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A Plea that they approach the question of God’s Existence in a scientific and rational manner.
After a friendly discussion with atheists recently it struck me that many people of that opinion pride themselves on their scientific and level headed approach to the question of religion. They stand for logic, and mathematical scientific reasoning, none of the mumbo jumbo associated with religion.
I welcome that wholeheartedly, your brains are God given and I think they should be used a lot in deciding between theism and atheism, very much so, but is that actually what happens? Consider a few things that flow from this level headed approach:
a) Obviously you will have to put aside any question about the (vastly exaggerated, and some completely hoaxed) scandals involving the Catholic Church in Ireland, that can have nothing now to do with your cold hard logic sense of reason here? If 10,000 geography teachers were imprisoned in the morning for whatever, it still does not follow that the Shannon isn’t a river in Ireland or Malawi a country in Africa. You are clearly going to be putting all this hype to one side as you consider the philosophical question of the existence of God, and, in truth, is that what you actually do?
b) You can have no sense of fashion here, or your own presumptions about what is likely to grow or decline in the future. You are not in the market for a handbag at this point, it should have no impact on you any sense in which older people might have been more religious in the past, and that the Churches are now not as full, and you would prefer to be with the younger hipper in-crowd, etc! If you are now this logical sort of fellow all that is not interfering with your decision here, right?
c) No sense of pride or a feeling that religion is a kill joy is impacting your new logical scientific self, is it? None of us like to be told what to do, and for example if one borrows a huge sum of money for a great new car, we don’t like people reminding us that we have to pay all that money back? Its a kill joy sure, but its also saying the hard truth, and thats what religion sometimes has to do, but of course you aren’t thinking of anything like that when deciding if God exists or not? There is no sense in which you would like to continue your lifestyle free of ‘judgementalism’ coming into your logic here is there, because obviously that would be very far from a logical and scientific approach to this question wouldn’t it?
d) Do you have the level of knowledge to decide this question? Obviously if I was to decide if I believe a physicist when he says they can explode a giant bomb by crushing two tiny atoms together, I need some knowledge of physics to know if he is lying or not. Logically, its not just about your own intelligence, clearly its that added to education in the subject which will give you, hopefully, the right answer.
But what is your level of knowledge of theology, or even of specifically the philosophical Proofs of God’s Existence as outlined by Aquinas say? I hear so many atheists proudly saying that at the age of 7 they knew it was all bunkum etc etc, imagine if you said that to the physicist in that question above? At the age of 7 how much knowledge could you reasonably have of theology or its related disciplines of logic and philosophy? Have you studied it all properly as an adult, reading a few selective quotes by people like Dawkins does not make you a theology expert, or give you anything like enough education here to be able to decide this question. Anyway if you like you can read something like this text which might help you at least to know the main theist arguments: http://www.orwellianireland.com/proofs.pdf .
In any case just a few thoughts on the subject...
After a friendly discussion with atheists recently it struck me that many people of that opinion pride themselves on their scientific and level headed approach to the question of religion. They stand for logic, and mathematical scientific reasoning, none of the mumbo jumbo associated with religion.
I welcome that wholeheartedly, your brains are God given and I think they should be used a lot in deciding between theism and atheism, very much so, but is that actually what happens? Consider a few things that flow from this level headed approach:
a) Obviously you will have to put aside any question about the (vastly exaggerated, and some completely hoaxed) scandals involving the Catholic Church in Ireland, that can have nothing now to do with your cold hard logic sense of reason here? If 10,000 geography teachers were imprisoned in the morning for whatever, it still does not follow that the Shannon isn’t a river in Ireland or Malawi a country in Africa. You are clearly going to be putting all this hype to one side as you consider the philosophical question of the existence of God, and, in truth, is that what you actually do?
b) You can have no sense of fashion here, or your own presumptions about what is likely to grow or decline in the future. You are not in the market for a handbag at this point, it should have no impact on you any sense in which older people might have been more religious in the past, and that the Churches are now not as full, and you would prefer to be with the younger hipper in-crowd, etc! If you are now this logical sort of fellow all that is not interfering with your decision here, right?
c) No sense of pride or a feeling that religion is a kill joy is impacting your new logical scientific self, is it? None of us like to be told what to do, and for example if one borrows a huge sum of money for a great new car, we don’t like people reminding us that we have to pay all that money back? Its a kill joy sure, but its also saying the hard truth, and thats what religion sometimes has to do, but of course you aren’t thinking of anything like that when deciding if God exists or not? There is no sense in which you would like to continue your lifestyle free of ‘judgementalism’ coming into your logic here is there, because obviously that would be very far from a logical and scientific approach to this question wouldn’t it?
d) Do you have the level of knowledge to decide this question? Obviously if I was to decide if I believe a physicist when he says they can explode a giant bomb by crushing two tiny atoms together, I need some knowledge of physics to know if he is lying or not. Logically, its not just about your own intelligence, clearly its that added to education in the subject which will give you, hopefully, the right answer.
But what is your level of knowledge of theology, or even of specifically the philosophical Proofs of God’s Existence as outlined by Aquinas say? I hear so many atheists proudly saying that at the age of 7 they knew it was all bunkum etc etc, imagine if you said that to the physicist in that question above? At the age of 7 how much knowledge could you reasonably have of theology or its related disciplines of logic and philosophy? Have you studied it all properly as an adult, reading a few selective quotes by people like Dawkins does not make you a theology expert, or give you anything like enough education here to be able to decide this question. Anyway if you like you can read something like this text which might help you at least to know the main theist arguments: http://www.orwellianireland.com/proofs.pdf .
In any case just a few thoughts on the subject...
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