Are All Atheists "Fools"?
My atheist friends often have Psalm 14:1 lobbed at them as if the verse ends the conversation like a holy grenade! It says, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God".
But the verse does not mean all atheists are fools. It means anyone who "says in his heart" there is no God is a fool. In other words, anyone who denies God for merely emotional reasons is foolish. An issue this profound is not to be determined by one's psychological state or emotional disposition.
The person who has genuine intellectual questions or objections concerning God's existence is not the biblical definition of a fool. God will honor and answer in the humble quest for truth. The honest inquirer is in a better position before God than the emotionally closed-minded.
Since I'm talking about the Hebraic-Christian Scriptures, they repeatedly say we must humble ourselves before God. Think about it. If God exists, humility is certainly in order in seeking Him. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you". "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God", etc.
This shouldn't be hard for the atheist intellectually. Most of my atheist friends agree that humility is in order in the quest for any truth. Don't you agree?
(On the other hand, I can see how horrible I would feel (at least at first) if, say, Islam was proven to me to be true. I would be forced intellectually and emotionally to acknowledge Allah and Muhammad. I would have to begrudgingly and reluctantly bow before them. That would suck! I would acknowledge Allah's existence, but probably continually resist any relationship or love for him until he smote me!
But I must say that my emotional resistance to Islam is mostly for intellectual reasons! Thankfully, I am confident there is nothing forthcoming in Islam that will serve as an adequate defeater of Christ's claims.)
BTW, I am aware of Christ's injunction against calling anyone a fool, yet he himself did. Keep in mind that Christ is forbidding unwarranted name-calling (literally "empty head") from people who are themselves often foolish!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Will Sloan on -
Yeah, we should send him an email requesting that "indisputable proof" he allegedly has access to. If it were so damn indisputable then why would people like us even exist? We'd have no reason to ever challenge it.
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Permalink Reply by Violet Chartreuse on -
I had a friend tell me this a few years ago. Ha! I think we should embrace it collectively and turn it back on them!
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on -
Absolutely, let's all be as foolish as we can for one day to help the poor theists feel better about their foolishness the other 364. LOL
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Permalink Reply by Will Sloan on
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Haha! A guy I know posted the Atheist Day gag as his Facebook status update. He know's I'm an atheist so I thought I'd antagonize him a bit by "liking" it and making a light-hearted comment about how funny it was. Kill em with kindness. Works incredibly well. LOL!
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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Just a useless piece of trivia but the French phrase for an April fool is poisson d'avril - literally fish of April or April fish.
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Permalink Reply by Will Sloan on
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Not useless at all. You could use that to turn it around on the lot. So we may infer (loosely) that fish = fool then...
Presto!
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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LOL!
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Permalink Reply by Dale Headley on -
The latest posting from Kevin Harris is as revealing as it is revolting. In response to many of us who regard the Pentateuch as a despicable account of heinous debauchery and murder ordered and led by God and Lieutenant Moses, Mr. Harris doesn't make any attempt to cast this bloody, rampaging holocaust by the Israelites and their Commander-in-Chief in a metaphorical light in order to preserve an aura, however fleeting and evanescent, of a benevolent God. He makes it crystal clear that the slaughter of men, women, AND CHILDREN was an entirely justified extermination of pagans (Ooooohh - atheists!) and their children. In essence, Mr. Harris believes that ANYTHING his God does is, by definition, righteous. There is not much to say about this, except that Mr. Harris validates my oft-expresed opinion that Christianity is the MOST evil of all religions. For holy sycophants of Mr. Harris' ilk, the ONLY imperative is to blindly worship and obey the magic man in the sky - human beings are irrelevant. Abraham is their hero, because he was willing - dare I say it, EAGER - to obey God's cruel joke in ordering him to slash his son and burn him on the altar. God, of course, didn't really mean it ("Fooldja!"); but Ancient Abe didn't know that; and duty to God trumps paternal love. Mr. Harris thinks this paragon of fatherhood (thanks to a slave) is an icon after whom we should all model ourselves, apparently. Oddly enough, Mr. Harris seems reluctant to attribute natural disasters to Godly manipulation or control. In fact, he explicitly chooses to "ignore" them. But cold-blooded, intentional genocide? That's okay, since it was God's will. The upside of all this is that none of us should feel any further need to address Mr. Harris and his ilk with any respect or compassion whatsoever. Ain't religion wonderful?
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Permalink Reply by Rodrica Davis on -
I would have to agree with you.
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Permalink Reply by Toby Cooper on -
Yes. The most disappointing part of having my question answered was the predictability of the answer. I was hoping for something much better. I am reminded of what Steven Weinberg said: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on
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