If atheism, the disbelief in a "god", is the null hypothesis, why can't the same be true for theism? "Do not believe in a god until there is evidence a god exists" can change to "believe in a god until there is evidence a god does not exist". A theist can say the latter is their null hypothesis. Why can't the latter be the null hypothesis too when both statements operate similarly?

And if "do not believe in a god until there is evidence a god exists" is the null hypothesis, then why isn't "do not believe there is a universe or world around us, independent of the mind, until there is evidence a world independent of the mind exists" the null hypothesis? Humans can only find things out subjectively, with their senses, which means the world humans observe is limited by their subjectivity. Observation is done by the eyes, which makes it subjective, not objective. Every evidence humans have of their own existence, or the existence of the earth and the universe around them is limited by subjectivity, and can not be objective unfortunately. Why doesn't it follow that one should not believe there is such a thing as a human, an earth, universe, etc outside the mind until there is evidence? Why isn't solipsism applied to the outside world the null hypothesis if atheism is the null hypothesis? And why is evidence important when it's limited by subjectivity and can never be objective?

This comment was what made me ask this question: https://imgur.com/nU814Ol

I sometimes see people claim "null hypothesis is only for statistics" and "not relevant". But I don't see how the fight over whether or not "null hypothesis" is a "correct" word is relevant to the questions. What I mean by "null hypothesis" is "default position". If anyone has an issue with the usage of "null hypothesis" here, then please replace "null hypothesis" with "default position" everytime you see the word "null hypothesis" in my post.

Every time I tell my Dad i’ve invested my time in exploring countless fundamental arguments for theism and Christianity and found them fallacious and generally insufficient this is the only response I get.

I’ve tried to argue that if there was an argument significantly different to the basic ones i’ve already heard then I WOULD HAVE HEARD OF IT.

I won’t claim to be a SUPER expert on all apologetics but I believe I have enough expertise to reasonably hold my position as an atheist (specifically that I do not assert the nonexistence of a god but rather I do not accept the assertion that there is one).

How the hell do I convince my Dad i’m not missing some vital information or unique apologetic perspective?

I'm not in a position I can test if the earth is really round from above, send a robot to outside of the earth to observe what the earth, the other planets, our solar system, stars, galaxies, etc look like along with how many stars, planets, etc there are, or observe the shape of atoms and what's inside them, etc. All I do is accept what someone else tells me is the case. Atoms are round, inside them there are protons, electrons and neutrons. Planets are round. There are 9 planets in the solar system, along with their names, what they look like, what their temperatures are, what states they are in, etc. Even about our own bodies, I can't test the things I'm told, what bones, gametes, genes, DNA, organs in general look like, how many organs we have inside the body, etc. What viruses look like. Or for what other species do, I can't go out there and test for myself what other species look like, and do.

I have accepted, but can't observe for myself. When I say something scientific, if someone asks "where's your evidence", all I can give is what someone else (a scientist) told me. Isn't that appeal to authority fallacy?

How can science be trusted and accepted when one can't observe or test everything they are told by the scientists?

And how is trusting/accepting science when one can't test or observe the scientific things they are told for themselves not blind faith much like religion is?

I hear often people say they dreamt of a location they've never been to before, later on having checked to realize that the location actually exists and indicates they had a past life in there as someone else, who in next/after life came to exist in another body (their current body). This is reincarnation I think. Someone for instance told me she dreamt of a family she's never met or heard of, checked and the family existed hundreds of years ago. She thinks the little girl in the family is her now, because she viewed a part of their history from her perspective in her dreams.

There is also such a thing as prophetic dreams, that warn of future events. I have an instance of someone saying they dreamt of a road they've never been to before, only to one day end up on that same road from their dreams: https://imgur.com/PssAiyH

Someone I know told me she dreamt of an accident happening to her sister and it did happen on the same day the dream warned her it would happen.

Are there any scientific explanations for these dreams? Are these dreams evidence that there is a soul, a past life, an after life, some way to know what occurs in future via dreams, etc? If not, can you explain why?

When a monotheist says God/creator exists, they are told "okay but what about Zeus, Thor, unicorns, santa, dragons, vampires, ghosts, etc? We're going to say they exist too, why don't you believe in them?"

But I think there are some issues with that comparison. In monotheism, a god is defined as the most powerful being that created all that exists, is non-contingent (has no cause for its existence) and is immaterial (not of matter or energy).

How can Zeus, Thor, etc be considered gods and be compared to God/creator then when they are less powerful than God/creator, are contingent (have causes for their existence) and are material?

It's like how rap stands for rhythm and poetry so if someone doesn't write their rap lines they are not considered to be a real rapper, but a fake rapper, so because Zeus, Thor, etc don't meet the monotheistic definition of a god, they are not considered real gods, but fake gods. What are your thoughts on that?

Lastly, how can ghosts, unicorns, santa, vampire, etc be compared to God/creator? They are less powerful than God/creator, they are contingent, and are material, so how can they be compared?

I am genuinely asking these questions. I'm questioning, which I think is the first step away from theism after these years of being in a muslim country.

Just going from a basic Darwinian perspective, why would it make sense to formulate such complex worldviews unless it served some evolutionary function? Consider views which command practices like animal sacrifice, they are nearly universal (especially among the most successful world empires). Wouldn’t it be more a more successful strategy to simply prefer a general agnosticism with regard to cosmology, anthropology, and ethics— especially where such an agnosticism would lead to a more utilitarian allotment of vital resources?

Isn’t it more likely that these ritualistic practices actually survived to increase evolutionary fitness (increasing social cohesion, for example)?

And, if these symbolic systems of myth prescribe practices that they claim will increase the welfare of society, and their practices actually does increase the welfare of society— then doesn’t that suggest they genuinely represent approximations of reality in some way? Doesn’t their pragmatic functionality suggest some means of genuine insight?

If not, why not? On what foundation can one suggest mathematics is a symbolic system that genuinely represents objective reality, but mythology is not a symbolic system that genuinely represents social reality?

The question is in the headline. If there is no "God"/"creator", and if the universe and everything within it came to exist randomly and have no purpose, why doesn't the universe and everything inside it randomly appear and disappear, why don't thing go up instead of down randomly, how come there are laws of physics, a universal constant, etc? How come all planets are in the shape of a circle and not a triangle, donut, hammer, or anything else. How come the earth and the other planets move around the sun in such an organized fashion, and things don't randomly smash into each other ...

Because it seems if there is no purpose to the existence of the universe and everything within the universe, and everything just came to exist randomly, the universe would spontaneously appear and disappear, there would be no laws of physics, one second there would be a typhoon, the other second the earth would smash to pieces, the other second things randomly would go up instead of down, etc, things would just be random, or am I wrong?

Are my questions fallacious? If so what fallacies am I guilty of?

I grew up in a muslim household, my parents would call me "the daughter of satan" whenever I didn't listen to them. They would tell me "there was a demon floating and flying in the air in the living room waiting for you, I read this surah and the demon left screaming, you should read the Quran before you fall asleep to command the demons to leave you, they are scared of the name and the words of Allah" and I would be scared for days because in movies they showed "demons suck the soul out of you and take you to hell with them after making you as ugly as they are". Once when I was 14 and the power was out in the afternoon, everywhere was dark and when I was washing my hands in the bathroom a figure that looked exactly like my parents was holding the LED rechargeable light, she walked towards the bathroom door looking at the door and most likely me and then she turned her back on me, and walked away, the difference was her face wasn't shown, there were hair all over her face and her eyes didn't show. I screamed and ran out of the bathroom, I told my sisters about it and they said they also saw this same figure but that the figure disappeared after "walking on air" and floating.

