- janeiro (janeiro_a@rocketmail.com), April 01, 2004.

janeiro,

No, we do not judge by numbers. We can judge by the obvious way that God interacts with the people of the world. Note that for any other religion outside of the catholic church, miracles are something that happened a LONG time ago. Saints intercede for countless miracles in the catholic church to this very day. The repeated manifestations of God in direct response to the faith of His people are key signs that the Christian God is the true God.

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), April 01, 2004.

"I have some atheistic questions. All the proofs I've read about the existence of God only stress the existence of a god(like the Prime Mover, Creator, Designer, etc.). Though this does not tell us which one is the one true God(or gods for that matter). All gods of all religions are just claims of humans(prophets). How do we know that their god is the true god? Do we measure by the number of believers and/or the length of the existence of the religion? "-jANERIO

fALSE PRETEXT.

See, the truth is, those arguments arent dsigned to prove the Christain God. They afre designed to prove God exists. ( Not gods, multiple gods coudl not have created a whole Universe. even pagan religiosn start with either a central creator, or else the gods are formed by natural proccesses alreayd under way.)

The lrime mover and design arument et al are not engeneiried to rpove Christainity, they are only designed to illustrate God's xistance. Not hat our notion of him is correct.

Other, seperate arumdents are designed for that.

Argumetns such as Historacity. Archeology has proven time and againt hr Bible's validity. Granted, many current theories seem to undermine the Bible, but it was also so in the early 20th century, whrn they claimed as fact the Hittites didn't exist, such a powerful, and vast, empire woudl have been known to them. That aprt of the Bibel was cleary mythical.

Then, withthe turn of a shovel, the Hittites where discovered.

Archeoogy more times than not confirms the Bible.

Likewise, theirs the Acid test of accuracy in nes life. The principles nt he Bible, unlike most other rleigions, swhere made ot be tested, and many are self evident. Inded, Oayl tells us in Theseonians to hold fast that which is good, and to test things out.

The adivce is good advice, and works. Simpley out, it is the only way the human machine was designed to work.

That, plus all the answered prayers and Miracles, all confirm Chrisainiry. Not the prome mover arument.Theirfore, askign us to show the Chrisyain veiw of God is corect based on an argument that si only designed to show God's existance is poitnless. It woudl be lime me askign a sicnetist to show why Big Bang theory is plausable, and after he explained it, turnign aroudn and saying " OK, that part seems reasonable, but can you tell me how this proves Sueprstring theory?"

Naturally, Big Bang theory really doesnt prove superstring theory, but oen can hold to both theoryies just the same.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), April 01, 2004.

Jainero,

One very unique thing about the Jewish and Christian Faiths is that they involve accounts of God's direct presence. The Old Testament is filled with God's direct actions which are witnesses by thousands. In the New Testament people witness the power of God the Son. No other religion has these "eye witness" type accounts.

Pagan religions like Greco-Roman or Norse simply tell stories to explain all of life's questions through supernatural beings. They are not desribed as "eye-witness" type accounts. They also do not contain people who are known to have existed by the historical record. Achilles, Hercules, Ullyses etc are not documented to have really existed by history. Pontius Pilate, Ramses, King Solomon etc did indeed exist based on historical fact.

If God exists, I would thus say the only true God is the God of the Bible because the data are very much in His favor.

-- David F (notanaddress@nowhere.com), April 01, 2004.

Jainero,
I don’t think you are going to find your answer with logical proofs of the existence of God. If you look at man's search for God over the centuries some questions come to mind:

1) What is that driving force that compels man to search for God?
2) Why have these searches 'evolved' from primitive idol worshiping to what we have today in Christianity, Islam, and Hindu?
3) What is it about these 3 faiths that compel the majority of the people of the world to adhere to one of them?
4) Athiesm has always been with us, why are so few people atheists today?

Now for some answers:

God has placed in each of us the desire to find Him. It is inbred into every human being. You can’t help but look for Him.

When we look around us, we see that simple human law isn’t the answer. Saddam’s law certainly was worse than US law, but what makes it worse? Who or what gives us that guidance. We all know that there are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong, not matter what our laziness, lusts, desires and other vices tell us. We call that natural law. Natural law is the same for everyone. Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem or Christian. Natural law was placed there by God for all humans. When we violate that natural law, we, Christians, call that sin. Sin leads to ruin. We Christians are blessed in that Christ came down to show us the way out of sin. That is what is known as the Good News of Jesus Christ.

