Arguments agains Atheism by some of todays best thinkers

ambush80

Senior Member
Sfd, you fool nobody.
You made embeded a few interesting videos and when someone wanted to talk to you about the videos that you posted, you called him a troll.

And you HAD to post a pic of Troll spray when nobody was even remotely trolling anyone.

You are the only true troll in the forum.

Let's let bygones be bygones.

Yet he's now an atheist, therefore he himself is a living contradiction of his pet thesis. Kind of a meta-narrative for atheism.

How so? Can you explain what you mean by this?
 

ambush80

Senior Member
Lennox opens by saying "God is real. Ultimate reality is a personal, eternal and supernatural God who has revealed himself in the Universe, in His word the Bible and supremely in Jesus Christ His son, who Lord and God incarnate."

Wow.

That's allot of material there. Where does anyone want to start?
 

ambush80

Senior Member
Lennox states that Dawkins believes that "religion builds a firewall in the mind against scientific truth...but it's not so with Biblical Christianity".

I'd like to hover on that for a little while as well.
 

ambush80

Senior Member
Lennox goes on to point out that Jesus is reported to have said "I am the truth".

I'd like to get into that, too.
 

ambush80

Senior Member
Dawkins theorizes that we see all the things that we make and project that all things were made by a being like us. Is that possible?
 
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atlashunter

Senior Member
Done feeding the trolls.

Says the troll. I thought you said this was from some of today's greatest thinkers?

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ambush80

Senior Member
Lennox opens by saying "God is real. Ultimate reality is a personal, eternal and supernatural God who has revealed himself in the Universe, in His word the Bible and supremely in Jesus Christ His son, who Lord and God incarnate."

Wow.

That's allot of material there. Where does anyone want to start?

I'll start with the premise that God is real. To me, the best argument that God is real is the notion that every effect must have a cause. It's ultimately an infinite regression proposition. If one were so inclined as to desire a Prime Mover, and that's ultimately what it is, an inclination or a preference, then one must declare that "The buck stops here", at God. No other explanation necessary. We just stop asking where things came from when it comes to God. Why can we do that? Because we prefer it. God didn't come from anywhere. He is eternal. Oh boy. We just interjected the eternal. What kinds of things can be eternal? In science class they said that energy cannot be created or destroyed. How do they know? Like all things in science it's a best guess from what we calculate, observe or theorize. But how do they REALLY know? They don't. But deists claim that they know, and how do they know? Because of personal revelation.

That's what Lennox said.

He also said that God revealed Himself in the Bible. This Book is a hard one for me. Besides all the supernatural claims, of which there are a troubling many, there's what appear to be contradictions in historical accounts ie. how and when Judas killed himself etc. I'll steer clear of those problems for now because I want to see if I can make an apologetic argument for the accuracy of the Bible.

The best I can do is relegate most of the supernatural claims to metaphor. Some of them are held dear as literal, a distinction supported by such things as "literary style", indicating that the writers were making accurate accounts of actual events like the resurrection. How in the world do I make sense of a claim like a resurrection? I'm pleading for someone to show me the path to believing such a thing actually happened.

It seems to me that what happens to believers is that they FIRST, FIRST, have some revelation that God exists; He speaks to them, they experience a miracle, they feel Him, and THEN they proceed to believe that the Bible and all its claims are true. I don't know of anyone that says that they read the Bible and what it said made so much sense to them that they were compelled to believe that Christ is Lord. It's always Christ revealed himself and then they believed in the veracity of the Bible. Tell me if I'm wrong.
 
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ambush80

Senior Member
Lennox states that Dawkins believes that "religion builds a firewall in the mind against scientific truth...but it's not so with Biblical Christianity".

I'd like to hover on that for a little while as well.

The Bible says "Let us reason together"

This is a good piece form Answers in Genesis:

https://answersingenesis.org/apologetics/faith-vs-reason/

"Faith Is Necessary for Reason

Biblical faith and biblical reasoning actually work very well together. In fact, faith is a prerequisite for reason. In order to reason about anything we must have faith that there are laws of logic which correctly prescribe the correct chain of reasoning. Since laws of logic cannot be observed with the senses, our confidence in them is a type of faith.
I'm not sure this is true. Laws of logic can absolutely be observed with our senses. It's how we know that the ball hidden under the cup is still there. What does it take to believe that the ball has disappeared or transported or simply vanished and is no more? I contend that it requires something other than reason.

