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Does anyone know of a good resource for Atheist?

Do you mean how to evangelize them?

Depends on what you are after. The Cathechism...the Bible...Prayer...

ICXC
NIKA

Are we talking about how to agree with them or how to evangelize them?

CDL

What are the proofs for theism?
Catholic or Orthodox source.

There are the 5 proofs of St. Thomas Aquinas; The Muslim Kalaam Argument; the watch argument; etc... These can be found in Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Kreeft and Tacelli.

Any book by Prof. Peter Kreeft I would advise getting. He teaches philosophy at Boston College.

Tsk tsk...God can't be 'proved' like this.

ICXC
NIKA

Dear Nika,

To what are you objecting? Are you claiming that cosmological arguments such as those of St. Thomas Aquinas or St. John Damascene are invalid or do not conclude to the existence of God?

Dr. Michael

I have no doubt that we can demonstrate THAT God exists through reasoning. I'm also convinced that Revelation is necessary to assure us WHAT and WHO God is.

CDL

I have no doubt that we can prove to our satisfaction that God IS. If you note the original request was very unclear and early posters were trying to tease out some idea of what the poster was looking for and the context of what he was wanting the info for.

Obviously my posting was unclear to later readers. I was implying that simply presenting the argument for the existance of God would not be enough. There needs to be some God in there as well, not just a well presented and logical argument for the existance of God. I may have assumed a lot in terms of what the original poster wanted the info for.

I hope I have cleared this up.

ICXC
NIKA

NB. DR M it's Pavel not to be confused with the stamp on the Prosphora

St. Theresa of Avila, The Interior Castle. Recommended to me by my father when I had started to stray agnostic. That and to sit down and try to spend time READING the Gospels with an open mind to the lessons they contain.

I don't think God can be proven or disproven.

Proof is an intellectual process. It is a process of arranging data in the most logical way to yield a conclusion that is (supposedly) true.

While proof is very useful, it is not infallible. Proof, as a process for determining truth, is only as good as (a) the data it has to work with, (b) the logic which is employed to analyze those data, and (c) whether the problem being considered can be resolved by logic.

That last requirement for proof is especially important. Proof is a logical process, but some problems are not solvable by logic. Consider the classic Liar's Paradox: "This sentence is false." It is impossible to determine by logic alone the truth of falsity of that statement. Or, consider the computer. It was proposed by Alan Turing in his classic essay "On Computable Numbers" in order to prove that some mathematical questions cannot be answered by logic alone.

Proof is a process of logic; it is an application of logic to data in order to derive a conclusion. But, logic cannot solve all questions. Hence, logically, proof alone cannot solve all questions.

Put another way, proof is a product of the human mind, and the human mind is finite, but God is infinite, and the finite cannot apprehend the infinite. Finite numbers cannot add up to infinity. Finite proofs from the finite human mind cannot add up to the infinity of God. At most, the human mind can come up with ideas about God, but the human mind cannot conclusively prove God. God is beyond proof, because God is infinite, but proof is a product of the human mind, and the human mind is finite, and the finite cannot apprehend the infinite. God can be inferred, but God cannot be proven or disproven.

Ultimately, God can only be accepted or rejected on faith.

-- John

More to the point of this thread, most atheists face the issue that God cannot be proven and they conclude that God does not exist. This because of two errors: they assume (1) that anything which exists must be provable and (2) that religion is a series of intellectual propositions.

(1)
Regarding the first error, plenty of things exist which cannot be proven in a strictly logical manner. Beauty, for example, cannot be proven. That is because it is so variably defined. A blind person, for example, has a very different idea of beauty than a sighted person. And, both sighted and blind people apply the concept of beauty to more than just visible things . . . such as beautiful music or a beautiful day. A beautiful day, for example, can refer to the weather or the events of the day etc. Yet, beauty exists... though it cannot be defined by proof.

(2) Regarding the second point, religion is not just a series of intellectual propositions. Religion is not just a collection of ideas. Religion is a way of life which, ultimately, attempts to answer the ultimate questions of human life: where did I come from, why am I here and where am I going. There are answers to these questions, but they are not solely ideas. They are not things that can be learned solely from intellection. The answers to the ultimate questions of life are learned by living, i.e. they are experiential. For ultimately, these questions are seeking to provide a context for life, a meaning for life and a purpose for life. Part of that comes from data (i.e., intellection); part of that comes from experience; part of that comes from choice; and part of that comes from beyond us yet somehow also permeating us. Religion asserts that the last factor is the most important, and learning to live in harmony with it is the means for acquiring the answers to the ultimate questions of life.

The evidence which leads to this conclusion can be found in three seminal works on the nature of religion. They are

(A)
"The Varieties of Religious Experience" by Professor William James

(B)
"The Idea of the Holy" by Professor Rudolph Otto

and

(C)
"The Sacred and the Profane" by Professor Mircea Eliade.


In these works, it is observed respectively

(A) that there are a variety of human (psychological) experiences --and not merely ideas-- which form the basis of religion;

(B) that, though diverse, these experiences have three common elements:
-- a sense of the Other (the "numinous")
-- which in turn produces a sense of tremendous mystery / awe
-- which in turn produces a sense of personal transformation;

(C) that this personal transformation, which is caused by the encounter with the Sacred, is expressed by a need to live life in terms of the Sacred.

Religion, therefore, is the attempt to express the inexpressible Sacred through the living of our lives. Words and ideas can attempt to describe that process, but they are not that process itself. Only living that process is that process of living life in terms of the Sacred.

Hence, these three books are what I would recommend to anyone (especially an atheist) who is seeking to understand the fundamental nature of religion.

Then, if the person is still interested in learning more about religion, I would recommend Professor Huston Smith's "The World's Religions." It is an excellent survey of the essence of the major religions of the world. And finally, if the person was interested in learning more about Christianity, I would recommend The New Testament and I would recommend "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis.

After that, I would recommend the person to actually visit a church or other community of religious faith � not just for observing worship but also for observing how religion permeates and shapes the lives of its practitioners. That is because religion is a way of life -- living life in terms of the Sacred -- and therefore religion can only be understood by experiencing it and not just by reading about it.

-- John

If I find that NIKA I will belt him one

No one disputes that there are logical answers but I do feel that if it was that easy the world would be full of Christians. It does sound like add water and stir and then you have a belief in God. I think we got our logical conclusion that there is a God mixed up with 'belief' in that God. One can take you there, the other is the gift of God.

John, indeed, beauty cannot be proven. As Florensky said, which we discussed on the other thread about "modern" apolegetics, "The Truth manifests itself. It does not prove itself". That is a thoroughly Eastern Christian way of expressing the reality.

I also like the following from Olivier Clement (himself a former athiest):

FDD