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[quote=Anonymous][quote]If you are an atheist, and you think serious believers believe in a God who is some sort of "sky fairy," "invisible friend," or "flying spaghetting monster," I challenge you to take on the argument put forward by the learned Robert Barron, STD. [/quote]

That's an interesting concept, and one that is ultimately unchallengeable.

The fundamental question of belief in a deity or atheism is simply that - a question of belief. I do not believe in a deity. I believe that the universe is completely natural and subject to discoverable physical laws. Those who follow the various religions believe in some supernatural spiritual element to the universe of some kind.

I freely admit that it's possible there may be some supernatural entity that created the universe. I simply don't believe that's the case. I can't prove it's not true, though, because logically proving a negative is actually really difficult. Any atheist that says he/she can prove there is no God is setting him/herself up for failure.

The essence of the atheist position doesn't boil down to the FSM, or calling God a "sky fairy." What it comes down to is the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If you want to believe in God, that's your prerogative. But if you want to convince me that God exists so that I believe, then I require proof, and if you want me to believe that there's an infinite, omnipotent, omniscient being that created the universe, that is not subject to the physical laws of the universe, and that somehow listens to the prayers of beings that are even further beneath it than bacteria are to us and elects to engage in the day-to-day lives of those beings, well, then, to me that requires pretty extraordinary proof.

You believe in God. You accept that on faith. I don't. There's the difference between a believer and an atheist.

So, despite the fact that I don't believe in God to begin with, and it's no more a part of my life than my hobby of "not stamp collecting", I'll take up the challenge of Robert Barron's position. I would argue that while it provides an interesting rebuttal to the supposed atheist argument that there is no God (an argument I will not make, as I noted above)

The argument that God is the essence of being itself is fine - and borders on deism, naturalism and Obi Wan Kenobi's description of the Force ("It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together."), but the implication of God as "being itself" is that God must be separate from the tangible, finite universe in which we find ourselves, and that God cannot be a being. Barron says something very similar - he does not believe God is [b]a[/b] being in and of itself, but, rather the essence of the act of being.

The idea is that as tangible beings who are part of this physical universe, we can never fully grasp (or speak about) who/what God really is, because we are incapable of grasping the infinite nature of God. So any attempt to describe or "know" God is doomed to failure through our own insufficiency and tangibility.

Thus, any statement about God must always be symbolic (except the statement "God is the essence of being."). Because if God is the essence of being itself, but is not an entity in its own right, then the instant any aspect of the Divine is brought from essence into existence, it is tainted by the limitations of the requirements of existence within our universe (not to mention our limited ability to comprehend the infinite).

So, the consequence of that for Christian doctrine seems pretty devastating. Any assertion that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God must succumb to the recognition that we cannot conceive of the infinite, and that any attempt to document the "Word of God" is subject to the taint of attempting to make the infinite "essence of being" tangible and comprehensible.

That this rings true can be seen from the fact that there are a myriad of different understandings of God within the Christian faith alone, let alone when you add in the other Abrahamic faiths.

The reason none of you can agree on how to interpret scripture is because the concept of the infinite is incomprehensible and can only be discussed in incomplete, potentially inaccurate, symbolic terms and metaphors.

And here we get to the reason why atheists even pay attention to religious believers. Despite the fact that the Bible is, by Robert Barron's own definition of God, a symbolic, incomplete attempt to document the incomprehensible, some of you people like to fight wars over who believes what, and some of you use that symbolic, incomplete set of documents to attempt to force others to behave in specific ways because it's "God's Word."

I don't care what you believe. Whatever helps you get through life is fine with me.

But when you start using the rules of your religion to try to govern my behavior, just because you think your God said so, that's where I push back.

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