Help Debating An Atheist

[AccountDeleted]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='06 January 2010 - 03:35 PM' timestamp='1262752534' post='2030644']
He said "By the way, if he does nothing to prevent evil that would be considered malevolent. It's like if you knew that there would be a shooting and did nothing to stop it, that is malevolent."

How should I respond?
[/quote]

It is very difficult talking to an atheist (I know, there are many in the family!) because they see everything from a very "human" perspective. By that, I mean that they can't imagine that there is an intelligence greater than ours that can see not only what is coming, but also all of the possible consequences and ramifications of what is coming. So what we might perceive as an evil, could in fact, be a disguised good. This is a very hard concept to grasp for anyone who has no belief in eternal life or a being of infinite good. For them, physical is all that matters, and the idea that the soul could benefit from a physical harm just doesn't make sense.

Still, perhaps you could ask him if he had ever experienced something that he thought was a bad thing, only to find out later that this very thing made other things possible that were ultimately good for him. Ask anyone of faith who has experienced a great deal of suffering, and they can usually see a bigger plan at work in their life, especially on a spiritual level. Those without faith might not be able to attribute this to God, but even on a worldy level they must have times when they say "Wow, if that (bad thing) hadn't happened, then that (good thing) wouldn't have happened!" and hence realize that not everything that looks bad is bad. God's ways are pretty far above ours and not always easy to explain. May the Holy Spirit guide your words.

[Aloysius]

question: why do bad things happen to good people?
answer: they don't.

a truly good person who dies is united with God for eternity.

ultimately, good things happen to good people (heaven) and bad things happen to bad people (hell)... it's a difficult road getting there, in which many seemingly bad things occur to us; death, suffering, even tremendous suffering. why does God not stop the suffering? because suffering in itself is not an evil, suffering is a means to a good. God does not stop suffering, but He comes down to suffer more than any of us to sanctify the suffering.

heaven is not heaven without the suffering road to get there; if there were no suffering, heaven simply wouldn't be as amazingly good. what, couldn't God make it just as amazingly good? nope, because the very definition of WHY it is amazingly good necessitates the suffering on earth. you cannot have the effects of suffering without suffering itself.

this is the message of the cross. this is Christ's answer to human suffering. to the raped, to the hungry, to the thirsty, to the tortured and murdered... your suffering unites you to almighty God who made suffering holy.

it is a hard perspective to have when faced with your own personal suffering. it is a perspective that only the Faith can give. but then, I suppose that many who do not have this perspective in life and despair in their suffering, but who still seek God, will still reap the sweet rewards of suffering.

so many Christians forget... the reason Christianity is unique in the world is that it worships a suffering savior... that it answers the human question of suffering by saying "it is a blessing to suffer". no other religion is foolish enough to say that, which is why no other religion is wise enough to say that.

Edited January 6, 2010 by Aloysius

[AccountDeleted]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='06 January 2010 - 10:47 PM' timestamp='1262778439' post='2030788']
question: why do bad things happen to good people?
answer: they don't.

a truly good person who dies is united with God for eternity.

ultimately, good things happen to good people (heaven) and bad things happen to bad people (hell)... it's a difficult road getting there, in which many seemingly bad things occur to us; death, suffering, even tremendous suffering. why does God not stop the suffering? because suffering in itself is not an evil, suffering is a means to a good. God does not stop suffering, but He comes down to suffer more than any of us to sanctify the suffering.

heaven is not heaven without the suffering road to get there; if there were no suffering, heaven simply wouldn't be as amazingly good. what, couldn't God make it just as amazingly good? nope, because the very definition of WHY it is amazingly good necessitates the suffering on earth. you cannot have the effects of suffering without suffering itself.

this is the message of the cross. this is Christ's answer to human suffering. to the raped, to the hungry, to the thirsty, to the tortured and murdered... your suffering unites you to almighty God who made suffering holy.

it is a hard perspective to have when faced with your own personal suffering. it is a perspective that only the Faith can give. but then, I suppose that many who do not have this perspective in life and despair in their suffering, but who still seek God, will still reap the sweet rewards of suffering.

so many Christians forget... the reason Christianity is unique in the world is that it worships a suffering savior... that it answers the human question of suffering by saying "it is a blessing to suffer". no other religion is foolish enough to say that, which is why no other religion is wise enough to say that.
[/quote]


Oh Aloysius - that was just the sweetest thing I have read in such a long time! I would love to give it a plus, but don't have any left. I have been thinking so much lately about suffering and how St John of the Cross says that it is through the Cross that we are united to Christ, and your post was just such a perfect description of "why" suffering, and what a great grace it is, all because of Our Suffering Lord. Thank you for that. Ah.... sweet.

