Atheism

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

Dominus pax, may the peace of our lord and saviour christ jesus rest in your heart in that the holy spirit may descend upon you and renew your mind with hope...
My question to discuss is " Is Atheism a natural response to try and avoid the consequences of sin?" Even we as christians some or most have a period/s of darkness where we begin to doubt the existence of god due to the persistence of evils in the world as a whole and in our own lives personally, some continue some don't, but those whom have been taught know that the success of evil in our lives personally and communally is a consequence of sin whether directly our own or indirectly sins against ourselves personally and god forbid but also scruples(assumed sins committed and assumed sins against.) Unsure if i'm on point but would like to see other peoples interpretations of what is atheism?

God Bless
JC"seek and you shall find,knock and the door will be opened"

[MIKolbe]

what do you mean by natural? as in the natural law?

[ExCorde]

Atheism is as natural as CO2. Too much is poisonous to us, and a lot more of it needs to come out from us than into us in order to maintain full health.

Answering you directly, I think you imply that atheists bash God remorsefully. That may not be the case. Contemporary atheist interests seem to be about scientism (empirical science as the only acceptable epistemology), separation of Church and state (that actually negates freedom of religion and education), humanistic and ecological ethics, gender equality ideology, and a mix of basic ignorance and prejudice against how they perceive religions to be (although they are right about some of their criticism). A lot of the atheists these days aren't as smart as they think they are but sure are arrogant and noisy, speaking from personal experience.

I don't think it's more about keeping their sins to themselves as it is about hating someone telling them what to do and not relating to a metaphysical understanding of their place in life. By that I mean that many believe "love" is just the firing of neurons, etc.

That being said, there are perfectly reasonable arguments for being atheist (or rather, agnostic). It will just depend on what you factor into your "calculation" of what's fair enough in the universe as God made it.

You'd be surprised just how often people live as if God didn't exist anyway ([i]etsi Deus non daretur[/i]). Even Augustine said: [i]As a youth I prayed, "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."[/i]

[Catherine Therese]

[quote name='ExCorde' timestamp='1297365398' post='2211007']
Contemporary atheist interests seem to be about scientism (empirical science as the only acceptable epistemology)
[/quote]

Most of the atheists I know fit into this category. The thing is, to call themselves atheists is just so DUMB. I mean, really, its just another form of idolatry! I suppose they could call themselves aTheists, but they really can't call themselves atheists, if you know what I mean?

So many of the pseudo-intellectuals that fit into this category think that they're original, enlightened, and better informed than the rest of us poor simple souls who need a 'fantasy' to explain away the difficulties of life. The reality is they're living out their own private little neo-renaissance glorying in the wonders of human intelligence and our capacity to discover causes...

I find it really difficult to deal with atheists. You see, pride is my predominant failing... and when they start getting all superior because they feel that the empirical evidence supports their view and all I have to hold onto is a 'fantasy'... well I get all riled up by their arrogance and then I don't respond in a loving way - I respond in an almost angry way. Its not that I don't love them and want them to come to a knowledge of the Truth and the peace and joy that accompany that - but somehow in the heat of the moment I can't act accordingly. [img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/brickwall.gif[/img]

Does anyone else have this difficulty?
Better yet - has anyone else overcome this difficulty?

Edited February 11, 2011 by Catherine Therese

[ExCorde]

[quote name='Catherine Therese' timestamp='1297427202' post='2211301']
I find it really difficult to deal with atheists. You see, pride is my predominant failing...
Does anyone else have this difficulty?
Better yet - has anyone else overcome this difficulty?
[/quote]

Nice, never thought about the aTheist vs. atheist idolatry bit. I'm not sure if we could ever get the point across though. I would say that the idolatries are evident when we forsake the living and true God, but it won't be so much to those who cling to their "certainties" with tooth and nail. This phenomenon is repeated and has been prophesized even by philosophers not particularly supportive of the Christian "cause", like Nietzsche. We fall into nihilism because the objective basis of truth, the only one, is lost. All of those certainties are ultimately straw. Tomorrow they will change; they are not enough to answer the depth of human nature - as a consequence, that insufficiency will be manifest in miseries. With God's mercy, redemption is possible; without it, life becomes miserable for all.