My parents were like "I told you they are real and waiting for you". Another time when I was in the living room and sitting on the couch, the door of the living room (which is the exist) opened on its own and slammed shut, there was nobody opening the door, it just opened on its own. I screamed and read the surah of Quran for whatever opened the door to leave.

I'm 20 now. It has been years, when I became a non-believer I stopped seeing such things. But tonight I just asked myself the question "what was it that I really saw back then". Is there a scientific explanation for the "demon" or "ghost" I saw when I was a teenager? Or for the door just opening and closing/slamming shut on its own?

Hello everyone. As someone who went to a lot of church services as a kid, I was always easily impressed by topics about this or that archaeological finding that uncovered some artifact that implied Israel's existence, such as the Merneptah Stele. I now find a large amount of irritation with these sorts of discussions and my main issues fall into a few categories:

​

One: Archaeological evidence is not in anyway a smoking gun. Usually the actual information that is not open for interpretation is minimal. The Merneptah Stele for example references the nation of Israel and that it was campaigned against. "Israel is wasted, and bare of seed." That's it. Some will try to ground Joshua or Judges into it, but it is one sentence on a piece of stone.

Two: How is appealing to archaeology (or science for that matter) gratifying to the theist? By putting so much trust in these sources and then molding our interpretations of text to fit whatever new theory or piece of evidence says, are we not just trivializing what is written? I think that the Bible itself is barely an account of history as we would understand it, but rather highlights of human interaction that takes place in a broader context. Of course, some elements of history become more entrenched in some sections (such as the kings of Israel), but overall I think some theists engage the material in a non-gratifying way to themselves or their audience.

Three: Putting so much importance on some archaeological evidence and blatantly ignoring other pieces of evidence (or lack of evidence) is an easy way to just lose credibility. Some of these talks essentially boil down to "I am going to point out these few pieces of archaeology that back up what I believe and ignore anything that is conflicting to my views." The same thing happens with science, especially when you start chucking the word quantum and big bang around.

I think we should be careful how to view this evidence on either side of the debate, archaeology provides a window into what happened in the past, but due to what is preserved, who it belongs to, and how we interpret it can give various accounts of events. It is like a giant puzzle, not whack a mole.

I have been doing some research and thinking on the subject matter of nothingness after we die. The idea is we simply have a complex nueral network that seems like self awareness but is just a system of interactions that creates this "illusion" of consciousness. I do not believe in this viewpoint or at least allowing myself to see it this way scares the crap out of me. With that being said I have some questions entertaining this line of thinking. For one, I found comfort in thinking that if this were true and considering that matter is never destroyed and just changes form than the exact formula that creates my particular illusion I call a consciousness will after however ever long (which would not matter since death would be nothingness during this time) eventually happen again. This brought me to some counter arguments with myself. For example, if this were the case then my exact formula could also be cloned, but my clone would have its own "illusion". May have the same thoughts, feelings, memories, ect, but would not be me. Take the same line of thinking and apply it to a hypothetical. Let's say that science can break you down to the atom and then after 3 minutes reassemble you. Would your "illusion" continue? Stands to reason to think so. What if they used different matter to re-create you? Would that alter anything if the formula does not change? This also can be argued against when considering the formula that makes me now is different from the me even a year ago. Since new data and matter have been removed and/or added since then. This leads me to think that time and space (essentially the 4th dimension) must play a role in what gives us awareness of self or self-consiousness.

Sorry for the extra long post here. Just these questions and ideas have been weighing heavy on me for some time and I would like to get some opinions on the matter.

I was thinking about the fact that many cultures throughout history have independently made the same inventions: pyramids in Egypt and Mesoamerica; writing in Sumer, China, and Mesoamerica; the wheel in Eurasia and Mesoamerica. People are competent observers of the world around them; the underlying engineering and linguistic principles of these technologies are the same no matter where you are, and can be known through rational means. Hence you have multiple, independent inventions of these and others, by civilizations that had no contact with each other.

But when we look at religion, the picture looks very different. Religions, like all aspects of culture, can be expected to differ from place to place. However, what I want to highlight is that religions feature truth claims of some sort, foremost of which is the idea of a personal god, demigod, or anima that can be petitioned to intervene in your life and is fond of you.

None of these beings ever turn up twice in long-distant areas. When Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay arrived in Papua New Guinea, he didn't find people who worshipped the Trinity. Instead, the Papuans had a myriad of religions of their own, none of which looked anything like Christianity.

After realizing this, it's basically made it impossible for me to believe in any sort of supernatural personal being. This has made me pretty sad. Anyway, I haven't seen anyone make this argument before, so I figured I would post it.

DISCLAIMER: This is a very long post. This is mostly intended to motivate people to do research. Not everything I said here is correct, I may have done some mistakes that I may not be aware of but my whole point of this post is to make people realize that Science doesn’t lead to absolute Truth. Science isn’t the only knowledge that we have and we shouldn’t depend and believe in science with 100% certainty.

This doesn’t mean I am rejecting the scientific method. I’m not saying that science doesn’t have any truths at all. I’m talking about Absolute Truths which everyone can be absolutely certain about. Most people, doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist or theist, trust science mostly because it is absolutely amazing and practical. I actually love science but unfortunately science can never be absolutely true. Especially when it comes to scientific theories, there’s a lot of problems with the scientific method and knowledge philosophically.

Science basically works in a probabilistic framework. The implications of this is that scientific knowledge can always change its conclusions and it is not set in stone, any new studies and new data that can challenge or contradict scientific knowledge today will have to reconcile it and make new conclusions taken from new evidences. This is a HUGE problem and this is one of the reasons why we cannot trust scientific theories as absolutely true but ONLY as a workable model.

Scientific knowledge is mostly based upon an assumption not certainty philosophically. David Hume who is an atheist understand the problems with science philosophically which is “The Problem of Induction.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/

I’m here to say that Theories like Darwinism which gives an explanation of human biological evolution isn’t 100% true with certainty. ANY scientific theories are not absolute or certain in nature. Is it the best explanation for biological evolution? Not really, there are other evolutionary models other than Darwinism mechanism of natural selection, like Lamarckian mechanisms “inheritance of acquired characteristics” instead of natural selection. In science you can get more than one inferences from the same data. Darwinian evolution especially the mechanism of natural selection is not the only inference that we have. The most popular is of course natural selection but this doesn’t mean it is the Absolute Truth, it just means it is a popular theory.

I know for a fact that rationally speaking, Absolute Truth actually exist in our reality. One good example, that is absolutely true is that all humans that is alive have consciousness. Nobody can deny this fact at all. We know this to be Absolutely True about Consciousness but we cannot justify this claim under atheism because with God, consciousness is just an illusion made from the brain. Therefore making our subjective experiences in Life absolutely meaningless without God to give intrinsic value to human Life. Under Theism, it is coherent to say that God as a conscious Being give humans consciousness. Consciousness came from another conscious Being is much more coherent than consciousness pop into existence from the brain and that our subjective experiences are only an illusion and it is driven by blind, random and pure physical processes. The latter makes absolutely no sense.

