In Reply to: Re: Bible Questions posted by Ancaru on February 16, 2006 at 13:49:35:
Ancaru/Fred:
With all due respect to the both of you, I feel it necessary to point out some things:
A counter-argument to atheism is really very simple. Atheism is an anti-God religion. It claims, thatit is to be considered THE system epistemologically encompassing all reality, are fatuous and silly.
It makes unsupportable claims against all types of theism, without even disproving the WEAK theistic belief systems, such as pantheism. It can easily be refuted philosophically, scientifically/evidentially, and experientially.
Its arguments are all "a priori" and unprovable, and pretend to be able to prove sweeping and supposedly irrefutable arguments within a posteriori considerations of hard data, while being unable to avoid the logical barriers to linear cogency of at least the four main philosophical problems with belief systems which claim universal proof without any finite reference point.
Id est:
-False premise
-incomplete middle
-begging the question
-circular argumentation.
And, when cornered with the hard questions regarding their untenable mere belief system, its adherents almost universally resort to ad hominem attacks on those "daring" to oppose them, but without any real attempt to answer particularly those questions.
I used to be an atheist. The arguments are logical crap. If you remove all possibility of intelligent discussion of all theism from the possibility of reality, especially of monotheism/trinitarian Christian theology out-of-hand, which is philosophically absurd, unfair and meaningless, the available "left-over" empirical proof argues far more strongly for philosophic nihilism than for simplistic atheism.
Nihilism assumes a priori that there exists no such thing as an overarching explanatory paradigm for all possible reality; INCLUDING atheism. That is to say, it atttempts to present as logical the idea that "There are absolutely no absolutes"; an absurdity on its face.
Atheism USED TO be the supposed purview of "the smartest guy in the room" in any given discussion group of supposed intellectuals, and the mere hint of an ad hominem attack on a professing theist of any kind assumed the atheist the winner before the posing of any hard questions regarding the validity of the belief system; hands down.
That is no longer the case. Today, the prevalent systems among the inteligencia of the university set are either post-modernism, or recent mass enquiries
(producing angry ranting objections to even its possibility) regarding the scientific evidences for "intelligent design", and pure atheism is considered passé.
And there are thousands of URLs for webpages regarding the topic.
Oh, yeah--I've been a philosophical nihilist as well, a one time. It doesn't wash, either. Neither did any other religious crap; including the Yoga psychic/occult. Experientailly available on demand, yes; but not an experience coming from God (like MOST of the COG/TF/TFI experience).
But then, Biblical Christianity is not about refuting a hateful perverted leader of a destructive sub-Christian cult, or about being required to submit to the baseless and silly bullyings of religious atheism.
It's about a real relationship with a real Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit and the Father, through Him.
My experience there, as well as that of millions of people over the last 2000+ years, is not at the mercy of anyone’s mere argument, especially such a poorly constructed one as the empirically data-free opinions voiced by those who sadly, and philosophically speaking, dishonestly, embrace dogmatic atheism, at this time in their lives.
Sincerely,
OT2 (OldtimerToo)