About pride in debates. Their constant distortions, demands and evasions will exhaust and exasperate you. It is something close to demonic: divisive and troubling. There is often no desire in them to patiently seek the truth, but one mostly to undermine and offend the other. No matter how things are obvious to us, they will often keep attacking despite our finest expositions. At that point, it is salutary to turn to Christ and be reminded of the undeserved gift of grace bestowed on each and every single one of us - salvation does not come from us, but from God who set us apart.

What helps me the best is to 1) never take it personally, even if plainly stated so; 2) take it easy and use some witty humor (but not sarcasm, they'll devour you); 3) stick constantly to the facts and show them as many reasons as possible while thinking ahead if you will be saying something weak or seemingly contradictory; 4) abstract from the usual joy in sharing the Gospel, you won't normally find any reciprocation among them - face your adversary with care and offer to seek answers along their side - I mean, even if you don't know them, keep the dialogue open and keep in touch; 5) never flinch on Church doctrine even on matters of custom if they seem to be looking for quick licks - again, present reasons in favor of them rather than discussing their hierarchy in the deposit of faith, an argument that will often fly over their heads since none of it essentially matters anything at all for them at this point.

Keep in mind that they will probably be more stubborn and obtuse than you; if you come across someone genuinely interested even though snarky, don't be afraid to continue the debate if you have the time, unless they become offensive. Often times, if you let those who seem more perceptive blow off some steam first, they will show you their true colors, which usually boils down to quite practical terms rather than ideology - and that's where, in their true reality, you can touch them by offering the positive light of the Gospel that dispells darkness and nothingness.

Edited February 11, 2011 by ExCorde

[Theologian in Training]

In any debate, the best course of action is to ask questions and be genuinely interested in their answers rather than trying to set them up for your own benefit. Questioning the believer or non-believer as the case may be, helps you understand where they are coming from and you expose weaknesses and get further. Asking questions, most of the time is a non-threatening way of doing something and you not only learn but start to understand where they are coming from and why they do and believe what they do. I learn a lot that way and I also get to see how a person is thinking, which, as strange as it may sound, is truly a fascinating thing.

[Catherine Therese]

[quote name='Tab'le Du'Bah-Rye' timestamp='1297334881' post='2210919']
My question to discuss is " Is Athiesm a natural response to try and avoid the consequences of sin?"
[/quote]

Tab'le, I got so caught up in one of the responses to your question and the line of thought precipitated by it that I didn't really address your original question!! I'm sorry about that - it was very rude of me.

[u][b]My thoughts:[/b][/u]
This is not as simple a question as it seems on the surface. The state of 'seeking to avoid the consequences of sin' presupposes an awareness of sin and the fact that it has consequences. This means that to adequately address your question one has to consider a great many aspects of morality, and if you're a Thomist (which I am, in an armchair/wannabe capacity) then this necessarily draws metaphysics into the discussion too. So all of a sudden this gets pretty complex!

Consider:
[quote name='John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n65']
Freedom is not only the choice for one or another particular action; it is also, within that choice, a decision about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the Good, for or against the Truth, and ultimately, for or against God.

[b]([/b][i][b]Veritatis Splendor[/b][/i][b], n65[/b][b])[/b]
[/quote]

If it is true that, with the free choice that an individual makes preceding each act, that individual is implicitly choosing God or choosing to reject God, then I would claim that atheism actually BECOMES the consequence of sin, rather than as you have proposed, a consequence of seeking to avoid the consequence of sin.

