Finally, I must add that I will never suspend my sense of skepticism. Professor Gerald Joyce encouraged me to retain my sense of skepticism (both from his literature and an e-mail correspondence). I do feel that I have to apply skepticism to everything, and not simply restrict it to scientific hypotheses.
I reordered what you said because of how I want to answer. First, I will never give up on my critical thinking and objectivism. I will never be cynical, however. And Skepticism is problematic. You see, skeptics take to doubt first. That is exceedingly unscientific. I stick to critical analysis because it allows me to be able to look into a subject with out making up my mind first.
Additionally, the book “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” (Gary Zukav) really helped me with my Atheism/Theism problem, it demonstrated to me just how wonderfully ordered the universe is. I went on to read many C.S. Lewis works “Mere Christianity”, “The Problem of Pain” and others to really solidify me into Christianity and then simply the Bible drove me home to Catholicism about 3 years ago.
Additionally, Stephen Hawking helped because he portrays the universe in such a beautiful way, similar to Gary Zukav, that it began to strike me that I could use the scientific method to approach philosophy as well as Theism.
And finally, for this first section, a book which is merely an introduction to philosophy ( “Philosophy” by Thomas D. Davis ) presents some extremely thought provoking theories and ideas in short fiction story form that are wonderful. One of my favorites is: “Surprise! It’s Judgment Day”. It is a 6 page discussion between Professor Martin, an Atheist, and God just after Prof Martin dies.
Some of these books are far from Christian, or Biblically founded for that matter, but they provided, for me, the foundations of theism which lead me to Catholicism.
My question concerns the veracity of Christianity, and more specifically, Catholicism. I am wondering why do people sincerely adhere to those belief systems. More importantly, why should I believe? How could I be sure that I am not believing in a delusion (such as young-Earth creationism and geocentrism, which people also sincerely believe)? What makes Chrisitianity itself a credible belief system?
One constant is that you cannot look at how fervently a person believes their belief-structure in order to see if that belief structure is sound or not. You have to critically judge it for yourself. Honestly, the questions you asked cannot be answered in one post online, for I asked myself these questions and it took me almost 3 years to come to a theism stand point, another year to come to Christian, then about another year of reading the bible to come to Catholicism.
The best thing I can say to you is start very broad, as you have. You say you are Agnostic. That means you believe that in this universe there is some sort of being which is more powerful than humans. Ask yourself logically, if all of creation has some purpose, flowers provide food for bees, trees provide nesting places and oxygen, water provides essentials for the ADP/ATP process as well as carving out earth and creating new life to perpetuate life on this planet, then what is the purpose for this supreme being? Either this being is worthless and lazy, and in this case you ought to be an atheist, or he has some purpose and he does “something” what that something is, you do not know.
Continue the line of reasoning. If this being exists and has a purpose of its own, what is that purpose? And would we be able to observe it carrying out this purpose?
An equally important question, “Why is it that human’s have this propensity to believe in something more powerful” you said that we have a propensity to fool ourselves. You are confusing two separate factions of the human psyche. The first part is the part of our minds which help us survive, if we walk in a dark room we imagine spiders on our legs when we brush against something soft (for me with a lot of leg hair and mild arachnophobia, this occurs often). This is the natural process of “fooling ourselves”. Which you spoke of, there is, however, another natural process of “belief”. This is spoken about in the book “Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief” by Andrew Newberg. I have not read all the way through this book yet (it’s sort of big) but I have been interested in how the anti-theists feel about the human propensity (that God placed in us, in my belief) to believe in God. This book is defiantly my next read as I think it will give me new insights how to argue against anti-theists.
I think that this propensity to believe in God is very important and is much more than just a “Propensity to fool oneself.”
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