Atheism

Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The Universe exists. The Universe has a cause. A First Cause by definition has no cause before it. The most probable and reasonable cause of the universe is an uncaused first cause which is the all intelligent and all powerful and unconditioned creator of everything who is outside of time and space and material. The creator is "I Am" "I Am" is the unfathomable creator of all that is. Modern Atheism has its origin in the 18th century with scientists who wanted to be free of any limitations on their experiments or beliefs which might be imposed by an other worldly transcendent God of any kind. They boasted that their ”science" could explain everything eventually without need of a God. Science is all powerful and could potentially eliminate sickness and even aging and death. The absence of God allows freedom to be your own God, just like Adam who believed that by discarding God for a forbidden Apple he would become like God and never die. Atheists are correct in that an all good and loving God would not allow evil to exist and tragedy and injustice to fall upon innocent victims. They are also correct in accusing religions of being guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity and religious people of being hypocritical and unworthy of being imitated. At least the atheist doesn't pretend to be holy. An all loving and good God either does not exist or he eventually transforms evil into good which validates the temporary evil God allowed. A reason God would allow temporary evil would be to be able to create beings with free will. A reason God would create beings with free will would be to make them like himself. Beings would not have complete free will if they were not allowed to choose not to be like God, that is, all good and loving. If there is no God then it is all about might makes right and the survival of the fittest and I am my own priority. I am who am. I am God. Altruism would be just a snare to take advantage of others. If there is an all good and loving God who created me to be like him and share eternal bliss with him then it is worth my effort to try be good and loving like God and not have to worry and scuffle to grab all the pleasure I can before my time runs out. I can avoid judging and forgive wrongs in hopes of eternal recompense. If in the end there is no God then at least I have lived in peace and harmony with others. That life seems a life worth living. Billions are invested every day in lotteries with minimum chance of winning. Would it make sense to make a small investment that would not be missed for a chance at the ultimate jackpot of eternal wealth, health and happiness. Take a chance on God. Ask and it will be given to you. Knock and it will be opened to you. Seek and you shall find. Give and it will be returned to you in good measure packed down. Be merciful and you shall receive mercy. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Judge not and you will not be judged. Believe and you shall see. Hope and it will not be in vain. Come to me all who are burdened and I will give you rest. "It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning." Alexander Vilenkin In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made flesh.

Reasonable Faith

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/kalam Whatever begins to exist has a cause. The Universe exists. The Universe has a cause Real infinity is absurd: infinity less infinity is zero or infinity? If you subtract the even numbers from a numerical infinity you still have infinity. If you subtract all numbers higher that 3 you have 3. But you have subtracted an infinite amount of numbers in both cases and have different results. Infinity is only useful as an imaginary concept not as a physical reality. The most probable and reasonable cause of the universe is an uncaused first cause which is the all intelligent and all powerful and unconditioned creator of everything who is outside of time and space and material. The creator is "I Am" "I Am" is the unfathomable creator of all that is. "I Am" is Love.

God-like

Atheists destain religion and use the Bible to trash God and believers as genocidal maniacs who have caused all the evil in the world. You can not have it both ways. Either the bible is trash, in which case it is not worthy of mention, or it is the sacred story of a sinful humanity searching for meaning in this brief life. It is about an infinitely loving and almighty Creator who has created each of us with the freedom to accept or reject His offer to be like Him: perfect love. When the Bible is taken out of the context of the most amazing family saga, it becomes a pretext for whatever one wants to pretend.

Love Story

Atheists destain religion and use the Bible to trash God and believers as genocidal maniacs who have caused all the evil in the world. You can not have it both ways. Either the bible is trash, in which case it is not worthy of mention, or it is the sacred story of a sinful humanity searching for meaning in this brief life. It is about an infinitely loving and almighty Creator who has created each of us with the freedom to accept or reject His offer. When the Bible is taken out of the context of most amazing family saga, it becomes a pretext for whatever one wants to pretend.

imperfect world

Why would God create an imperfect world? In a word, for the sake of love; for the sake of people like me; for the sake of love manifest as life transformation, virtue, empathy, compassion, humility, agape; love manifest in creating a better world and even building up the very kingdom of love – the kingdom of the unconditionally loving God. As we have seen, every one of these reasons not only gives noble purpose to this life, but carries forward to its fulfillment in an eternal and perfectly loving life. It is the noble purpose which lasts forever. Temporal imperfection, in the logic of Unconditional Love, leads to eternal perfection.

Six Questions

1) What is the most positive and creative power or capacity within me?

2) If love is the one power that seeks the positive in itself, and we are made to find our purpose in life through love, could God (perfect Being), who created us with this loving nature, be devoid of love?

3) Is my desire to love and to be loved conditional or unconditional?

4) If my desire for love can only be ultimately satisfied by unconditional Love, then could the Creator of this desire be anything less than Unconditional Love?

5) If the Creator is Unconditional Love, would He want to enter into a relationship with us of intense empathy, that is, would He want to be Emmanuel (“God with us”)?

6) If it would be typical of the unconditionally loving God to want to be fully with us, then is Jesus the One?

For more detail: http://magisgodwiki.org/index.php?title=Why_Believe_in_God%3F

Atheism

Atheism cannot in principle be a rational enterprise because the unrestricted nature of God renders all methods of disproof fruitless.  The scientific method is useless for proving the nonexistence of a reality. God transcends the physical universe and therefore cannot be disproved by methods that can only apply to the physical universe.

Can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it? God does not move mountains with physical muscle power but rather with unlimited divine will power. Such a question is a contradiction in terms like a square-circle and is limited to mindless riddles and unworthy of rational pursuits.

