God is not merely a greater version of us. The difference is of kind not degree. The Transfiguration gave us a blinding glimpse of that difference.
He Marks the Sparrow’s Fall
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Smile…there is no Hell.
The smiling face icon.
I’m reminded of a terribly horrifying end of life moment for an atheist that lived in our Assisted Living center.
He was whisked away unexpectedly and let our a howl that my manager explained she had never heard before or since, in her 31 years of nursing. Jan was a RN.
The pitch of the howl was unearthly, she told me. He coded at the home and she went in the ambulance with him to the ER. He died in the ER just after the howl.
No Hell?
Better re-examine Pascal’s wager dear atheist that read this blog.
No one creates anything out of any motivation other than love. And, if God does exist, then he is love and he can only be true to his nature. Of course, logic also compels the conclusion that God exists because not even your angry, yet wishful minds can hypothesize a material explanation for the creation of matter. So yes dear atheists, your little post if true.
Amen, Philip and FOS.
I may take time to search for this later, but does anyone here know of a psychological study of what drives atheists? It seems to this wholly unqualified analyst that, based on what I have read and heard from avowed atheists, they often seem to hate themselves, for which they blame the God they claim doesn’t exist. Am I watching too much Dr. Ray on EWTN?
The older I get, the less time I have to devote to faux erudite ranting of delusional people.
The difference is of kind not degree. This is the problem I always run into when arguing on some blog. People think we’re talking about a being or beings so powerful and so alien to us that we’d think of them as gods. Actually there are such beings, and they look like giant wheels or have four faces and gleam like brass, but that’s not even what we’re talking about. Even they are finite in some respect. Once you allow that we’re talking about an infinite being, then extreme otherness and extreme closeness aren’t contradictory. If you tell me that the being who created time and existence cares a lot about Middle-Eastern politics and our sex lives, I can only say “that surprises me”, not “that’s impossible”.
“No one creates anything out of any motivation other than love.”
That’s a really profound point.
“Atheists” fail to see that they spend a whole lot of personal time and effort trying to denounce something which they claim doesn’t exist.
I don’t take “atheists” too seriously either. My reason is they always resort to insults when they can’t prove their point validly.
“Atheist” are better off dedicating their life to denouncing fairies. It’s better use of their mental capacity. And It won’t leave them with the same bad after taste they get when they mock their Creator.
I may take time to search for this later, but does anyone here know of a psychological study of what drives atheists?
—————-
No study needed. It is self will—pride. They want to be their own god. The same motivation that is at the base of every sin. “20For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”—John 3:20-21
😃 not ex nihilo, but out of Love
There’s a risk in psychologizing it. We know that if God is just, he wouldn’t condemn a person because of a psychological trait. I could see atheism leading to a psychological state though. I see two different trends among the serious atheists. There are the scientific types who don’t believe in the supernatural, and there are the ones who talk mainly about how they’d hate God if He existed. We all suffer from pride, but I’d think the former has more intellectual pride and the latter more moral pride.