[Varg]

[quote name='nunsense' date='06 January 2010 - 06:42 AM' timestamp='1262778142' post='2030784']
By that, I mean that they can't imagine that there is an intelligence greater than ours
[/quote]
Not true. I believe it's possible that there are aliens who are more intelligent than us

[Ziggamafu]

[url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=97567&st=60"]I posted my thoughts on an older thread.[/url]

[quote]
I think the point of the "atheist" position is that if your dad saw you being raped and did not act so as to preserve the free will of the rapist, you would properly think of your dad as a criminal. And to say that "God knows best" is to imply that we cannot trust our sense of morality, which screws up much more than it solves (since the Church's sense of morality is God-given and God's essence is synonymous with the moral good).
...it will all be okay when we see God and meanwhile, through our faith, suffering may have meaning that is known (offered by the Christian for an intention) or mysterious (used by God in a non-Christian for an unknown good). But the person who suffers doesn't need to hear that. The person who suffers just needs someone's hand to hold.
[/quote]

[quote]Job suffered injustice. Here you have a guy that God himself says is righteous and yet God smites him. Hard. He loses all of his beloved children, all of his wealth, and his health in the same day. Then his friends come and tell him how horrible of a person he is.

And yet everything is okay for Job, he is at peace, before God even restores the things taken. Why? What satisfied Job? Answers? No. At least not the answers Job originally wanted. It was the beatific vision. Job saw God, the source and standard of justice and beauty itself. The thing upon which perceptions of any goodness depends. That essence of what it is, maximally, to love a child or want justice served in the first place - that's what Job saw.

And when Job saw this, everything was fine even though the reasons that goodness should make use of evil and injustice were left as mysteries.

I have to hope that therein is the key to understanding why injustice - like the torture, rape, and brutal murder of children beneath the age of reason - exists in the world. I have to believe that the next life is simply that good, that this life could be immeasurably worse for everyone and still there would be no complaints upon sight of the divine essence.

We are all part of a Shakespearean comedy - perhaps influenced by God, but written by us - that seems, from the perspective of this life, to be a tragedy; written, line by line, unimpeded by God except in the rarest of circumstances, by the choice of every human "actor" within the story. We only find out it is a comedy in the end, just like the happy ending of fairy tales tends to come only after the characters endure some kind of purgatorial trial.

This of course hinges on a very liberal hope for the salvation of most, if not all, of humanity by the extraordinary graces of God. The injustice is not rectified if the victim doesn't get a happy ending. Aquinas did not seem to have such a hope in his Summa, at least from the portions that I have thoroughly read. We'll see.[/quote]

Edited January 6, 2010 by Ziggamafu

[Ziggamafu]

Specifically addressing the OP, I would suggest to the atheist that for our perceptions of good and evil to be validated in the first place there must be some objective source and standard of goodness by which those perceptions have objective value. Otherwise, what is the point of arguing about them? If there is no God, perceptions of "injustice" are merely a temporary (almost infinitely brief) and subjective illusion of a meaningless consciousness. What you say is unjust is only "unjust" if I find it so. Etc. To care about "evil" enough that it may be employed in an argument against God is to give objective existence to qualities of goodness; yet goodness may only objectively exist in God.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='05 January 2010 - 11:35 PM' timestamp='1262752534' post='2030644']
He said "By the way, if he does nothing to prevent evil that would be considered malevolent. It's like if you knew that there would be a shooting and did nothing to stop it, that is malevolent."

How should I respond?
[/quote]
Humans have the obligation to protect life because we do not have the authority to take it and therefore not attempting to stop it is an act complicit with the murder. God has the authority to take it and therefore is under no obligation to stop it any more than He would be guilty if He took the life Himself.

There's also good reason to hope that God will be merciful to the innocent victims of murder.

The arguments that God is a murder only work if you take God's authority and the afterlife out of the equation. Naturally, an atheist does just that, but he should realize in debating a Christian that his views are not shared and therefore not a good starting point in debate.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Raphael' date='06 January 2010 - 08:48 AM' timestamp='1262785700' post='2030824']
Humans have the obligation to protect life because we do not have the authority to take it and therefore not attempting to stop it is an act complicit with the murder. God has the authority to take it and therefore is under no obligation to stop it any more than He would be guilty if He took the life Himself.
[/quote]

I think that the objector is likely referring to unjust suffering (whether in life or a miserable death) more than the concept of death itself. Also, we should not give the impression that God is above his own nature of goodness. Not that you were saying that, but I know many atheists who get that impression from saying things like "God has the authority to do what he wants".

