Report details sexual abuse by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania's Catholic Church

1. Do you have evidence for this claim (that "God does not exist"), Or is it simply a blind faith? In order to know for certain that God does not exist, You would have to know everything about the universe; otherwise, How could you be sure that God is not found in some area of the universe that you have not explored? And you"d also have to know about everything that is potentially beyond the universe " otherwise, How could you know that God is not found "outside" the physical universe? You"d have to know absolutely everything about everything in order to know that there is no God: in which case you would be omniscient " one of the aspects of deity. So you would essentially have to be God in order to know that there is no God " in which case God does exist. This is yet one more example of the fact that atheists are irrational; they just don"t think things through. Their beliefs are arbitrary (without logical justification). 2. What the priests did is totally inconsistent with the morality a Christian professes to hold dear and it should be condemned. The usual attempt at a logical argument fails. It goes back to the pagan Greek philosopher Epicurus (341"270 BC), Who was cited by the early Christian apologist Lactantius (AD 240"320)26 then used by the Scottish "Enlightenment" skeptic David Hume (1711"1776). In schematic form, The argument could be written thus: If God exists, Then God is all-powerful, All-knowing, And morally perfect. If God is all-powerful, Then He has the power to eliminate all evil. If God is all-knowing, Then He knows when evil exists. If God is morally perfect, Then He has the desire to eliminate all evil. Evil exists. If evil exists and God exists, Then either God doesn"t have the power to eliminate all evil, Or doesn"t know when evil exists, Or doesn"t have the desire to eliminate all evil. Therefore, God doesn"t exist. The first premise describes the Judeo-Christian God as revealed in the Bible. Premises 2"4 are plausibly held to be what the Judeo-Christian God would do with such attributes. The first two are held to be the Judeo-Christian premises, While #5 is indisputable (although only truly justifiable under a Judeo-Christian world view). So antitheists draw the conclusion that God cannot have the attributes that the Bible reveals about Him (#6), And conclude that such a God doesn"t exist (#7). Some theistic philosophers try to retreat on #1, By denying that God is all powerful, Such as "open theism" and "process theology". But this is not the true God of the Bible. However, Christian philosophers have long argued that Premise 4 should be extended to: 4R42;. If God is morally perfect, Then He has the desire to eliminate all evil"unless He has a good reason for allowing it. Then there is no incompatibility with #5. Since no antitheist can show that there is no possible good reason for allowing evil, Since that would be a universal negative, The argument collapses as logical disproof of theism. This was expressed in a wonderful book Dr A. E. Wilder-Smith (1915"1995): "This is how God triumphs over evil"not by "stopping" it, But by using it to His greater glory. "27 Later, We see some biblical reasons why God is permitting suffering. Indeed, Lactantius used much the same argument against Epicurus himself. Before that, We will argue that one good reason for God"s allowing evil in the world today is a just judgment resulting from the man"s sin (see Death and suffering is the penalty for sin). Apologists have also long pointed out that the argument doesn"t work for another reason. The existence of evil now would be incompatible with #4 only if it read: 4R43;. If God is morally perfect, Then He has the desire to eliminate all evil immediately. But is this really so? As will be shown (and was well explained by Daniel Defoe), For God to get rid of evil immediately, He would need to destroy all of us! With this understanding, We can correct #5 to: 5R42;. Evil exists for now but will one day be destroyed (as the Bible says); or God has not got rid of evil"yet! 1, 4/4R42; and 5R42; are certainly compatible. This is enough to show that atheists lack a logical case against God. But it is still important to go further and explain where evil came from, Why He allowed it, And what He is doing about it"and has already done about it. God originally created a perfect world, Described by God as "very good" (Genesis 1:31). So when God created moral beings, There was no actual evil. In fact, Evil is not a "thing" in itself, Even though it is real. Rather, Evil is the privation of some good that something ought to have, As Augustine pointed out. Considering a moral evil like murder, This is a removal of a "good" human life. Adultery is a privation of a good marriage. Good is fundamental and can exist in itself; evil cannot exist in itself. Evil is always a parasite on good. At the same time that God judged sin with death, He withdrew some of His sustaining power. Everything is running down because of sin. God has given us a taste of life without Him"a world full of violence, Death, Suffering, And disease. If God withdrew all of His sustaining power, The creation would cease to exist. Colossians 1:16"17 tells us that all things are held together, Right now, By the power of the Creator, The Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Hebrews 1:3). However, In one sense He is not holding it together perfectly, As He is deliberately letting things fall apart to give us a taste of what life is like without God. In other words, God is allowing us to experience what we wanted"life without God (cf. Romans 1:18"32). As far as a Christ that existed, As far as we know, The first author outside the church to mention Jesus is the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, Who wrote a history of Judaism around AD93. He has two references to Jesus. One of these is controversial because it is thought to be corrupted by Christian scribes (probably turning Josephus"s negative account into a more positive one), But the other is not suspicious " a reference to James, The brother of "Jesus, The so-called Christ". About 20 years after Josephus we have the Roman politicians Pliny and Tacitus, Who held some of the highest offices of state at the beginning of the second century AD. From Tacitus we learn that Jesus was executed while Pontius Pilate was the Roman prefect in charge of Judaea (AD26-36) and Tiberius was emperor (AD14-37) " reports that fit with the timeframe of the gospels. Pliny contributes the information that, Where he was governor in northern Turkey, Christians worshipped Christ as a god. Neither of them liked Christians " Pliny writes of their "pig-headed obstinacy" and Tacitus calls their religion a destructive superstition. I know a lot about Catholicism. They say salvation is by doing good. When the Bible says it is by faith and repentance. The Catholics baptize babies for salvation, But babies cannot understand salvation so when they die they go to heaven without baptism. Nowhere in the Bible will you see baptism of babies. Catholics say Mary was the mother of God and perfect yet she said in the Bible that she needed a Savior. There are many other doctrines the Catholics teach that are not Biblical.