Romanus Cessario OP gives us an outline of sin worth examining here:
[quote name='Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology, p170']The Christian tradition actually recognises only two categories for evil. The first, the evil of punishment ([b]malum poenae[/b]), denotes the punishment which one suffers as a result of sin, and the second, the evil of fault ([b]malum culpae[/b]) denotes the actual transgression or sin. A sinful action is one that neither conforms to truth nor embodies goodness; sin is a privation of the due order that should inform a human action…

… One is not able to relate immediately certain punishments of original sin to personal moral agency, for example, earthquakes, famines, natural disasters. But even these signs that visible creation has become hostile to man are associated with the sinful and broken condition of the human race. In the actual economy of salvation, all punishments due to original in, including disease and physical catastrophes, can be interpreted only in the light of the Christian doctrine of redemptive suffering.

[b](Cessario,[/b][i][b] Introduction to Moral Theology,[/b][/i][b] 170.[/b][i][b])[/b][/i]
[i][/quote][/i]

In recognising the distinction between [b]malum poenae[/b] and [b]malum culpae[/b], we see that both are consequent to each sinful act; therefore, what your question has loosely termed 'the consequences of sin' needs to take into account both of these elements.

Furthermore, we need to define whether the person in the hypothetical situation you've set up in your question is trying to avoid the consequences of HIS personal sin, or if he is trying to avoid the consequences generically of original sin, which would also encompass trying to avoid the consequences associated with another person's sin (cognisant of the corporate reality of sin in the economy of salvation).

So let us consider a person attempting to avoid the consequences of original sin. Firstly, the desire to do so is a sentiment almost certainly experienced by just about every human that has lived, including the perpetrators of the sinful act themselves, who each attempted to cast blame on another and "pass the buck" as it were. During our childhood or early faith formation, most of us would have questioned the 'justice' in our inheritance of guilt from our first parents, as we were confronted for the first time with the reality of our fallen condition. So the DESIRE to dodge the consequences here is, I suppose, a normal human response to discovering the reality. The ATTEMPT, however, to follow through on this desire to actually avoid the consequences, is obviously futile. Every single one of us will experience sickness at some stage and every single one of us will eventually die - these are clearly [b]malum poenae[/b] of original sin. As far as I can tell, the [b]malum culpae[/b] of that first act is our fallen human nature - THIS is the absence of due good that Adam and Eve chose for humanity… a degradation of the good created by God. Given that it is not possible to avoid these consequences of sin, the attempt to do so anyway is clearly irrational, not at all a natural response to the reality of the sin, even if the desire to do so is a natural sentiment!

If we then consider a person attempting to avoid the consequences of his personal sinful acts, we can see that it can sometimes be possible for a person to avoid temporal malum poenae. It is conceivable, therefore, than this person could convince themselves that they have managed to avoid the consequences altogether, perhaps really convincing themselves that there wouldn't be future satisfaction required for the expiation of guilt at some later stage.

In both of these examples we have seen individuals either rationally enough or irrationally attempting to avoid the consequences of sin, perhaps ignorant of the reality that this is impossible. But for a person to be even subconsciously following these lines of reason that person would have to acknowledge the existence of God, the reality of good and evil in more than a subjective sense and the reality of their own personal culpability for their sinful acts. This sounds about as far away from an atheist as a person can get.

This brings me to the possibility that I have misunderstood your question. Perhaps what you mean by 'avoiding the consequences of sin' is less akin to avoiding personal responsibility for actions and more akin to actually trying to explain away the reality of sin full stop, by explaining away God Himself. If the reality that without God we do not exist is not well understood, then perhaps a person may come to the conclusion that without God there is no context or relevance for the context of sin, therefore by rejecting God, the need to follow any given moral law or even natural law becomes null and void. Following this line of reasoning perhaps finds its 'logical' conclusion in some kind of profession of atheism. I placed the world logical in inverted commas because I believe the reasoning is flawed but understandable given the series of false assumptions that have to be made for a person to arrive at this conundrum.

