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Many of my friends are proud and confident
atheists. This greatly upsets me, as I have
tried to convert them many times, however
they just refuse to believe. I have come to
accept them for who they are, but I still
have these questions:
Why do people become atheists?
People like Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins
proudly believe there was no God, and try
to convince others of this.
Why does Atheism exist?
What could I say to my friends that mock
me for my religiousness and try to make
me an atheist?
Thanks,
Joseph
{
Why do people become atheists and what can I say to my friends that mock me for my faith? }
Eric
replied:
Hi, Joseph —
Reasons for atheism vary from atheist
to atheist. I have heard a theory
that a bad relationship with your
father is common among atheists;
this makes sense since the father
is a child's first image of God,
and if your father abuses you in
some way, your natural sense of right
and wrong protests and distorts your
image of God, causing you to reject
a being that in essence doesn't exist . . . or perhaps it just gives you an aversion
to God.
Belief in Darwinian evolution can
enable people to be atheists since
it makes atheism intellectually plausible. (This is not to say that we must
embrace creationism; I refer to a
specific kind of
non-theistic evolution common among
scientists.) I often think at the
root, there is a moral issue; while
atheists often protest that they
are perfectly moral, I suspect, for
many, there is a desire to be free
of moral restraint, even if it is
just for a handful of behaviors or
even just the principle of the thing.
This sort of thing is rooted in pride,
which is the chief enemy of the soul.
Man naturally rebels against someone
higher than him because of his ego.
What can you say to your atheist
friends?
Ask them what caused the Big Bang?
Ask them to go back in time, a second
or so before the Big Bang, and explain the causality:
[the relation of cause and effect].
Does it make sense to say that this
just happened on its own?
My understanding
is that all the laws of physics start
to fall apart, and we approach a
singularity.
It's lovely to appeal
to Evolution to explain how we evolved
from the primordial soup, but exactly
how did we get from a singularity
to all the marvelous complexity of
the beautiful universe we have today?
Another thing you might do is appeal
to the supernatural.
For example, St. Pio, who died in
1969, had the gift of being able
to read souls. He knew your sins
without your even telling him. Tens
of thousands of strangers, if not
more, mobbed his confessional lines
to hear him tell them their sins.
He knew that packages contained lottery
tickets without opening them (and
he'd fly into a rage). All this stuff
is well documented by people who
are living.
Or how about St. Bernadette, whose
body is so incorrupt (not decayed)
after well over a hundred years of
death that she looks like she's sleeping,
and her skin is still soft and pliable? (See The
Incorruptibles by Joan
Carroll Cruz.)
Or how about the fact that every
canonized saint in the Catholic Church
since about the
11th century (over 400 in John Paul's
pontificate alone) has required a
very strictly and skeptically verified
miracle to verify the saint's sanctity
(most of them, requiring two miracles)?
I just wanted to add to what Eric
has said by sharing some thoughts
of a good friend that recently pasted
away. My answer
is not really mine but his, in his
memory:
A good friend of mine, Clayton Bower Jr., a fellow Catholic apologist who passed away a few years ago, gave a very good talk titled: Atheism's Weakness. Let me dedicate what he said in his memory.
First, we have to state that all Atheism is dogmatic.
Why?
Because the very definition of Atheism
itself requires one dogma or solemn
teaching. One must believe:
That God does not exist.
Without this dogma, Atheism falls
flat on its face.
These days you often hear an introduction
to Atheism from a group that calls
themselves the New Atheists. The problem is there
is nothing new about what they are
saying. The term the New Atheists is just a re-marketed
term to sell their dogmatic belief.
There are three types of Atheism
in the world today:
Philological Atheism, otherwise
known as Agnosticism
Psychological or Adolescent Atheism, and
Practical Atheism
Philosophical Atheism or Agnosticism
We can admire those who sincerely
hold on to a form of philological
atheism.
Why?
Because they sincerely
are unsure of whether God really
exists, yet are open to someone
showing them, for example, the Five Proofs of St. Thomas Aquinas.
They are a class of faith-seekers who honestly cannot find acceptable answers for why God would exist. This can be justified and understandable based on one's background.
Psychological or Adolescent Atheism
Those who hold to a psychological or adolescent
atheism, don't
really believe there is no God.
Most of the time, kids in their
teens hold on to this form of
atheism.
It is more of a rebellion against
their parents in the younger years
of their life. Since their
parents demand they believe in
God, they rebel and deny His existence,
though many times, they aren't
even at an age where they can
form their conscience correctly.