What I’m rejecting is the scientific knowledge or Theory are absolutely true. We know for a fact that science doesn’t deal with certainty at all or absolutes. Any Scientific Theory can ONLY be taken as truth probabilistically because this is just how science works. You can never actually claim that ANY scientific Theories are absolutely true. A scientific theory can be either most likely true or least likely, no absolutes.

Science has limits. It only deals with empirical data and it is impossible to use science to study metaphysics, consciousness for example. This is why The Hard Problem of Consciousness exist and not one single soul have figured out what consciousness is ontologically. We can never use the scientific method as a tool to study metaphysics. This doesn’t make sense at all since science is in the realm of empiricism not metaphysics.

So if anyone tries to bash religion especially God by using science, it has no weight to it. Especially at the academic level which is the philosophy of science which has a lot of conceptual problems and disputes among the academics. Scientists and Philosophers have a lot of disputes among themselves like with Atheists and Theists. If someone who believes that scientific knowledge is absolutely true then they are delusional. Science will never be 100% certain.

We have a limited understanding of our reality and our observation is limited in this universe, which is only 0.0000...% of the whole universe(observable and unobservable universe), the other 99.999...% still not observed by humans. Humans can only observe only a tiny fragment of our whole reality. It’s safe to assume that humans don’t know everything and they never will be certain.

For me personally, the only way to get certain absolute knowledge and truths is from a Necessary Being that actually knows absolutely everything, this concept of a Necessary Being is much more coherent than assumptions made by science and philosophy(Nihilism etc). This concept of a Necessary Being is impossible to be applied to a human being since we are limited and flawed in many ways.

So, this is why Theories from Contingency exist in Philosophy to explain this concept of a Creator who is a Necessary Being but this Theory is STILL an Assumption but it is still a logically coherent concept but there is no way of actually testing this Theory to be true unless this Necessary Being made contact with humanity. There are some religions out there that claims that this Necessary Being or God has made contact with them through revelation but how do we know if this is true?

This is why some Theist argue that Revelation is a superior knowledge than scientific or philosophy or any types of knowledge when it comes to Absolute Truths. Since Revelations coming from the Creator have a huge epistemic weight compared to all other knowledge. If we indeed have solid evidence of that this Creator has made contact with humans through revelation then the implications of this revelation is that it WILL confirm the existence of a Creator and it no longer considered as a Theory but Absolute Truth from the Creator who knows everything.

My evidence for the existence of this Necessary Being is the revelation of the Quran which is the ONLY UNcorrupted revelation from this Creator and the LAST revelation. Evidence can be found both within the scripture and the historical context and Falsification Test to prove that the Quran is in fact came from the Creator by using our rational faculty.

These are strong cases to support the Quran actually came from The Creator which is in this link. There are many more overwhelming evidences for the validity and credibility of the Quran which is the evidence and miracle from the Creator. http://www.onereason.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/The-Eternal-Challenge_8Feb_2.pdf

There are just too many cases piling up for the Quran to be from the Creator and to disbelieve it, is simply irrational. The Quran doesn’t contain knowledge of everything. It is mainly a guidance for mankind not a scientific book. Islam still accepts science as long as it doesn’t contradict the Quran. As a muslim, it is absolutely no problem in believing certain aspects about evolution but scientific knowledge have absolutely no weight when it comes to the knowledge of the all-knowing Creator who said in the Quran(after you guys have read the cases in the link) that mankind did not have a common ancestor with apes or any animals but the materials used is still from earth and that’s why we share Dna with other animals and plants. We just did not have any common ancestor with them.

If you guys actually read the link above which is written by an actual scholar who did research on the Quran then you’d know that the Absolute Truth can only be found and confirmed by the Quran but it doesn’t acknowledge everything only certain things especially guidance and the existence of God. So, Science and Philosophy are NOT completely useless. Both are still practical but these two methods can never be absolutely True, only Revelations which cannot be falsified can be absolutely True.

I know that not all atheists are nihilist. It’s the worldview itself is what leads to Nihilism. For me, the atheist worldview doesn’t make sense at all when it comes to morals and human value.

In their worldview, we are fundamentally an arrangement of Atoms interacting with another arrangement of Atoms, what value can we assigned to different arrangements of atoms if everything in the universe is made from the same material?

I know that there is atheists out there who believes that humans have value and morality but how do they actually justify this belief? How can they find objective value in anything in Life without contradicting their worldview?

Atoms are cold, blind, non-conscious, non-rational and non-moral material. How can these materials suddenly give rise to consciousness, rationality and morality? It’s like saying Morality came from nothing. It just pop out of existence from non-existence which is a contradiction.

*This topic is actually brought up by Subboor in this debate.

https://youtu.be/-Ysux8vA1TM

The problem of how to deal with an infinite regress of causes features prominently in cosmological arguments. The defender will assert that an infinite regress of causes is impossible and problematic, and the objector will assert that an infinite regress is possible and unproblematic.

There is not just one way to contextualize this issue—thinkers as diverse as Aquinas and Leibniz both utilized the infinite regress problem in some way to prove God, and yet were operating under significantly different philosophical frameworks. Nevertheless, the reasoning behind the uses are similar enough to warrant a general treatment. What I aim to explore is a distinction between types of causal series which, under analysis, relegate many popular objections to the impossibility of an infinite regress to the category of a misunderstanding. I will be referencing the infinite regress problem from Aquinas’ First Way for personal preference.

Let’s begin with a clarifying question: are all causal series such that an infinite regress is impossible? If I were representing Aquinas, my answer would be emphatically: no. Aquinas (and many of his contemporaries) in fact were agnostic philosophically about a past-infinite universe, so it seems that for him an infinite regress is possible. But Aquinas also defended a version of an Unmoved Mover argument in which an infinite regress is impossible. How is that he held to a possible past-infinite universe, but also to an Unmoved Mover? To the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of an infinite regress? The resolution to the contradiction lies in a distinction he made between two different types of causal series: one ordered accidentally, and one ordered essentially.

Accidental causal series

Accidentally-ordered causal series are a series of causes in which each member does not derive its continued being from previous members in the series, such that previous members in the series could be suppressed and latter members would not be affected.

Example: I was produced by my parents, and they were produced by their parents, and them by their parents. So in a sense, I was caused by my great grandparents. But my great grandparents were not doing anything as I was being born, since they were dead. I came from them not in the sense that my coming to be required my dependence on them as I initially came to be. Moreover, I am not dependent on my continued existence that my great grandparents should exist. I rather came from them in the sense that they in the past did something which finally resulted in my coming to be.

Essential causal series

Essentially-ordered causal series are a series of causes in which each member derives its continued being from previous members in the series, such that if any previous members in the series were suppressed, the latter members would be affected.

Example: Consider a series of moving train carriages. The carriage in the back is pulled only insofar as the carriage after it is pulled, and that carriage is pulled only insofar as the next carriage is pulled, and so on. If you detach any of the carriages from the series, that carriage and all carriages after it will eventually stop moving (assuming that it is a closed system).

The important difference is that effects in an essentially ordered causal series require the continued existence of all their prior causes in the series in order for them to have the effects that they do at each moment, whereas effects in an accidentally ordered causal series have no such requirement.