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='06 January 2010 - 10:19 AM' timestamp='1262791180' post='2030850']
I think that the objector is likely referring to unjust suffering (whether in life or a miserable death) more than the concept of death itself. Also, we should not give the impression that God is above his own nature of goodness. Not that you were saying that, but I know many atheists who get that impression from saying things like "God has the authority to do what he wants".
[/quote]
If we speak the truth about God, we can't leave out basic truths. The fact of the matter is that it is not a requirement of goodness for God to remove the suffering we have brought upon ourselves. Goodness is not the same as "niceness," which is really another word for false charity.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Raphael' date='06 January 2010 - 10:28 AM' timestamp='1262791705' post='2030852']
If we speak the truth about God, we can't leave out basic truths. The fact of the matter is that it is not a requirement of goodness for God to remove the suffering we have brought upon ourselves. Goodness is not the same as "niceness," which is really another word for false charity.
[/quote]

A child who gets crushed by fallen tree does not bring that upon himself. Neither does a child bring upon himself rape, torture, and murder at the hands of a molester.

The free will argument cannot apply in such instances of evil / suffering. There are, as far as I've reflected, only four answers that various theistic groups tend to give to such examples of apparent injustice:

1) God is in charge. He has the authority to do / allow what he wants.
2) God will bring good out of the event, and we will likely only know that good from our resurrected perspective at the end of time.
3) Suffering has been redeemed by Christ such that it contributes to the present good, not just a completed story from the perspective of the resurrection.
4) Victims of temporal injustice receive a greater reward that is eternal (i.e., "suffering buys you more glory in Heaven; the worse the suffering, the bigger the mansion." Etc.)

Of the four, it is in my experience best not to even mention 1) because the atheists have that excuse shoved down their throat by the Christian culture at large and, worse, it is practically a non-answer that leaves the atheists with the impression that God is the author of evil.

"We bring it upon ourselves" only applies to those who are in a state of mortal sin. We cannot blanket original sin over everybody to endorse the "we bring it upon ourselves" excuse because our will plays no role in our acquisition of original sin.

Edited January 6, 2010 by Ziggamafu

[Winchester]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='05 January 2010 - 11:35 PM' timestamp='1262752534' post='2030644']
He said "By the way, if he does nothing to prevent evil that would be considered malevolent. It's like if you knew that there would be a shooting and did nothing to stop it, that is malevolent."

How should I respond?
[/quote]
Tell him to read Plato, Aristotle and Socrates.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' date='06 January 2010 - 10:56 AM' timestamp='1262793410' post='2030857']
A child who gets crushed by fallen tree does not bring that upon himself. Neither does a child bring upon himself rape, torture, and murder at the hands of a molester.

The free will argument cannot apply in such instances of evil / suffering. There are, as far as I've reflected, only four answers that various theistic groups tend to give to such examples of apparent injustice:

1) God is in charge. He has the authority to do / allow what he wants.
2) God will bring good out of the event, and we will likely only know that good from our resurrected perspective at the end of time.
3) Suffering has been redeemed by Christ such that it contributes to the present good, not just a completed story from the perspective of the resurrection.
4) Victims of temporal injustice receive a greater reward that is eternal (i.e., "suffering buys you more glory in Heaven; the worse the suffering, the bigger the mansion." Etc.)

Of the four, it is in my experience best not to even mention 1) because the atheists have that excuse shoved down their throat by the Christian culture at large and, worse, it is practically a non-answer that leaves the atheists with the impression that God is the author of evil.

"We bring it upon ourselves" only applies to those who are in a state of mortal sin. We cannot blanket original sin over everybody to endorse the "we bring it upon ourselves" excuse because our will plays no role in our acquisition of original sin.
[/quote]

All 4 are correct and valid, but you forgot to clarify the situation. Suffering is not always caused by the sins of the individual harmed, but by original sin. As such, man has inflicted suffering on man, and God has no obligation to deal with any particular instances of it, certainly not in the way man wants. Atheists forget that we have no right to demand from the one we violated that He fix the problems caused by our violation of Him. That is our starting point. Then we move on to how wonderful it is that He is merciful, but we must keep in mind that the specifics of how He carries out that mercy are beyond our knowing.

[Varg]

Yes, but man didn't cause cancer. Man didn't cause ebola or natural disasters or anything like that. Your argument works for war and manmade problems etc, but it fails at explaining why there's all the things mentioned above.

Edited January 6, 2010 by Varg

[Winchester]

Clearly it's the work of the devil.

And lawyers.

[Varg]

Wow.

You DIDN'T blame it on Communists this time? I'm impressed.