For more, see: http://www.catholic.com/library/gods_love_for_you.asp

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), April 01, 2004.

Janeiro,

One thing that I have leard from taking courses that try to prove the existance of God, they are do one bad thing. They try to fit God into our terms. Try to fit God into all of those proofs and then say, God is still greater than these proofs would show. Remember God is ineffable (unexplainable). A English mystic put it correctly, "To truly know God, one must kill God." Not kill God in the sense of stop believing that God exsists, but what we think God is.

-- Scott (papasquat10@hotmail.com), April 01, 2004.

A friend of mine moved from being an Atheist to being a Buddhist. I congratulated him for a step in the right direction. Get me going on the pros and cons of that religion someday. BTDT, at least a bit.

Most proofs of God either themselves require a leap of faith in the middle (C.S.Lewis), or mearly prove that a* logically internally consistant set of ideas can be had around the idea of God (Thomas Aquinus and the Catholic Catachism based on him and his methods). At most they hint in the right direction, and suggest that it is not insane to believe. Both of these sources are good for those who want to approach things logically. The T.A./C.C. does disapoint when you realize that there are other outcomes equally logical. C.S.Lewis is a good way to start, many of the objections are answered, and a good set of attitudes can be aquired there.

I will state this as a personal belief: I do not believe that you can prove God's existance. My journey to do so for myself ended when I got weary of it, and accepted the idea of a beautiful sunset as something above this mundane existance: I can understand the appriciation of beauty logically in food or a mate, but a sunset? I thank my baptism and Catholic education for giving me a quest for God. (And I wish that the Catachism were then what it is today, so that I would have answers, or the hope of answers, so that I would not have gone looking elsewhere. All that is now past)

So I must point to things that are outside of the logical scientific universe, and hope that they remain so. I have heard that the early church had problems with the concept of ghosts: either they should have passed on or not exist at all. All the paranormal points outside of anything normal, or in a sense logical. Since a logical structure must account for everything, or at least (science) give faith/hope that it someday might do so, the least thing that will never fit breaks the mold. Again for me a perfect miracle did it, not one that was totally improbable, but one that could come about in this universe, but was not likely to happen. It was a simple answered prayer (not in the Steven King sense, please). (some of the best miracles are when people change their mind for somethng better, not improbable, but not usually likely. Not that mine was this.)

* but not an exclusive "logically internally consistant set of ideas"

May God bless your search, and please do not blame Him for the destruction brough about by the exercise of free will in a fallen universe.

-- Sean Cleary (seanearlyaug@hotmail.com), April 02, 2004.

The Atheist position is also equally indefensible. The only logically defensible position is doubt. And we all have a good hunk of that. But that is what I wearied of.

The Atheist must prove that God does not exist to secure their position. and this is hard to do. Possibly logically impossible to prove a negitive. The Atheist's statements are generally negitive: it does NOT whatever.

A position akin to the Atheist is that God does exist as prime creater, but has lost interest in interacting with (his) creation. Harder to hit, this position must expain away all that has been testified to, and all that is on going. The least thing can destroy this position.

Sean

-- Sean Cleary (seanearlyaug@hotmail.com), April 02, 2004.

And if you are to start reading in a direction of faith, let me say that C.S.Lewis is a much better read than the Catholic Catachism -- unless you are a logic major. He is easier, and the ideas are more tightly grouped. I have never thrown his books across the room for lacking imagination -- just for claiming logic and only seaming to have it.

Sorry for the multiple posts and post-scripts. Consider it all one lengthy post. I still remember the Catholic taught ideal that conversion of another helps one get to heaven or some such.

-- Sean Cleary (seanearlyaug@hotmail.com), April 02, 2004.

rereading: "answered prayers": see Needfull Things by S.King, last chapter. The whole book is a wonderful sermon on temptation and the devil.

-- Sean Cleary (seanearlyaug@hotmail.com), April 02, 2004.

It is a fact - as this sentence itself proves - that men understand realities (cognitions) that are neither spatial nor temporal...that is, realities and meanings that are known not perceptually (by the senses) and thus aren't things known through "the hard sciences" like physics, but are very real nevertheless.

Now conceptual thought PROVES that the mind is not the brain insofar as the principle of cause and effect (in which an effect may be equal to but never greater than its cause), shows that conceptual thought is an effect beyond the capacity of a physical organ (brain) to cause.