Now that we have distinguished two types of causal series, which of these is relevant to the First Way? The series that Aquinas claims that can regress infinitely is the accidentally ordered causal series, and the series that cannot regress infinitely is the essentially ordered causal series [Summa Theologica 1, 46, 2ad]. Why not the latter? Simply because to say that an essentially ordered causal series could regress infinitely is equivalent to saying that all the members could possess their continued being derivatively without anything from which it is derived. Using the earlier example, it is to say that a series of infinite carriages could move without an engine. This is not a problem with accidentally ordered series, where its members do not possess their being derivatively.

To briefly explicate: recall that for each effect in an essentially ordered causal series, there is an essential dependence on all prior members for its continued being. It may be helpful to represent such a series in this way:

A has its being only if the following conditions are met: 
    B has its being only if the following conditions are met: 
        C has its being only if the following conditions are met:
            D has its being only if the following conditions are met:
                ...

where the letters represent ordinary objects in the world and the indented statements that follow represent their essential conditions for existence. Now, it is apparent that if this series extends infinitely, nowhere are the conditions of any member being fulfilled, but are rather endlessly deferred, and therefore unfulfillable. But since it is evident from our sense experience that objects do exist, their conditions must be being fulfilled, so there must be an unconditional terminus.

In light of this, we can now see that for Aquinas, infinite series as such are not ruled out. He allows for an infinite accidentally-ordered causal series. But for Aquinas, God is not a cause in the sense of setting a process going which then in time had certain effects (as in an accidentally ordered series). God is rather the cause of effects which are dependent at every moment of their continued being (as in an essentially ordered series).

Now to tie this into a discussion. On the atheists side of things, the mainline objection since Hume has been not to argue that essential causal series don’t require a terminus, but rather to deny the reality of essential causal series altogether, so that all essentially ordered series in one way or another reduce to an accidental series, thereby making the problem not a problem at all. As an atheist, would you take this angle or another, and why?

I. Introduction

First I’m going to throw out a content warning for discussions of bigotry, violence including genocide and violence toward children, and fascist groups and individuals in modernity as well as history. If any of these topics may affect your mental wellbeing, please be cautious in how you proceed. I’ll next add that I heavily disagree with fascism in theory and in practice (“heavily disagree” is… putting it rather mildly), so you’re not about to delve into fascist apologetics or any such nonsense.

Now to my point in writing this is to explore the complicated relationship between fascism, religion, and atheism so that there’s a better understanding of the nuance historically and in modernity. Admittedly, part of this comes from seeing concerns about atheism or theism (typically specifically religion) based on things like Hitler’s religious views, as if that comes close to covering the full depth of the matter. So we’ll be looking at what fascism is, how religion is involved, how atheism is involved, and some completely secular arguments that can be used to try to sway people.

II. What Is Fascism?

Since fascism as a term has been used unfortunately frequently in a way that cheapens its meaning, I figured I’d provide an outline of what it is. So I’ve borrowed from three main sources in order to outline common (but not necessarily universal) characteristics of fascism:

Fascism pushes for a national rebirth through a charismatic sort of populist nationalism, and it redefines basic elements of society by changing who counts as a citizen, running counter to Enlightenment values, challenging individuality by encouraging people to subsume to a singular national will, and rejecting traditional authority and systems while still appealing to traditional values. Fascism is anti-capitalist in many senses; anti-communism; typically focused on racial, ethnic, and/or national hierarchies (particularly since the nation relies on the race); and militaristic in the sense that it focuses on subsuming one’s own will and willingness to sacrifice oneself.

I’ve created a longer list of the characteristics gathered from the three sources I’ve used for this (Umberto Eco, Robert O. Paxton, and Roger Griffin) here.

III. The Appeal of Fascism

This is quite a lengthy topic, so unfortunately I’m going to have to shorten it to cover the basics of the post-WWI struggles with social, political, and economic issues across a handful of countries. A lot of Germany’s are probably well-known— skyrocketing inflation, demilitarization, reparations, sexual laxness (for the time), the “stab-in-the-back” myth, the presence of French soldiers from Africa in the Rhineland, lost territories, significant shortage of working-age men, the aftereffects of the flu, the rise of communism in the east, etc. Italy also did not gain territory that they felt they deserved and went through unemployment crises, strikes, debt from the war, conflict from far-left groups, and more.

In Romania, fascist movements often took from the college population, where students’ prospects and abilities to acquire good jobs upon graduation seemed slim and fear of Bolshevism (and therefore the Jews supposedly behind it) also created extreme resentment against the overrepresented Jewish college students. Romanian peasants were also not satisfied by land reform, meant to advantage them compared to the ethnic Germans and Hungarians that held the land. Slovakia lost a great deal of its civil servants when they returned to their ethnic homeland, Hungary, and it was also notably poorer than the other half of newly-formed Czechoslovakia. Many Czechs filled the gaps, creating worry of Czechs subsuming Slovaks. The religious differences (Protestant Czechs and Catholic Slovaks, predominantly), the same rate of taxes while Slovaks generally earned less, and the fear of Czechs being able to overrun their production also led to increased favor for the new Slovak fascist party. Hungary underwent three different governments from 1918 to 1920; lost a lot of minorities to emigration while also gaining refugees who were often bureaucrats or aristocracy, not filling the job deficit left behind; had a successful communist takeover as the second of the three governments that was short-lived due to foreign intervention and occupation on top of internal resistance but still left food shortages and disgruntled peasants; and a third, right-wing leader that allowed a platform for the increasingly popular fascists but also enacted a White Terror to purge Bolsheviks and Jews. Finally, what was in the 30s referred to as Yugoslavia— extremely ethnically diverse with groups that had fought against one another in WWI, dissatisfaction with Serbian domination of administration, unhappiness among Muslims about living in a Christian state, and paralyzed government.

So there’s quite a bit here in the countries I’ve chosen to focus on historically, but the common themes can be seen. Religious and ethnic differences are fairly common as factors, as are financial issues and massive social and geographic changes. The extreme difference in pre- and post-war societies led to discontent with established systems that appeared unable to handle the new challenges, sparking interest in alternative paths of government. While socialism, communism, and anarchism all gained a number of followers, the fear of these also spurred people toward the right, particularly given existing anti-Semitism and the tendency to blame communism on Jews. From the start, it’s clear that there are… a wide variety of options for why people felt inclined to throw their weight behind the fascists, and yes, religious differences are one of those. This isn’t surprising given religion’s importance in people’s lives, but I’d also like to state that I’m not blaming religion for fascism. There are a host of other reasons why people went for these movements, and as I’ll discuss later, fascism doesn’t necessarily need religion to function.

IV. Fascism and Christianity

Since fascism is initially a Western phenomenon, it shouldn’t be surprising that if it were to appeal to a religion, it would appeal to the predominant one of the region. But as I alluded to in the previous section, even an appeal to Christianity really isn’t simple at all— mostly-Catholic Slovaks saw their denomination as a mark of distinction from their Czech neighbors, leading to the Slovak People’s Party being characterized by its Catholicism whereas other fascist parties would lean more toward Protestantism or Orthodoxy. As compared to the Slovak People’s Party, led by two Catholic priests over the course of its lifetime, the Nazis had active issues with Catholicism among members in some cases. In Gitta Sereny’s book Into That Darkness, she interviewed a camp commandant, Franz Stangl, who was an Austrian Catholic. After Nazis annexed Austria, Stangl speaks of the issue he faced as a Catholic:

“It was only very shortly after this that I was ordered to sign a paper certifying that I was prepared to give up my religion.”