Is God a tyrant? God helps human freedom in every way possible to be complete and perfect, and therefore, would not undermine human freedom. Tyrants, who always fail and ultimately die, are a proof that God will not allow anyone to permanently deny human freedom.

Definitions of Evil

Inadequate Definitions of Evil

Another issue has recurrently emerged throughout the history of philosophy, namely, the problem of evil. It would seem that if God is perfect Goodness and Love, He would not permit evil in the world; and furthermore, it would seem that anything evil should be excluded by God . Again, the seeming incompatibility between a perfectly good God and evil arises out of an assumed definition. This time, the definition of “evil” seems incompatible with perfect Goodness and inclusivity. Since evil seems to be evident, it seems to mean either that God is not perfectly good or that a perfectly good  God does not exist.

Let us consider the first point, namely, that if God is perfectly good, He would not allow evil in the world. This contention has already been addressed above with respect to the definition of “love,” so I will only briefly repeat the germane point: if God were to disallow all human evil, then God would have to disallow the free choice to act in an evil way; and if God disallowed the free choice to act in an evil way, He would not allow our good actions to be self-initiated. He would essentially have programmed us for good behaviors, but not allowed us to choose good behaviors over against the option of choosing evil ones; therefore, He would have foreclosed the possibility of our good actions truly being self-initiated, and therefore truly being our own.

Furthermore, acts of human evil can purify our freedom toward perfect Love, for when evil actions are perpetrated against us, we are challenged to respond with a gift of self(love) in forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. These selfless actions (which are frequently undeserved by the perpetrators) are the highest manifestations of human generosity and love. Ironically, they are elicited by evil. The story of my life, as well as world history and literature, are replete with examples of how forgiveness of evil has led to the intensification of goodness and love. Would Europe be the same without the Marshall Plan in which America forgave the debt (and built up the economies) of the nations with whom it had been at war?   Would the great ideas of human rights and economic rights have occurred without the forgiveness of centuries of oppression? The list goes on and on.

Evil elicits vengeance, and vengeance begets vengeance, unless a free agent intervenes and lets go of the just offense in a recognizable act of compassion. This act not only stops the cycle of vengeance begetting vengeance, but also calls collective human consciousness to a higher ideal, a higher sense of collective self, which is at once intrinsically beautiful, while allowing the real possibility of peace. Ironically, this greatest of human choices can be induced by evil.

We may now proceed to the second point of tension between God and evil, namely, that if God is perfectly good, He must exclude evil . Again, the problem is definitional, for the definition of “evil” seems to get in the way of God being both perfect goodness and perfect inclusivity. However, the definition of “evil” which does this views “evil” as something positive – as something existing in itself.

A brief summary of the volumes which have been written on this since the time of Plato shows a more comprehensive view of “evil” which does not view it as something positive or existing in itself. In this view, evil is seen to be a negation of a free being’s power to love. Obviously, the free being exists, and his power to love exists (and is positive). But evil does not exist apart from this free being and his positive capacity to love. Evil occurs when the existing free agent negates (ignores or undermines) his positive power to love.

Now, these evil actions could have, say, angry feelings embedded in them. But these feelings are not identifiable with evil itself; they are the result of evil (that is, a free agent’s choice to ignore or undermine his capacity for love). Furthermore, destructive (evil) behaviors may come from this free agent, but these behaviors are also not identifiable with evil itself; they are the result of evil (i.e., a free agent’s choice to ignore or undermine his capacity for love). Thus, the occurrence of evil is not something which exists in itself; rather, it is the result of a free agent’s choice to ignore or undermine the capacity for affection, empathy, compassion – love.

In sum, evil can occur through an existing free agent, and it arises out of the ignoring or undermining of an existing capacity for love. It can give rise to feelings and destructive behaviors which have ontological status. However, the evil of the free agent, of the feelings, and of the destructive behaviors does not exist of itself. It occurs through the negating of the positive power to love in the free agent. If this definition of evil is correct, then it is not excluded by God; for it has no existence which can be excluded. God’s perfect goodness and perfect inclusivity remain completely compatible.

There are other kinds of atheism not connected to the notion of “God,” and therefore not concerned with incompatibility between God and a particular phenomenon (say suffering or evil). For example, socio-political atheism generally tends to be more irreligious than atheistic. It objects to religion because it is, say, an “opium of the people” (a distraction from needed socio-political change). Philosophers who proffer these claims frequently do not offer any argument against the existence of God, but rest their case on their sense of religion as antithetical to human progress.

Many such philosophers frequently ignore the fact that religion is responsible for social progress in many arenas, such as the initiation and advancement of laws, legal systems, social welfare systems (through, say, prophets who exhorted the populace to care for widows and orphans), schools and educational systems, hospitals and health care systems, etc. This makes those philosophers’ selective view of history quite suspect.

I would like to conclude this section by returning to an important point made earlier – namely, that I do not want my brief treatment of suffering and evil to convey in any way a disregard for the true suffering that so many have endured in their lives. Grief at the loss of a loved one, debilitation at the loss of one’s faculties, indignity at the hands of callous individuals, should never be underestimated. My sole purpose in treating the above topics was to show how careful we must be in our definitions of “love,” “evil,” and “God.” As we attempt to translate our deepest emotions and experiences into concepts, we will want to remember that the more nuanced and complete the definitions, the more they will correspond to the truth; and the more they correspond to the truth, the more they will present the path to healing and deliverance within the horizon of unrestricted Love, Goodness, Justice, Beauty, and Home

For more details: http://magisgodwiki.org/index.php?title=Can_Atheism_Be_Rational%3F.