When they grow older, and especially
have a family, their denial of
the existence of God usually disappears.
This type of atheism is based, not so much on a true cognitive belief that there is no God, but is a reaction to overbearing religious parents and teachers just to get under their skin. Adolescent Atheism is a reaction to parental or adult demands. There is no real in-depth study of whether God exists, or not. The teenager or youth rebel just to identify themselves and their own identity. They are basically saying: I'm not like this overbearing parent.
Practical Atheism
Practical Atheism is probably
the most widely spread form of Atheism
today without people being conscious
that they fall into this camp.
There's an old saying:
If you were arrested for being a Christian (or a Catholic), would there be enough evidence against you?
. . . and a bumper sticker on the car or a Rosary in the window wouldn't be enough.
How do our words and actions from
Monday through Saturday reflect
Catholic Christian principles?
If they hardly reflect them, we
are practical atheists.
Practical Atheism says, We can go about knowing there is a God, but behaving like there isn't one.
That said, who we say we are, and what we do, should go hand in hand for anyone who calls themselves a Christian.
I've met people who call themselves Christians but have no problem supporting abortion and so-called gay marriage (There is no such thing as gay marriage.) Their life is a lie.
When someone lives a life where their words contradict their actions, their credibility or believability goes down . . . No matter what they say, they are Practical Atheists.
Clayton Bower Jr.
R.I.P. February 21, 1950 to September
13, 2010
You said:
Why does Atheism
exist?
To quote a Catholic apologist, who
veered to the right, right outside
the Church:
Because they, atheists, are
not using their God-given minds!
I personally believe there is
an inner rebellion against someone,
usually a father figure, either:
now, or
when they were children
that causes this, though they
will never admit it. There is
only one solution for a family
member who finds (him/her)self
with a family member who is an
atheist: prayer.
You said:
What could I say
to my friends that mock me for
my religiousness and try to make
me an atheist?
You can tell them why you are a Catholic and share with them the Twelve Reasons to become a Catholic.:
Also talk to them about Pascal's
wager. From New
Advent:
Pascal's Wager, so-called
because it was devised by the
brilliant Catholic philosopher
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662),
is an apologetics method in
the form of a wager aimed at
getting atheists and agnostics
to consider the possibility
that God exists and that there
is a Heaven and Hell.
The beauty
of Pascal's Wager is that it
is an appeal to the chief God
worshipped by atheists: their
reason. Fr. Joseph
H. Cavanaugh, C.F.C., explains
this in his apologetics handbook, Evidence
for Our Faith.
Pascal addresses his argument
to the typical man of the world
who regards making money and amusing
himself, not as a means to an
end, but the real purpose of existence.
Even if he refuses to consider
his ultimate destiny, Pascal maintains
such a man cannot avoid wagering
about it. In practice, he must
stake everything on one of two
propositions, either:
that
there is a purpose in life
(God made us for life with
Him); or
that
there is not. Man cannot
refuse to wager for by doing
so he implies that there
is no purpose in life.
Under one guise or another,
human selfishness is always
urging man to stake everything
on "B." Pascal
tries to show that it is far more
reasonable — even from the
viewpoint of self interest — to
stake all on "A."
If
you bet everything on "B" and "A" is
the truth, you lose an eternal
good.
But if you stake all on "A" and "B" is
the truth, you lose only a few
temporal pleasures.
Pascal describes
the thoughts of the typical man
in these words: "I
know not whence I came or whither
I go. I only know that on quitting
this world, I shall fall forever
either into nothingness or into
the hands of an angry God (Hebrews
10:31) . . . And yet I conclude
that I should pass all the days
of my life without bothering to
inquire into what must happen
to me. Perhaps I might find some
solution to my doubts, but I do
not want to take the trouble . . . I intend to go forward without
looking ahead and without fear
toward this great event, facing
death carelessly, still uncertain
as to the eternity of my future state [Pensees III, 194]. . .
. In other words, Pascal thinks
it is not merely a moral tragedy
but an intellectual blunder to
wager on "B," that is,
to refuse to recognize a purpose
in life. He feels sure the typical
man would soon have faith if he
renounces pleasure. At least he
should search for the truth. "According
to the doctrines of chance, you
should search earnestly for the
truth, for if you die without
worshipping the True Cause, you
are lost. 'But,' you say, 'if
God had wished me to worship him,
he would have left me signs of
his will.' Indeed, God has done
so (Romans 1:18-21; 2:14-16);
but you ignore them."
Hope this helps,
Mike
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