“What exactly did it say on the paper?”

“It said that I affirmed that I was a Gottgläubiger [believer in God] but agreed to break my affiliation to the Church.”

Stangl’s religious belief was important, but his loyalty to another overarching system— the Church— was a threat to the total consolidation of power for Nazis. So even with the religious factor to fascist popularity, there really isn’t consistency across the board. That said, there is a wrench to throw in here, which is that even sects that were actively disliked by the denomination with power still sometimes agreed with and worked with them. Again from Sereny’s book:

“We talked for a moment and then she pointed to a child – well, it looked like a small child – lying in a basket. ‘Do you know how old he is?’ she asked me. I said no, how old was he? ‘Sixteen,’ she said. ‘He looks like five, doesn’t he? He’ll never change, ever. But they rejected him.’ [The nun was referring to the medical commission.] ‘How could they not accept him?’ she said. And the priest who stood next to her nodded fervently. ‘Just look at him,’ she went on. ‘No good to himself or anyone else. How could they refuse to deliver him from this miserable life?’ “This really shook me,” said Stangl. “Here was a Catholic nun, a Mother Superior, and a priest. And they thought it was right. Who was I then, to doubt what was being done?”

I’m not citing this to blame all Catholics or even all clergy for aligning with these views. But this is a case in which some clergy members agree with the Nazis on Aktion T4, in which the disabled were murdered often by carbon dioxide asphyxiation. Stangl, having had a moral dilemma about his work, becomes convinced once he hears their thoughts on the matter. Continuing on with the messiness, Nazi Germany also contained the persecution of Christians by Christians— Jehovah’s Witnesses are a prominent example, but even Protestants who disagreed with the Party (such as ones seen in the Confessing Church) faced harsh ramifications. So the thing that I wanted to point out is that religion is not entirely a unifying factor, nor is it inherently a divisive one either. While Catholics weren’t favored, some still sided with the Nazis on issues such as this one. Meanwhile, fellow Protestants could find themselves against the wall if they were openly critical of the regime.

To switch tack a little, though, I’ll also address two somewhat common occurrences among European Christians of the time, which are anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. My distinction here is ‘against the religious people’ and ‘against the ethnicity’ respectively. There are some very far-reaching roots of anti-Judaism in particular that go back well before Christianity existed, and that’s not a topic for this post. However, it clearly survived well into Christian-dominated Europe, and there are a few key aspects I’d like to cover, those being blood libel, desecration of the host, and usury/money-lending. The first is an accusation of the ritual torture and sacrifice of Christian children at Passover, and while one of the first prominent cases was in the mid-1100s, the accusation still persisted well into the 1930s with Der Stürmer. The second is a continuation of the deicide charge, in which Jews are collectively blamed for the murder of Jesus, and desecration of the host is the false accusation of Jews gathering and stabbing communion wafers, which were (per transubstantiation) supposed to be Jesus’s actual body. Deicide as a concept still exists today; one of my professors, upon telling his grandmother that he was studying related subjects, was told that ‘the Jews killed Jesus’, still persisting with an idea of perpetual guilt. The third is somewhat complicated, but to shorten it down, being a money-lender was not a desirable job (especially since charging interest was seen poorly), and so the job often got left to Jews. Due to already having connections with Jewish and Muslim merchants elsewhere, they sometimes managed to be quite successful, with the unfortunate catch that no one likes their creditors. And when the debtors happen to be quite powerful, they can expel their creditors from the country in order to not pay them back, although naturally there were a wide variety of actions from people with less power as well.

Anti-Semitism is a more historically modern concept, although one that does draw upon some of these older things. While one could escape being Jewish in older times by converting to Christianity, anti-Semitism makes such an escape impossible. An individual is born Jewish and, no matter what country they’re in or what language they speak or if they practice that faith, they are Jewish still— and not only that, but they are often Jewish rather than being the nationality of the country they live in. Ideas of unchangeable, inescapable racial identity became increasingly popular in the 1800s and naturally retained popularity through following times, including practices of phrenology, eugenics, etc. So what does an inescapable racial and ethnic identity have to do with Christianity? One of the most prevalent racial depiction of Jews of the time includes a dirty, ragged man with stereotypical features and often in connection to money and to other Jews. For example, some drawings depicting the Dreyfus Affair portrayed Dreyfus looking back at other Jews like Karl Marx— indicating a loyalty to other Jews over one’s own nation and the global Jewish plot of communism. The idea of a sinister interconnectedness of global Jewish communities was also present in earlier history, when blood libel was considered a coordinated effort among Europe’s Jews. The depictions with money persist from old stereotypes around money-lending, and the figure’s ragged appearance is connected with their life in Eastern Europe, an area that many fled to after being expelled in earlier eras.

So it’s a history of Jewish and Christian relations that lends quite a bit to some modern anti-Semitic tropes, and some of these tropes and the religious ones can be seen across denominations in the 1900s— for example, I mentioned Der Stürmer earlier, which largely had a Protestant audience to work with, but the sentiment could easily be found in countries like Poland and Romania, which leaned toward different denominations with their fascist groups. So even though there were ideological differences, interfaith persecution, etc., there were also common attitudes to pull from, including this one.

I’m going to use some of the lesser-known fascist parties to make a point about the differences, however:

• Arrow Cross Party. A Hungarian fascist party that was officially Roman Catholic, “a-Semitic” (Ferenc Szálasi argued that the country must be devoid of Jews and Arabs entirely), anti-capitalist and anti-communist but also pro-land reform, and focused on racial superiority.
• Iron Guard/Legion of the Archangel Michael. A Romanian fascist party that was actually a bit of an outlier in that it was more explicitly religious (one goal was to bring the entire nation closer to God in a spiritual nation rebirth) and actually had a… quite different overall history with women. The party was Eastern Orthodox, anti-communist and anti-capitalist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Magyar.
• Slovak People’s Party. Despite being officially Catholic like the Arrow Cross Party (and actually led by two priests), this group was also anti-Magyar on top of being anti-communist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Semitic.
• Ustaše. A Croatian Roman Catholic fascist party that was anti-Serbian, anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist and anti-communist, and anti-Slavic (since they viewed Croats as coming from more Germanic roots). They were situationally anti-Catholic (persecuting those who didn’t accept papal infallibility) and typically anti-Orthodox but tolerant of Muslims unless they held opposing political views.

So these groups really aren’t religiously or even ideologically unified in multiple cases. For example, there was a sort of rivalry between the fascists in Hungary and Romania. Both sided with Hitler, believing that he would win the war, but their hope in siding with him was that they would either gain or retain land such as Transylvania (which Romania had obtained after WWI, taken from Hungary). Additionally, toward the end of the war when Hitler’s loss was seen as inevitable, Romania’s Antonesçu refused to deport some Jewish Romanians to Auschwitz by using the excuse of the weather, although it’s more likely that he wanted to appear distant from Germany’s war crimes, especially to keep Transylvania out of Hungary’s hands in the event of a post-war border reformation. Religion did not create any real friendliness or alliance between these groups; the Nazis were still anti-Slavic (and not particularly thrilled about some Christian denominations) and the Romanians were still anti-Magyar. Therefore, it’s more fair to say that religion is, if anything, more of an internal unity tool rather than anything creating any grand cohesion— and even then, the Ustaše persecuted fellow Catholics while accepting many Muslims.