The reality is, however, that people in this situation KNOW that God exists, thats why they are so anxious to avoid the consequences of sin in the first place! These people therefore are [b]rejecting a God they know exists[/b], rather than actually not believing that God (or any other god) exists. I wouldn't consider this to be true atheism. The people who, in these circumstances, attempt to use reason or any other faculty to explain God out of existence or relevance, are essentially setting up that human faculty as their god. (To ExCorde: They might not see it that way, but that is the truth of what they are doing. Their subjective interpretation of such an action has little bearing on the truth of the matter!)

I'm not sure that quintessential atheism even truly exists?

In the light of Christian revelation we know that the natural law is written on our hearts (Rom 2:15). This bears out in the reality that we recognise that we are ordered toward Something greater than ourselves. The variety of pagan faiths that have abounded throughout human history demonstrate this reality. Without the benefit of positive law, many have misinterpreted this recognition of being ordered toward something greater incorrectly and this accounts for the pagan beliefs.

Surely most professed atheists are closer to agnostic or pagan than they are to true atheism?

[b][u]In Summary (with apologise for my verbosity as I explored this one)[/u]:[/b]

[b]1. If Atheism were a natural consequence of anything it would be a consequence of sin and NOT a consequence of the desire to avoid the consequences of sin.[/b]
[b] [/b]
[b]2. It doesn't even appear reasonable for a person who acknowledges the reality of sin to believe that an attempt to avoid its consequences would be anything but futile, and is therefore isn't even really a natural thing to attempt, much as the desire to do so would be a natural enough sentiment[/b][b]
[/b]
[b]3. It may be possible to make the moral law governing acts of humans to be irrelevant by explaining away God. Categorically denying God without an interior attempt to explain Him away seems unlikely here. Therefore a PROFESSION of atheism (and not atheism itself) is a feasible response to an unwillingness to face up to the reality of sin [/b][b]
[/b]
[b]4. The position of atheism is so intrinsically untenable that I'm not convinced a quintessential state of it truly exists in any human being.[/b]

Edited February 12, 2011 by Catherine Therese

[ExCorde]

[quote name='Catherine Therese' timestamp='1297490519' post='2211608']
This is not as simple a question as it seems on the surface. The state of 'seeking to avoid the consequences of sin' presupposes an awareness of sin and the fact that it has consequences.[/quote]

Great effort put in for your fellow Australian! Very nice and edifying.

The first thought you mentioned here was actually the first thing I thought too when first reading this but I wasn't able to make any substantial points across in my first post, I see. I seem to have avoided to describe it clearly and focused on the negative parts. It really is a nonsensical lifestyle thing these days, just another thing to be consumed but of a nefarious and unsustainable character.

The only thought I would add is about how atheists do believe they have a spark of understanding about the universe. Their atheism is something religious to them, it's a key with which to open all doors that lead to truth. Many feel therefore empowered because of this, like they have tasted the fruit of the forbidden tree and survived it, so they now laugh at God in the face and disregard any notion of judgment. By excluding the difficult realm of religion and sticking to the material stuff, they simplify reality. We know how appealing religious [i]simplifications[/i] are: just consider the varieties of Protestantism (or, dare I say, Islam). They do survive and are even popular for quite a while, aren't they?

Was my 2nd post with advices any use to you Bek?

[ExCorde]

[quote name='Theologian in Training' timestamp='1297456639' post='2211432']
In any debate, the best course of action is to ask questions and be genuinely interested in their answers rather than trying to set them up for your own benefit.
I learn a lot that way and I also get to see how a person is thinking, which, as strange as it may sound, is truly a fascinating thing.
[/quote]

I share this completely! However, I fear I put the tone too much on defeating a certain argument. Perhaps there's something of a wrong perspective there? I mean, we're talking about atheism here, it's a pretty serious thing, but should I simply try to understand the person? I'd very much welcome assistance on these questions.