Thus existentially and phenomenologically, all men have personal experience of something which is NEITHER atoms and energy but spiritual: an ordering principle, a willful intelligence sustaining conceptual thought.

Therefore, something in man, (our mind) cannot be material (composed of parts, exposed to change/time).

Now if matter and energy is not all there is, and yet the hard sciences only deal with matter and energy, it becomes obvious that human knowledge includes fields beyond "the hard sciences" - includes in fact more than the study of logic and mathematics...it includes a conceptual study of being per se.

It also becomes clear that since the brain is not the mind, the body is not the soul...thus the soul is not an effect of the body and mere animate matter does not cause soul! Soul animates (gives a intelligible order to) matter.

So what IS the cause of this effect (conceptual thought in man)? Can't be matter and it can't be energy. It can't be spatial or temporal... it must itself be (cause and effect) at least as conceptual/spiritual as the mind itself is.

This is how from time immemorial (OK, since 300 BC) Philosophers have come to know with a certainty as great as that of self-knowledge that human beings have a spiritual soul, and that the origin of this spiritual soul must itself also be spirit.

And guess what? Neither the agnostics nor the atheists can or ever have been able to deny the above is true because the sheer fact that they can think abstractly and conceptually (reading symbols such as English which have no direct reference to anything perceived by their senses) shows the qualitative difference between perceptions and conceptions.

They can SAY God doesn't exist but they can't prove it. They can CLAIM that only physical sciences are valid expressions of knowledge but they can't PROVE IT because to do so requires conceptual metaphysics which contradicts their proposal... thus at every angle, neither atheism nor agnosticism are RATIONAL.

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), April 02, 2004.

another way to look at things (and between the posts that I have seen there has been several ways already) is that few folks really know what logic is, have taken a logic course, have noticed what problems there are in using logic alone to solve problems. Most often they have a personal level of proof that is generally different from the logicians.

Aside: Lewis Carrol was a logician and a believer in God.

So what your personal level of proof is becomes inportant. What would you accept as evidence? Does it have to make sense? try the Catholic Catachism -- the answers are there I have been assured, complete and wrapped up. Does it have to feel right? Try C.S.Lewis. or others.

Sean

-- Sean Cleary (seanearlyaug@hotmail.com), April 02, 2004.

Thank you for all your answers!

Sean and Joe, Thank you for the insights about atheism and the existence of spirit and God. Though my question really does not focus on disagreeing with the existence of God but they are focused on the RELIGIONS today. Every religion has a different God, so which one of them is correct? or has the real God revealed himself already for that matter? I think Paul H's answer is the closest thing. It is really a matter of faith, or believing the "eye-witness" accounts of the people in the Bible, and the miracles shown. The problem is who's "eye-witness" account will you believe?(or stated simply, which religion will you believe?) As catholics, we are very proud of the history of our Church for 2000 years, how Jesus came and established it. The question is, how come Islam is almost as widespread as Christianity? Ive read somewhere that not much truth is in Islam and most of the truths were borrowed from Judaism and Christianity(for the Muslims, I admit that I do not know your religion, the things that Ive read could possibly be anti- Islam). Jesus said all lies would be exposed, the truth will not stay hidden and would prevail. Today 2 "truths" seem to be dominant, Christianity and Islam. So which is the truth(only one can be the truth because they are teaching conflicting doctrines)? Is the truth up until today still hidden(or not yet that obvious)?

-- janeiro (janeiro_a@rocketmail.com), April 04, 2004.

In a Christain framework, Jesus will reveal the truth inthe ned. Truth is not, however, determined by a Majority Vote.

also, not all rleigions worship diffeent gods. Islam, Chritainity, and Judaism all worhsip the same God.

Also, Mormonism and Islam BOTH worhsip the same God as Chriaisn and Jews and for the most part teac the same things. Where they differ is where Christains and Jews say Islam is in error.

However, these differences arent as numerous as you may think.

As for how rleigions spread, the truth helps a religin spread, and if it has most of the trht in it it can do quiet well.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), April 04, 2004.

Yeah, you are right, miracles have a lot to do with it. Look at all the miracles Jesus performed. Not Buddah, not Mohhamad, nor any other man did miracles such as His.

-- Sonya (johnsonya2003@hotmail.com), April 05, 2004.