As a result, I’m not going to just blame these sentiments on Christianity. People were against the Jewish religion before Christianity ever existed, and it’s a pretty unprovable what-if game to imagine if equally harmful ideas would have arisen if Christianity had never come to dominate Europe, particularly if we try to figure out if the 1800s’ racial and ethnic ideology would have come to exist in the form it did as well. Ultimately, there really is no way to show what would have happened for sure, but existing biases could easily have worsened without Christianity. On top of that, having the same religion didn’t always matter to these fascist groups, even within the same borders.

V. Non-Religious Binding Factors of Historical Fascism

So it’s not easy to detangle these from religion just as it’s not easy to detangle them from other pervasive things such as politics and economy, but these are ones that (unlike something like desecrating the host) really don’t need a particular religious belief or necessarily one at all to buy into these. The arguments about finance also fall under this category, but considering that I had notes on religious association with the origin, I thought to include that information there. As seen in my second section, there are plenty of elements of fascism that don’t have any particular religious or irreligious agenda inherently. Even if there are religious or irreligious roots for some of the specific kinds of bigotry I’ll also list, they don’t require a faith or lack thereof in order to agree with them.

• Anti-communism/-capitalism. Part of this was rooted in anti-Semitism, since communism was often considered a Jewish plot, but there was also a fear of violent revolution as happened in Russia. Combatting this perceived threat was a trait of many historical fascists, and modern ones may follow or at least allude to it as something threatening (see: “Cultural Marxism”). Additionally, many groups favored corporatism over capitalism, which was often seen as materialistic.
• Anti-democracy. As part of the defining characteristic of a national leader embodying the nation’s destined rebirth, democracy falls by the wayside in favor of following these dictatorial leaders. Even in early stages of fascism, votes were sometimes obtained through intimidation.
• Anti-Semitism. This one’s pretty clear. Considering how widespread the sentiment was and how wrapped up it was in other factors like anti-communism and ethnic superiority, it’s no surprise to find this one across nations.
• Antiziganism. The Romani people have long faced (and still face) quite a lot of prejudice. During WWII, they were systematically murdered by nations such as Germany and Croatia, and modern neo-Nazis and fascists have sometimes named Romani people in hateful messages.
• National superiority and heroism. Some idealized nation or homeland is often placed at the fore, as is the concept of contributing everything, even your life, to your people and your land.
• Racism. This probably doesn’t need to be expounded on much, since racial hierarchy, particularly in a eugenicist context, was very common among these groups and still is.
• Toxic masculinity and misogyny. Unfortunately all too common all over the political spectrum, but particularly prevalent among fascists. Traditional roles and expectations for women popped up in historical groups and they’re still here now, with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer openly disapproving of women voting, for example. Toxic masculinity goes hand-in-hand with the ideas of militarism and heroism as well as the hierarchy placing men over women.

Even if some of these are deeply connected to religious history— such as anti-Semitism— they’re all able to be held with or without religion, unlike explicitly religious or irreligious arguments. All of these on top of some of the earlier characteristics I mentioned simply don’t rest on an individual’s religious stance. In order to convince someone of antiziganism, you don’t need to appeal to the crucifixion legend about their ancestor crafting the nails used on the cross; you could focus on racial purity, their ‘backward’ culture, etc. The sentiment is the same regardless of how it’s justified.

VI. Fascism and Non-Christian Religions

For this one, I have two main examples: the exploration of “pagan” ideology and symbolism by people in Nazi Germany and the modern neo-Nazi Varg Vikernes. In regard to the former, a contemporaneous movement called Ariosophy shared quite a few of the same racial and ideological values. Some individuals did support the growth of Nazi groups, although many were later persecuted despite doing so. Additionally, there were high-ranking Nazis with somewhat of a keen interest in the occult, although for the most part, it went nowhere (especially given the short lifespan of the “Thousand-Year Reich”). As for Vikernes, he’s open about his esoteric and Odinist beliefs, demonstrating that one does not need to even be a Christian in order to be a Nazi (and we’ll see another example of this later).

Some Islamic groups have also raised questions about adherence to a fascist ideology, but I’m frankly not qualified in the slightest to say much about it. The existence of the possibility, however, does seem to signify once again that we cannot and should not be limiting fascism to purely a Christian movement.

VII. Fascism and Atheism

I’ve mentioned some people in this post that have been, erroneously or not, associated with atheism. One was the sort of kickstarter for this post— Hitler. I was reading over Richard Carrier’s take on the Table Talks and found myself as frustrated with that as I was with people claiming that Hitler was definitely an atheist. My personal stance on that one is too long for the scope of this post, but suffice it to say that figuring out some of the man’s personal stances can be an utter mess. That said, there are absolutely some fascists that were or are atheists. One of the most prominent was Mussolini, who had a very long and complicated history with the Church but spent at least most of his life publicly or privately a non-believer. To appeal to fellow Italians, he often put up a faithful façade; however, many of his writings were anti-clerical at least and sometimes outright atheistic. According to Heike Bock’s work in "Secularization of the modern conduct of life? Reflections on the religiousness of early modern Europe", some of the irreligious groups in Nazi Germany also avoided being banned by working with volkisch groups that were either tolerated or actually supported by the Nazis.

So we do have examples of historical atheists being fascists or cooperating with them, and unfortunately, we have modern ones as well. Richard Spencer is an openly-atheist neo-Nazi, probably best known for his role in 2017’s Unite the Right rally. Before anyone mentions it, he also claims to find value in Christianity, but the thing about fascists is that they’re often liars— so while it’s possible that Spencer finds no value in Christianity but says he does, isn’t an atheist but says he is, etc., we don’t know the exact case. The fact that he publicly proclaims to be an atheist, though, is telling in itself even if he tries to appeal to Christians as well. Also, it’s not as if publicly religious fascist leaders didn’t do the same, as mentioned with Nazi Germany in the previous section.

VIII. Conclusion

So hopefully the thread of my thoughts is clear here. You don’t really need religion to be a fascist— what you need is a politically expedient manner of appealing to people’s frustrations, fears, and common values, which can include but does not have to include religion. Even if you do use religion, it isn’t necessarily really about protecting the faith. Again, we can look at the Ustaše, who were willing to persecute fellow Catholics. At the same time, though, it is valuable to recognize that common institutions like nationality, religious identity, race, ethnicity, etc. can be exploited so that we can learn to tell when that exploitation is happening and stop it. We’ve seen multiple sides of the aisle become involved in fascist ideology and movements, so we should take caution and realize that we are not immune. Furthermore, if we are going to make criticisms of groups or individuals that do or did participate, then we should proceed with caution to ensure that we’re not labelling people unfairly, not casting too wide a net, but also not failing to call out the behavior when we see it.

Edit to mention that a lot of the above information is from my classes, which I'm avoiding naming for the sake of anonymity.

This will be a recurring feature of the sub. Sample Size One is intended for individual stories with subjects of relevance to the Subreddit. There's always a place for quantifiable data, but without remembering the people in the discussion, we're just pounding our heads against a wall.

This can be from the outside looking in, the inside looking in, the inside looking out, or the outside looking out. We'll try to spread topics around so they can draw in different sub-groups, and if you have suggestions, we'd love to hear those too!

