Whatever happened to love? Do Catholics still talk about that? How about community? How about service to the needy? How about welcoming those who are in crisis? Why are Catholics so incredibly bored by Catholic Charities, arguably their most persuasive accomplishment?

Don't the teachings of Jesus offer some brilliant insights in to the human condition? We think that pursuing self interested agendas will get us what we seek, but somehow the act of surrender so often works so much better.

This is counter-intuitive genius which can be verified by any human being in their own personal experience. No need to believe in God, no need to accept anything on faith, no need to attend a church, no need to agree to or join anything. Wouldn't discussion of such topics be a more effective way to reach out to atheists?

I live two hours from the oldest church in America, a Catholic church in St. Augustine Florida. I have no interest in Mass, less interest in the clergy, and doctrines bore me. But the peace that vibrates off of that piece of property is impressive. Something is going on there that can't be easily explained.

As example, the squirrels in the park around the church walk right up to you and take nuts right out of your hand. To put this in context, my wife and I have raised hundreds of baby squirrels with great care, and they don't eat out of our hands once released.

How about this? The moderator of this site might declare a six month ban on God discussions. That would force us to remember that religion is about more than God talk, and these other topics are typically far more accessible to those who aren't believers.

A few years ago I was preparing to debate an atheist on the existence of God at my home church.

Wait, please, let's stop right here at the first sentence before diving right in to a lot of distracting details. Before we yet again debate the existence of God for the billionth time, could we please slow down for a moment and focus on the concept of existence?

Has anyone here noticed that the overwhelming vast majority of reality, space, does not fit neatly in to either the "exists" or "doesn't exist" categories? Whether one believes in God or not, shouldn't such a fact cause us some concern?

Is the assumption shared by both theists and atheists that a God can only exist or not, yes or no, one or the other, actually a reasonable assumption? Shouldn't we at least wonder about this?

Could it be that we are so very eager to repeat the same familiar competing answers contest that's been endlessly repeated for centuries that we have largely, or maybe completely, ignored investigating the validity of the question?

Doesn't the question matter, rather more than a little bit? If it should be true that the question being asked bears little resemblance to the nature of reality, (whether God created or not) doesn't that suggest that maybe ALL the competing answers could be hopelessly flawed?

Are we actually interested in a real inquiry? Or is the God debate kind of like a familiar card game where everyone knows the rules, and we just want to get on with playing the game again, because that's what is familiar and comfortable to us?

Hello
It might be that the unforgiven sin(against the Spirit) is the deliberate
leading of a child away from God, (as Christ eludes to)
Jesus can forgive the Jew or Gentile who does not accept him, and those who never knew him.
The atheist can be forgiven; not the person who deliberately tells a child to reject God.
An atheist who says they don't believe(might be saved ) but one who mocks God, plants disbelief into the mind of a child, is unrepentant and does not set the child free to seek God, that person is lost.

You make fundamental errors about Catholic moral theology. And then you reason from those errors.

For example that a five-year-old child could commit a mortal sin unintentionally.

"If you start with erroneous premises you will reach erroneous conclusions, not matter how good your logic might be."

I have no idea what this is in reference to, but I certainly agree with it.

If you start with erroneous premises you will reach erroneous conclusions, not matter how good your logic might be.

"Saying that Jesus was inspired by the devil is not saying anything about the Holy Spirit."

So is the Holy Ghost holier than Jehovah and Jesus, or is he simply an unforgiving sicko with a mean streak? Maybe instead of sending people to hell, he would do better by sending himself to anger management classes. On the one hand, he flies around like an oh so gentle little dove, but on the other, piss him off, and he'll cast you evermore alive into an eternal crematory. How to reconcile his gentle dove act with such eternal viciousness.

You're saying that Jesus blood didn't cover all sins,
one sin being so bad that even the blood of God could not atone for it. Does it not matter to you that, even if Hitchens did commit the unpardonable sin by not believing in God, he would have done so out of a good conscience, and therefore couldn't have done differently. I suppose that you hold that his intent was irrelevant? How about a five year old who picks up a strange book and reads the "wrong" blasphemous words, is he forevermore condemned alongside Hitchens? Surely, for a sin so serious, God should have gone all out to define it carefully, but he didn't. Maybe he was called away and never got back to it, or maybe he just didn't mean it as you took it. How can you be so certain that he is so bad?

I don't hold that your version of God is worth worshiping because I view your God as like a cat who crouches before mouse hole and captures his prey by surprise, so how about I just go ahead and say with KItchings that I don't believe that your God is inspired by good but by evil? In your view, that would suffice for the "unpardonable sin" would it it not? I didn't have to say those words, of course; I could have kept them to myself, but would that have gotten me off the hook? I'll put my thoughts a bit more succinctly: I regard your murderous deity as evil, which SURELY puts me in the same category as Hitchens in your mind. It simply doesn't work for me to be ordered to love a deity, ordered to walk a narrow path, and ordered to not, upon pain of
death, to stray off that part in some other direction unless I am given a good reason. Furthermore, it doesn't work for me to be endlessly threatened by some heavenly sadist. Your God's mercy is so worthless that if I had it and two dollars, I could afford a cup of cheap coffee, but then again, I could do the same thing if I only had the two dollars. Your God is a bully, and I hate bullies. Your God doesn't
give a rip about trying to understand you, me, or anyone else because he doesn't think we're worth understanding, he just wants to be brown-nosed upon pang of hellfire and to smile when we cringe. Ultimately, we don't matter to him. He's to being God like Trump is to being president. Maybe he can scare me into doing or that, but I won't love him, and I won't respect him.

Have learnt a lot from this conversation.

I really appreciate your concern and the trouble you have taken to give a lenghty answer. But you and I come from a different cultural background and we have a completely different view on religion and faith. Even if I were a believer (which I most certainly am not) we would represent two opposite views on the relation between faith and reason. For me reason comes first. I want to understand before I believe and I have many reasons not to. I am sure that you on the other hand wholeheartedly agree with Augustine's saying 'Believe so that you may understand'. In my view this is an uncritical acceptance of faith.
For Christians the referent of the word "God" is the God of the Bible. There you find the foundational experiences. But the Bible was written in a specific period of time and in a specific historical context. It needs to be interpreted to be relevant for our time and to make a discussion with non-believers possible. So a broader philosophical context is required, otherwise a discussion about faith is sterile. Entering into a discussion about religion is not a sign of intellectual or spiritual vanity but leads to progressive insight or to denial. Your faith, on the contrary, is very conservative (not to say fundamentalist) and naive. I shudder when I read that God wants his children to come to him by simple faith. A father doesn't want to keep his children ignorant; he wants them to grow up and leads them to the treshold of their own mind. That is exactly what my father did and why I do not believe.