Atheists what do you believe
I voted for Bernie Sanders. It is definitely true that some atheists are angry — at religion, at religious people, at the government — but not all of us are. Some are fabulously happy, but not all of us are. That sure would be nice! But that is changing. For one thing, I got to know a lot about the Satanic Temple , a nontheistic religion that venerates Satan as a symbol of rebellion against oppressive authority. Similarly, when I attended the annual conference of an organization formed to help nonbelieving high school and college students called the Secular Student Association in July , I learned that getting out and helping people is a key concern for young secularists.
Speaker after speaker urged the atheists in the audience to go out into the world and actively serve their communities. How would you like it if your kids were forced to say that every day before class? When the government forces you as a kid to affirm something about the nature of the universe that you think is fundamentally incorrect, it tends to stick with you. Everybody in the United States has the right to practice their religion and to talk about how great it is and even to try to get other people to believe it too.
Atheists recognize this and of course we can do the same , but as minorities, we also understand that the government is in a different position than the people it governs. In the United States, the government represents all its citizens, which means that it should not and if the Constitution is interpreted correctly cannot promote one religion over others or religion over non-religion. This is because atheists do not have a common belief system, sacred scripture or atheist Pope.
This means atheists often disagree on many issues and ideas. Atheists come in a variety of shapes, colors, beliefs, convictions, and backgrounds. We are as unique as our fingerprints. Atheists exist across the political spectrum. We are members of every race. There are atheists in urban, suburban, and rural communities and in every state of the nation. We have more than affiliates and local partners nationwide.
If you are looking for a community, we strongly recommend reaching out to an affiliate in your area. What is Atheism? Many atheists think that their atheism is the product of rational thinking. Oddly perhaps, many religious people actually take a similar view of atheism.
This comes out when theologians and other theists speculate that it must be rather sad to be an atheist, lacking as they think atheists do so much of the philosophical, ethical, mythical and aesthetic fulfilments that religious people have access to — stuck in a cold world of rationality only. The problem that any rational thinker needs to tackle, though, is that the science increasingly shows that atheists are no more rational than theists.
For example, religious and nonreligious people alike can end up following charismatic individuals without questioning them. And our minds often prefer righteousness over truth , as the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has explored. Even atheist beliefs themselves have much less to do with rational inquiry than atheists often think. We now know, for example, that nonreligious children of religious parents cast off their beliefs for reasons that have little to do with intellectual reasoning.
The latest cognitive research shows that the decisive factor is learning from what parents do rather than from what they say. Nonetheless, a host of the greatest minds from antiquity to the present, including St. Bonaventure in the Middle Ages and William Lane Craig today, offer arguments that purport to defend this truth.
An example of one of these arguments, one which St. Bonaventure includes in his paradoxes of the infinite, goes as follows: If the world has always existed, then there would be an infinite number of past days. However, if there were an infinite number of past days, we never would have been able to arrive at the present day because an infinite series, by definition, cannot be traversed. Since we have arrived at today, it follows that there must have been a beginning of time. Modern physics also seems to give weight to this position.
Despite cyclic cosmological models advanced by some physicists in recent years, since the advent of the big bang theory in the twentieth century, the scientific consensus is that the universe did have a beginning roughly fourteen billion years ago.
The Conclusion of the Argument. The two premises are widely accepted today: everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist.
If that is the case, then the third statement, the conclusion of the argument, logically follows. We cannot avoid the fact that if everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist, then the universe must have had a cause. This logical conclusion leads us to wonder: if the universe had a cause, what is that cause? This idea defies logic. It would be like saying your arm caused you to come into existence, or that you yourself are the cause of your own existence.
Neither statement could be true, for since before you existed, there was no arm and there was no you! Thus, the cause of the universe must be something beyond the universe, something beyond all matter, energy, space, and time. In other words, it must be transcendent beyond the universe , it must be immaterial beyond matter and space , it must be eternal beyond time , and if it has created something so massively complex as the universe, it must be tremendously powerful and intelligent.
Well, a transcendent, immaterial, eternal, supremely powerful, and intelligent cause of the universe—what does that sound like to you? Now, this philosophical proof for God is fairly abstract. However, the Kalam argument does give us a sign pointing in the right direction. Although not everyone will accept it, the Kalam argument is a rationally well-constructed and impressive argument that will be difficult for most atheists to reject. So, commit right now to memorizing these three simple statements:.
Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. The universe has a cause. If you can memorize and recall these statements, you will have a powerful argument for God, and always be at the ready whenever someone challenges your faith. In the end, we should not let our atheist friends and family members intimidate us or make us feel anxious about defending our beliefs. Be confident in the fact that there are many good arguments for God.
It is our job to share them. He is the founder of StrangeNotions. He is a regular guest on Catholic radio and speaks to a variety of audiences about evangelization, new media, Catholic social teaching, and spirituality. Miss Fr.