The current topic is Spiritual Warfare Culture. However that's affected your life, we'd like to encourage discussion. This can include anything from pop culture to real life exorcism, targeted proselytizing, or cultural stereotypes based in beliefs in spiritual warfare.

Note: While we encourage engagement, dismissal and gatekeeping are not going to be tolerated. Since some of these topics can be a little raw for people involved, stories might sound a little hostile towards a group; we want everyone to understand that the whole point here is for a little more personal of discussion.

That said: No bigotry, targeted attacks, or other discrimination will be accepted. Moderation will be based around furthering dialogue from ALL sides of the conversation.

Hello there,

I found myself in an uncomfortable position recently and was wondering how some of you handle similar predicaments or if you might help me figure out an approach.

My wife and I have been married almost 7 years and we now have a 20 month old son. We both come from religious families, though my upbringing was more "hardcore" as I attended an evangelical church while she grew up going to a liberal mainline denomination. Religion was always more of a cultural/background thing for her, whereas I was taught that it should be the most important thing in my life. As a consequence of it being more important to me (and more damaging, IMO) I am more hostile to religion than my wife, despite our beliefs being fairly similar at this point in our lives. I would call myself an agnostic atheist and my wife something like an "apathetic agnostic cultural Christian". She really doesn't care about religious stuff much, but she likes going to church and seeing people (and I like the methodist preacher's sermons and singing songs).

I wouldn't necessarily describe myself as a "closeted atheist", but I wouldn't describe myself as "out" either. If asked bluntly to share my beliefs I would, but most people avoid such direct conversations, especially family. So it's probably just a matter of time before my parents figure out where I am (if they haven't already) but I'm not looking to force anything or have a confrontation. I plan to let natural conversations reveal my position, I guess.

Anyway, here's the situation:

A couple weeks back my parents were visiting us at our house and my wife made dinner. We set the table, got my son set up in his high chair, sat down to eat... and then my parents just sit there looking at me.

Now having a prayer before dinner isn't weird to me at all, I grew up with it every day of my life. We even took turns saying the pre-meal prayer when I was a kid growing up. I'm practiced in the art, but for the last however many years at family dinners and holidays I've been satisfied with simply listening respectfully.

But here they are, sitting at our table, not touching the food, just looking at me.

Oh, shit. I think. This is my house. I guess I'm expected to run this thing.

Fuck.

In the past I've just faked it, but I've become comfortable enough with myself and value honesty enough that I don't want to pretend. So I did the "prayer" while trying to leave the God stuff out and just start with "we are thankful for..." or "we give thanks for..." and keep it non-supernatural. But it wound up falling apart as I fell into old patterns, including asking somebody to "be with" my brothers and grandparents. I felt ridiculous.

Here is the other thing: I actually think a daily gratitude ritual can be a very good thing. I would actually like to provide my children with an example of verbally expressing thanks and appreciation. Plus I don't want them to be completely clueless at holidays and dinner at grandpa and grandma's. But I can't honestly do it in a traditional "give thanks to God" manner if I don't believe there's anybody listening. It feels preposterous, but more importantly, it feels dishonest.

So my request of you fine people is for any advice or experience you have dealing with similar situations. Or even better, helping me come up with some "touchstone phrases" I can use as part of a "saying thanks" ritual in our house before meals. How could I structure or phrase it to somewhat mirror the ritualistic formula of prayer so as not to make my parents feel uncomfortable? If they want to pray while I simply "give thanks" I don't want to stop that. But I don't want to lie either.

My current idea is just "we are thankful for A because X, we are thankful for B because Y, etc." but I feel like I need an opener. "Amen" as a closer seems fine, as far as I know it works to simply affirm what came before . Let me know if "amen" means some religious shit I'm not aware of.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for the advice/ideas.

I originally posted this on the r/atheism page. However, I would say about 90% of them are just not interested in knowing what theists believe and prefer to indulge in their favourite caricatures.

Some bits are quite provocative, but I think for good reason. It took me a while to write. What do you think?

"Often, in having discussions with atheists/agnostics, they characterise belief in God as being equivalent to the belief in Santa, fairies, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc...I can understand why many of them would find it comforting to think that that's all they have to deal with. Or they bring up many of the mythological figures/'gods' of the past - Zeus, Odin, etc...They also tend to think of God has an anthropomorphic psychological subject in the same way we are, and who exists alongside other lesser beings but is distinguished from them only in terms of his 'maximal qualities.’

Firstly, those 'gods' are not what we (the great theistic creeds) mean by God. We need to understand the qualitative conceptual gap between the mythical and devotional stories that people have told about their ‘gods’ throughout history, and the ontological and modal claims made about the God of classical theism.

The most important starting point, is to realise that God isn't 'a being' among other beings. It's not like there is a 'supernatural realm' out beyond the physical world, and God is some object that exists within this realm. Those 'gods' would be contingent, finite, cosmic-superhero demiurges like Zeus/Thor, etc... God, however, doesn't exist within anything more fundamental than him. Rather, all things exist within him, and yet, he is distinct from the world. He is pure actuality (no potentialities and limits), absolutely simple (non-composite), the transcendent mind at the foundational of all things, Actus Essendi Subsistens (the subsistent act of Being/Existence itself), and absolutely necessary. He is the foundational, uncaused-cause of all things outside himself who is continually creating and sustaining the physical realm in existence at every moment.

This, by the way, isn't some retreat in the face of modern science. Whichever physical or cosmogonic theory of the universe turns out to be true, has very little to do with Creation - which is explicitly concerned with ontological contingency/dependency. Even if the universe were eternal, it would still be dependent upon God at every instant. When I say 'first cause,' I don't just mean temporally first, but ontologically first. Creation has to be understood not as a change, but as a relation. When we ‘create’ something (e.g. a cake), we are changing things that already exist (flour, sugar, eggs, etc…) into something else (cake batter, etc…). However, when God creates ex nihilo, he is putting the entirety of being into existence qua being (the entire substance) - finitely and ab extra. Anything ‘external’ to God would therefore be something created by him. Therefore, the created order bears a real relation to God, but God only bears a logical relation to the world.

If God ceased to exist for even an instant, the entirety of reality would collapse into nothingness. He is the simple and unified unconditioned reality of being, consciousness, goodness, and reason, of which we participate as finite, limited instances of his infinite and unlimited being.

One of God's features which is extremely important is his absolute simplicity. God isn't composed of any discrete parts whatsoever - not even metaphysical parts or distinct properties. Since wholes are more fundamental than their parts and vice versa, if he were composite, then there would have to be a cause ontologically posterior to him to account for how those parts are combined at any instant - in which case, he wouldn't be the first cause. Therefore, by virtue of divine simplicity, God's attributes are just different ways of speaking about him, and these are predicated of him analogically. God's existing, isn't something different from his loving, which isn't something different from his Goodness, which isn't something different from his omnipotence, which isn't something different from his wisdom, etc...

This is what distinguishes the God of classical theism from deism, polytheism, pantheism, panentheism, etc.

Once you understand God in this way, it completely forestalls all common objections to God’s existence. Take a classic example involving morality - the Euthyphro dilemma. This asks: is something good because God says so, or does God say so because it’s already good? The former part of the ‘dilemma’ implies that God is some ‘moral agent’ out there who arbitrarily commands rules according to his own personal whim. The latter part implies that there is a moral standard that is a more fundamental reality, and God is participating in this standard. However, on classical theism and divine simplicity, this objection completely misses the point. God isn’t a ‘moral agent’ in the same way we are. He isn’t ‘a good being,’ is is subsistent Goodness itself. The created order therefore participates in this goodness.