For the Christian, it is a reasonable, justified faith. The Christian would expect to find a standard of reasoning that reflects the thinking of the biblical God; that’s what laws of logic are.6 On the other hand, the unbeliever cannot account for laws of logic with his or her own worldview.7

Since laws of logic are necessary for reasoning, and since the Christian faith is the only faith system that can make sense of them,8 it follows that the Christian faith is the logical foundation for all reasoning (Proverbs 1:7; Colossians 2:3). This isn’t to say, of course, that non-Christians cannot reason. Rather, it simply means they are being inconsistent when they reason; they are borrowing from a worldview contrary to the one they profess.
If the standard of reasoning is the Biblical God then why does He contradict Himself? Why doesn't he know where Adam is? Why doesn't he know that His experiment sucked and that He has to start over after erasing His mistake with a flood. If it was a divine plan all along, why did they write it like God was experimenting? I don't like the skeptic argument that "God wouldn't do it like that" and I wish all my fellow skeptics would abandon it as an argument, after all, a god can and will do things however He/She sees fit and it doesn't have to agree with our sense of anything.

Can anyone explain to me what the author means by "they are borrowing from a worldview contrary to the one they profess."? It sound like something Deepak Chopra or Ben Shapiro would say

Since reason would be impossible without laws of logic, which stem from the Christian faith, we have a very good reason for our faith: without our faith we could not reason. Even unbelievers (inconsistently) rely upon Christian principles, such as logic, whenever they reason about anything. So the Christian has a good reason for his or her faith. In fact, the Christian faith system makes reason possible."

"Laws of logic stem from the Christian faith".

Should I believe that resurrections sometimes take place? Should I believe that the Earth can stop turning without catastrophic results? Why?
 
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gemcgrew

Senior Member
So Dawkins starts by saying that at the age of nine he realized that his Christian faith was due to being born in a certain place. Believers often admit that this fact is unsettling yet it's not enough reason to doubt the truth of their beliefs. I'm curious as to how Christians compartmentalize this undeniable fact. Is it just an annoying detail that you don't think deserves any thought? Why is it so easily dismissed?
Where is the undeniable fact?
 

ky55

Senior Member
OK, so what?

So maybe I’m oversimplifying things, but why are billions of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims destined for He!! because they weren’t blessed to be born in Christian countries?
 

ambush80

Senior Member
OK, so what?

So circumstance, particularly in the case of religious belief, has more of an effect on one's concept of what is true as opposed to another factor like scientific discovery . An Indian in the Amazon jungle might believe that mice spontaneously generate from piles of trash or hay like Medieval Europeans did.
 

gemcgrew

Senior Member
So maybe I’m oversimplifying things, but why are billions of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims destined for He!! because they weren’t blessed to be born in Christian countries?
I am still trying to see how this would be unsettling for the Christian.
 

ambush80

Senior Member
So maybe I’m oversimplifying things, but why are billions of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims destined for He!! because they weren’t blessed to be born in Christian countries?

Because that's how God wanted it. Who is the clay to question the Potter? We have to get away from the weak argument that "God wouldn't do it that way". If He is, then He do what He do.
 

ambush80

Senior Member
As far as I can tell, the best we can hope for in order for everybody to be intellectually honest is for people to say "I prefer a God or I don't". Any evidence is ultimately meaningless in the context of our vast ignorance. That goes for the believer and the non believer.

Where I would prefer to couch the discussion is in an argument for utility. Are we better off believing in god or not. I think we should be able to argue that without getting into woo woo land.
 
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ky55

Senior Member
What annoying detail do you have in mind?

My apparently incorrect assumption that most Christians care about the “lost souls” who go to He!! I guess.

Seems like this was from the Calvinist folks.....

The chosen few..

We are the pure and chosen few
And all the rest are da..ed
There’s room enough in He!! for you
We don’t want heaven crammed.
 
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