Lately, I've been attempting to do both: I actually have a personal set of notes on [b]"atheistic thinking patterns"[/b]! These however are mostly a repository of psychological, philosophical and theological defficiences that I've come across in atheistic lines of thought, and the best way I've thought of tackling them. I do admit that I'm somewhat fascinated about how their mind works (have a few books on the psychology of atheism or rather, the psychology of atheists), but should I stop there? Because I am horrified by how they keep themselves tangled in such needless errors and then it no longer fascinates me...

Edited February 14, 2011 by ExCorde

[Theologian in Training]

[quote name='ExCorde' timestamp='1297652686' post='2212133']
I share this completely! However, I fear I put the tone too much on defeating a certain argument. Perhaps there's something of a wrong perspective there? I mean, we're talking about atheism here, it's a pretty serious thing, but should I simply try to understand the person? I'd very much welcome assistance on these questions.

Lately, I've been attempting to do both: I actually have a personal set of notes on [b]"atheistic thinking patterns"[/b]! These however are mostly a repository of psychological, philosophical and theological defficiences that I've come across in atheistic lines of thought, and the best way I've thought of tackling them. I do admit that I'm somewhat fascinated about how their mind works (have a few books on the psychology of atheism or rather, the psychology of atheists), but should I stop there? Because I am horrified by how they keep themselves tangled in such needless errors and then it no longer fascinates me...
[/quote]

Some atheists have, from what I have seen and can tell, actually rejected the invitation to faith and so trying "win them over" will be a challenge, to say the least. However, from what I have also seen, they love a good well-thought out theological conversation, but you need to be on your game logically and be careful of pitfalls that they either set up for you or, more often than not, you set up for yourself.

[Catherine Therese]

[quote name='ExCorde' timestamp='1297652251' post='2212132']
They do survive and are even popular for quite a while, aren't they?
[/quote]
Yeh, all the variations on dualism being the worst offenders in this regard, I reckon.


[quote name='ExCorde' timestamp='1297652251' post='2212132']
Was my 2nd post with advices any use to you Bek?
[/quote]
Yes, thank you. The distinction between wit and sarcasm is always a helpful reminder, because its a slippery slope and its easy to slide into the sarcasm, and thats when it ceases to be charitable.

The other thing - sort of abstracting the argument a little, detaching from it. I'm still too inclined to wear my heart on my sleeve and if I really feel strongly about something I'll get way too emotionally involved. I generally manage not to be so emotionally involved that I cease to be reasonable, thank Heaven, but I DO go far enough that I cease to be charitable.

I need to learn to have the discussion, state the truth purely and simply, and then be prepared to walk away and let the other person sit with it. I need not to be so focussed on winning the argument (the competitive academic in me) and be more focused on faithfully representing what I believe, respecting the freedom of the other to reject or accept, and trusting God enough that I remember that its HIM who does the work, and I'm just the grubby piece of paper He's writing on for the other to read.

[ExCorde]

Good insights from both of you!

Sometimes I listen to a few YouTube atheists. It turns out I just saw a video by someone who could arguably be misunderstood if we attempted to define him as an atheist by way of what was said here till now. I personally find it refreshing and more complete.

So, here's an atheist criticizing technocracy, empiricism, scientism and consumerism and praising the need for philosophy and thinking about the moral applications of science (which he mentions should be altruistic and advance humanity) as well as breaking things down to the fundamental concepts that should be consciously considered by individuals, like "what do we know about the world?", "how do we know it?", "what is the nature of reality?".

I'm not sure what it means that when asked about whether the existence of God was a philosophical or scientific question, he said it was both (good answer) but immediately started talking about Aristotle and the animals he studied... It seemed to me like the matter was of little concern to him, which made him a "practicing atheist" I suppose.

Warning: In case you find it offensive, he [b]uses the S-word once[/b] when talking about war, around 3:28.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA_1YtBVtMM[/youtube]