Some of you might object and say: "Why can't the universe as a whole just be necessary?" Well, this has to do with the nature of contingency and the 'ontological poverty' of all things physical. Something that is contingent (or dependent) has an explanation or cause outside itself. The universe includes: conditionality, composition, dissolution, impermanence, extension, time, space, matter, divisibility, geometric properties, topology, limits, boundaries, mutability, contrast, exclusion, etc. All these things cry out for an explanation beyond themselves. They could have been otherwise. They certainly could have failed to exist. Therefore, when you trace things down to their deepest explanation, you'll arrive at the purely actual, absolutely simple, absolutely necessary, subsistent act of Being itself. These are all just different ways of describing the Unconditioned Reality that is God - which is the path that reason naturally takes you. Just positing that the universe or its ultimate constituents is 'everlasting' would be to endorse a kind of 'absolute contingency' or a 'existential necessity.' It just happens to exist for no rhyme or reason (as a brute fact) and it doesn't seem to explain itself better than any other contingency. However, that would violate the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It's also no good to say that God would also be an unintelligible brute fact, because by virtue of divine simplicity, God's attributes are identical to God himself, and therefore God would be subsistent Reason/Intelligence itself.

Compare this to a favourite objection raised by atheists: the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” The FSM is a finite and contingent entity. It’s composed out of matter, and exists in time and space. It is composite (made up of different parts such as spaghetti, meatballs, sauce), has geometric properties and vertices. It’s a completely changeable and conditioned entity. Now, what some atheists will do at this point is say: “no, my FSM is immaterial, it is non-composite, it is eternal, unchanging, perfect, etc…” - stripping away all the things that make the FSM contingent. However, they’re not being clever, they’re actually describing God. They’ve just changed the label.

One point that needs to be emphasised is this: claims about God are either apophatic or cataphatic. The former describes what God is not, and the latter describes positive attributes about God (what God is). However, when theists for example say that God is timeless, spaceless, immaterial, etc...atheists tend to interpret this as an ontological privation - thinking that God is bereft of some capacity. However, that couldn't be more false. God is these things because he is unlimited and unconditioned. He is perfect. He is not bound by anything more fundamental than him. It follows, therefore, that he has will. God's will is also not a voluntarist one. He never acts arbitrarily or whimsically. Whatever world God decides to create is done so according to a rationale and best realises a specific ultimate good beyond itself, which is kept in conformity with the highest Good of the divine nature - the 'intellectualist' model of freedom. On this view, the will follows upon the intellect and has its natural appetite for the good. Since God has intellect and will, and is therefore loving, God is personal. However, this again has to be understood by analogy.

By the way, what I’ve presented is only a very brief summary of much longer arguments. If you are seeking to understand the other side, you should consult the strongest possible arguments that they have to offer. Not crude straw men, cliché slogans, and rhetorical overkill. I'm extremely disappointed by today's atheism - especially on the Internet. Never have I encountered such theological and philosophical incompetence and complete ignorance of intellectual history and tradition. They always harp on about how much they value science and logic, before going on to demonstrate their complete lack of familiarity with the details of the arguments. When they don't understand something, they accuse the theist of 'word-salad' instead of entertaining the possibility that they're the ones who are actually clueless. They use the words 'evidence' and 'demonstrate' in question-begging and self-refuting ways - without realising it. Heck, I'm a theist, and even I can come up with better objections to these arguments (even though I still think they fail). Modern popular atheism isn't the bastion of rationality, but a therapy for those who think that all rationality, science, morality, beauty, consciousness, etc. is ultimately the result of brute fortuity; and yet happily embrace these things only to concede their ultimate illusoriness. They have their cake and eat it too. It doesn’t really surprise me why atheism/secularism is rampant today. We’re seeing the bitter fruits of modernity - the grand narrative of the triumph of reason and science over ‘irrational’ faith. Anyone, however, who has the slightest idea about history knows that this is nothing but a fabrication of the Enlightenment, that has metastasised into the present day. It’s really the Enlightenment that recked havoc on the foundations of science, reason, and morality - abusing them to no end. We may have improved our material condition, but we’ve lost our sense of wisdom. Such a shame…"

Preface: I had some thoughts about this while reading Atrum's thread on the first way, and was originally not planning to pursue it, but then in chat, u/airor and u/Atrum_Lux_Lucis were discussing a similar topic. Due to the fact that everyone involved is working, Atrum thought an OP on the topic would be ideal. Seeing as I'm an Atheist, I'm not really invested, my brain just wandered down this rabbit hole.

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For starters, a summary of Aquinas's First Way

• In the world, we can see that at least some things are changing.
• Whatever is changing is being changed by something else.
• If that by which it is changing is itself changed, then it too is being changed by something else.
• But this chain cannot be infinitely long, so there must be something that causes change without itself changing.
• This everyone understands to be God.

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And the definition of Pantheism.

a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.

​

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Now, here's where we go from Aquinas to my train of thought, which ran at least somewhat parallel with that of u/airor.

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• For God to truly be an unmoved mover, there can be no point in (for lack of a better word) time, at which God goes from Potential Creator to Actual Creator. That is to say, God's actualization as Creator must be an eternal state.
• For God's actualization as Creator to be infinite, at least an element of Creation must be co-infinite with God.
• That which must be actualized by God for other movers to begin acting upon each other is that which we know as "the universe".
• The universe and God are co-infinite actualizations.
• That which is infinite is God.
• The universe is God.

Now, this is mostly for discussion/debate/fun with epistemology. I would expect there's some good arguments against this from within a Thomistic perspective, and there might be more ramifications from outside a Thomistic perspective.

Edited to change some uses of "Eternal" to "Infinite" since some digging suggests that there's a bit more semantic difference in Catholicism than common use.

We'd like to introduce a new recurring themed discussion topic called Sample Size One. The idea here is that we'll pick a topic, and sub visitors will be encouraged to discuss their own personal experiences with that topic. All anecdotes and crosstalk, from inside and out, whatever the topic is.

We all love hard, quantifiable data, studies, logic, and debate, but a lot of these topics really do affect people, and if our only experience with the topic is overwhelmingly positive or negative, it can be hard to remember how it might have affected others.

We don't have a first topic picked yet, and we'd like to wait to kick this off until we've got a few more people here checking in, but we also don't want to wait too long, because we do feel like it'll be a good way to use the space for more than just an echo chamber.

We'd love to hear input from the community as it grows and shows up, especially if there's any specific topics people might like to hear about. An example that was discussed in Mod Chat was "Spiritual Warfare Culture", and a bit of a mock-up OP was made.

Sample Size One: Spiritual Warfare Culture

This will (hopefully) be a recurring feature of the sub. Sample Size One is intended for individual stories with subjects of relevance to the Subreddit. There's always a place for quantifiable data, but without remembering the people in the discussion, we're just pounding our heads against a wall.

This can be from the outside looking in, the inside looking in, the inside looking out, or the outside looking out. We'll try to spread topics around so they can draw in different sub-groups, and if you have suggestions, we'd love to hear those too!

The current topic is Spiritual Warfare Culture. However that's affected your life, we'd like to encourage discussion.

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Let us know what you think.

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