Every sane human being is a "believer" in God’s existence. Some people pretend He doesn’t exist (atheists) but they know He does. I know what the atheist knows because God’s Word tells me that He has given light to every man. He cannot plead ignorance.
So I was right in what I wrote three days ago: Ray Comfort is so threatened by the existence of atheists that his only recourse is to flat-out deny that we exist. In that paper I also linked to Michael Martin's essay on the hypothesis that there are no atheists, and since Ray has used the scriptural argument for his hypothesis, I'll quote the relevant passage from Martin:
Does the Bible support the view that there are only professed atheists? Perhaps a scriptural argument can be given since one can be given for almost anything. But there is no doubt that scriptural arguments can be given for the opposite thesis as well. For example, in Psalms 14 and 53 one finds:
"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
Here it is seems clear that the Bible is saying that there are atheists but they are fools. It certainly implies that the fool does not just profess atheism since he says there is no God in his heart. The fool really believes it. This passage was used by St. Anselm in his notorious Ontological Argument and Anselm's reading supports my interpretation. Anselm argued that the fool's denial of God was not conceivable; that is, it was inconsistent, since a Being such that no greater being can be conceived must exist. Anselm was not saying that the fool was not an atheist. Rather he was saying that atheistic belief is inconsistent. Although few Christians today uphold Anselm's Ontological Argument and the argument has serious problems in all its various forms, Anselm's reading of the passage from Psalms is surely correct: Psalms assumes that there are atheists.
Martin concludes, quite rightly, that until better evidence -- or, really, any evidence at all! comes along for the there-are-no-atheists hypothesis, we atheists have every reason to believe that we really are atheists.
To the above I would only add that Ray himself contradicts his own thesis in the very name of his blog. He calls it "Atheist Central." If he were consistent, he should call it "Professed Atheist Central!"
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Hi Dave
ReplyDeleteI did read Ray's post and I have to say I do disagree with him as well when he says ,'Every sane human being is a "believer" in God’s existence. Some people pretend He doesn’t exist (atheists) but they know He does. I know what the atheist knows because God’s Word tells me that He has given light to every man. He cannot plead ignorance.'
I will not attack Ray though, as I like him and have benefited a lot from his teachings, so he is not my enemy, I just happen to disagree with what he has said.
What Ray has said seems to contradict Psalm 14:1. I believe atheists are real. They actually do not believe in the existance of God. That is why the bible calls atheist fools. But on that note, its not only atheists who the bible is calling fools, its Hindus, Moslems, Jehovah's witnesses and any other false religions. Any person who is not a true born again christian is a fool spiritually. Just like a muslim claims to love a false god, and denies the existance of a true God, Psalm 14:1 applies to them as well. Before I was a chistian myself I was a fool, even though I was not an atheist. Its not only atheists who are fools, every sinner is a fool. So Dave the verse (Psalm 14:1)does not directly attack atheism only, its a testimony against every living human being, we are all born spiritually foolish.
Now specifically dealing with atheism, the foolishness I find with this false religion is that atheists actually hate a God they dont believe in. That passes my own understanding, I dont get it. I dont hate Allah, or Bhuda, or the tooth fairy. Why, because they dont exist. When I talk to muslims, I am not angry with their god, or even their false religion,all I want is to get them converted to Christianity because its the only true religion. Not all roads lead to Rome, same with religion, there can only be one true one. That is Christianty.
So Dave yes you where right, I have to agree with you on this one, and I think Ray got it wrong, he is only human after all. He is not God, so he will make mistakes.
Now specifically dealing with atheism, the foolishness I find with this false religion is that atheists actually hate a God they dont believe in. That passes my own understanding, I dont get it. I dont hate Allah, or Bhuda, or the tooth fairy.
ReplyDeleteI dispute this. When a muslim comes to you (in real life or on a forum) to tell you about the glory of Muhammad and Allah, what do you tell him? Is it 'shove off, Allah doesn't exist, leave me alone'? I presume you would try to show him the light of Christ by showing him where he is wrong and where Christ is more valid. Correct me if I'm wrong. You'd point out to him how vile some of the laws and actions described in Qu'ran and haddiths are. Your 'job description' as an evangelist is to do that. When an atheist visits a forum for atheists like 'Atheist Central' or the Dawkins site, he does the same thing using different methods. But then you accuse him of hating God. If you use the same yardstick for yourself, you hate Allah. It passes an atheist's understanding that you would equate hate with getting a message across.
Jean said,
ReplyDeleteSo Dave the verse (Psalm 14:1)does not directly attack atheism only, its a testimony against every living human being, we are all born spiritually foolish.
As I pointed out in my verse on Psalm 14:1b, that's not an invalid interpretation, but it's not the one used by most Christians.
atheists actually hate a God they dont believe in. That passes my own understanding, I dont get it. I dont hate Allah, or Bhuda, or the tooth fairy. Why, because they dont exist.
Thank you, Jean, you hit the nail right on the head. Atheists don't hate a god we don't believe exists, because, as you are right in thinking, we can't! It's simply not possible! A person who believes that God exists but hates him is not an atheist -- to the best of my knowledge, there's not a common-use word for such a person, so on my blog I invented the word "dystheist" to describe such a person (too lazy to search for the exact post link right now, but it's one of the earliest posts there).
So when someone like Ray says that atheists hate God, you can be assured that that person doesn't know what the heck he's talking about -- he has made no serious attempt to understand atheism or atheists.
One more thing . . .
I will not attack Ray though, as I like him and have benefited a lot from his teachings, so he is not my enemy, I just happen to disagree with what he has said.
Don't be afraid to "attack" Ray in the sense of disagreeing with him. That's another thing that distinguishes atheists from Christians: we're not afraid to publicly disagree with one another, and to call one another on it when we make foolish mistakes. We keep each other honest.
...we're not afraid to publicly disagree with one another, and to call one another on it when we make foolish mistakes.
ReplyDeleteNo that's not true. You're wrong. We agree on everything all the time.
But seriously, to be fair I have seen Christians disagree with each other, even at Ray's. I would say however, it's more common for atheists to disagree, but they agree on different things than Christians. Christians disagree on scriptural interpretation, and atheists naturally disagree sometimes on political matters, how to deal with Islam etc.
not to say Christians don't disagree on politics and other things too.
ReplyDeleteApparently the difference is more about the depth of argument one is willing to go into, following the evidence to a reasonable conclusion. When the argument ends at 'take it on faith', reason is kicked out of the room.