Just because they have failed to convince you, does not mean they have failed

De Maria  Doug Shaver • a day ago

Doug Shaver

Hello Doug, I am a former atheist convert to Catholicism.

Right. So far, so good.

I've seen plenty of theological commentary on faith. I don't see a connection between what the theologians are talking about and my willingness to take my neighbor's word for it that my house is on fire.

I understand. But we who have faith in God trust Him do see the connection because we believe God is as real as our neighbor and we trust Him more than our neighbor.

However, when I did not believe that God existed, I couldn't trust in Him. Goes without saying, doesn't it?

Doug ShaverThis assumes facts not yet in evidence. The OT stories emphasize the need to trust certain people who claim to be speaking on God's behalf. Anybody can say, "Thus saith the Lord" and then accuse any skeptic of questioning God himself. The issue whether, when a man says "Thus saith the Lord," we should just take his word for it.

Those words are attributed to Jesus. Why should I believe that he actually spoke them?

 Because of the eyewitness testimony of those who wrote the Gospels.

Because church tradition says so?

 That too

Can we talk about the differences between church tradition and my neighbor's claim that my house is on fire?

 Please.

I think I see some equivocation here. If I can prove something, then I most certainly do believe it. I do also believe many things that I cannot prove, but I don't stop believing when I find proof.

 Precisely why I now believe in God. And I don't just mean believing in His existence. I trust Him totally. I trust Him more than my neighbor.

Obviously, I cannot believe a proposition that I do not understand at all.

 Agreed.

But I need more than understanding.

 ???

I need a reason to believe. The authority of the person uttering the proposition might be sufficient reason, but then I need to understand how he got his authority.

I'm not sure why you need more than understanding to believe? Nor why you would need someone of authority. If a child tells me something which makes sense to me, I believe it.

If I understand, and agree, I believe.

If I think I understand, yet disagree, then I won't accept and will reject. Therefore, I won't believe. This is the process I went through to reject atheism.

And how do I know that God has revealed those truths? Because the church says so, right?

 That is the logical conclusion which I drew after much study.

The claim that certain documents were produced by men who knew him is at the heart of the Catholic faith.

 Agreed.

Translation: Faith is willingness to do what the church tells you to do.

 Only if and after you come to the conclusion that the Church speaks for God.

This skeptic does not say, and never has said, that reason explains everything about reality. And he has rarely, if ever, heard any other skeptic say it.

 Agreed.

No, it does not. This is a caricature, not a characterization. Atheism requires none of those things.

 Agreed. 

I cannot either trust or distrust an entity that I don't believe exists. When a man tells me what God will do or has done for me, it is he whom I am not trusting.

 Agreed.

Yeah, we've all heard it, and some of us atheists disagree with it as strongly as Christians do. But we disagree only with use of the definite article. Faith is not "the source" of those things. It is "a source." Another source would be any secular ideology that thinks itself incapable of error.

 Ok. But I'm pretty sure that the majority of atheists call religion (i.e. Faith), THE opiate of the masses. You are the first atheist, in memory, who does not agree, wholeheartedly, with this axiom.

Harris is mistaken. He seems to think that if A and B share certain characteristics, then A must be of the same nature as B. Political ideologies can be like religions in certain respects, but that doesn't make them religions.

 I agree. I consider them "ideologies".

Apologists have been striving for two millennia. I have not seen one succeed yet.

 I'd say that depends upon how you count success. Just because they have failed to convince you, does not mean they have failed to convince anyone.