An atheist who wants to believe

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lonelyalgorithm

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So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
 
I don’t think any catholic can help you believe I think you’re going to have to ask God to show you he exists. I have a brother who like you was raised catholic and then became a non believer, although I don’t know you I’d say like him you are highly intelligent and just can’t understand why Catholics believe certain things when science proves it wrong. For example evolution vs. Adam and Eve. He asks me a lot of questions yet always finds a way to dispute my answer, so the only advice I can give you is the same that I give him, ask God to show you he exists, ask him for the truth. Hope this helps and I’ll keep you in my prayers.
 
Belief is a choice.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

Choose to believe and see what happens. If God is everything people say he is then he will help you with the rest. But you have to make the first move. God invites. He doesn’t force.

If you don’t like it then you can always go back to being an atheist.

-Tim-
 
Maybe somewhere small and deep down inside, you do actually believe. If you didn’t, then you probably wouldn’t care that you don’t and wouldn’t have any desire to.

I don’t think you can do anything other than ask Him to make Himself clear to you with time. I will pray for you that He will.
 
The universe exists. It has no reason for existing. And yet it does.

And you are not an electified bag of meat. You have a soul, your soul is eternal. You have true, permanent and objective worth. Deep down, I have yet to find anyone who TRULY believes they have no meaning to their life.

You know down deep that you matter, and you didn’t create yourself. You were created.
 
I have converted many Atheists and fallen away theists with this simple wisdom that I learned from some dedicated Sisters.

I must assure you that you are trying to jump over a key step in the process of coming to know God. You cannot jump right to believing as your post describes.

If you think about it, all things that you really know, started with faith, then moved to belief then to knowledge.

Please consider someone who develops a vaccine for say Polio. He must first have faith that a vaccine can exist. This faith empowers him to do the hard work, the real hard work of developing the vaccine. Then if successful, he has belief in his potential new vaccine, so he promotes it and gains disciples, but it is not proven yet. Finally, after seeing it work and understanding the biochemistry, he has true knowledge of the vaccine.

Please note the sequence Faith → Belief → Knowledge.

Please consider first not the ultimate thing (God) but just anything and how this sequence played out.

Say sports, or music. You had faith you could do it. After lots of hard work and some success you move to belief, you gain confidence and finally when you are a pro ball player, you have knowledge of what it is. You have experienced it.

If you want to come to know God, start with the first thing, the prayer for faith. He has NEVER failed to deliver that.

The hard thing is that you and God are intimately linked. Knowledge of God requires deeper knowledge of yourself. God lives through you as you are his body - the body of Christ. Have faith that this is true and spend the rest of your life growing towards knowledge.

Oh, and please don’t label yourself. We all have doubts in the process.
 
lonelyalgorithm said:
So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
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I think you should go to a Holy Hour or Eucharistic adoration and maybe just sit and be still for an hour. Then I would make this a regular habit. I would also start praying even though you don’t believe or feel that you don’t believe.
 
lonelyalgorithm said:
So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
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Hi lonely !

Start here than pray:

ATHEISM: The belief that there was nothing and nothing happened to nothing and then
nothing magically exploded for no reason, creating everything and then a bunch of
everything magically rearranged itself for no reason whatsoever into self-replicating
bits which then turned into dinosaurs. Makes perfect sense. St. Catherine of Siena

God Bless:)
 
You’ve found this board because you’re looking for answers.

I believe Jesus is knocking and you want to answer but you just don’t know how or if you want to open that door.

It’s okay.

Jesus doesn’t stop knocking.
 
My position is similar to that of the OP. I think the most accurate description of my beliefs would be agnostic Catholic, meaning that I am a practising Catholic, but I am not convinced that Catholicism is the truth. I nearly gave up at one point, and I think it would be accurate to say I was agnostic for a few months.

Being in my mid-teens, this is an especially difficult struggle, as so much is uncertain at this point in my life. My father is agnostic, and possibly atheist now, and my mother, though a fervent Catholic, is not an intellectual. I do not feel like I can confide with her, as it is hard enough for her to have a husband who has lost his faith and have to take care of seven children’s spiritual lives (I am the oldest of them). It’s a truly difficult situation to be in, and I hope it does not last into my adulthood, as I don’t think I will be able to make choices about marriage, for instance, if I am not in a good position to pass the faith on to others.

I genuinely hope that something, or somethings, will convince me that the Catholic religion is true, but until then I am stuck in a state of continual uncertainty.
 
lonelyalgorithm said:
So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
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Here are 20 proofs for the existence of God by Dr. Peter Kreeft.

strangenotions.com/god-exists/

You need to know exactly what the Catholic Church teaches and what it teaches about God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is linked below.

You should also start reading the Bible, but use a Catholic Bible like the NARB, the Jerusalem, the Ignation, the RVS, or the Douay Rheims Bible.

You should examine exactly what it was that made you leave the Church in the first place. When did you start thinking God did not exist and why. And at the time did you know all you should have about what the Church taught and who God really was? Did you ever really practice your faith, it requires steady work and prayer, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum?

Peace
Linus2nd
 
  1. Read scripture. I was shocked at what a genius Jesus was, and how beautiful God’s plan for our salvation was, and how magnanimous God’s character was. I was convinced it was all way too perfect to be any human’s work of fiction.
  2. Read inspiring stories about miracles, such as lives of the saints, Medjugorje, charismatic communities, etc. There are thousands – maybe millions – of testimonies out there that are too compelling to be dismissed.
  3. Read church teaching. It’s so deep and so wise it has to be guided by God.
  4. Build relationships with people who believe deeply. Their peace and joy will help your perspective.
  5. As mentioned by others, pray for belief – and solicit the prayers of those you trust.
You can trust God’s promise to you: ‘Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened to you. Ask and you shall receive.’
 
lonelyalgorithm said:
So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
Click to expand...
I forgot to mention that you should read the Catechism which is linked below.

Peace
Linus2nd
 
It’s funny to me when someone says they see no evidence for the existence of God. I see God in everything. The delicate balance of nature and so many ecosystems that are in a delicate balance. My goodness, look at an eyeball and how it brings images that the brain can understand. Then there is a million kinds of eyeballs on this planet that all work. There is order from the molecular level to the galaxies, like someone had some kind of incredible design.

The fact that Jesus came and said that God is our Father. Is there anything more incredibly exciting than that?

God cannot resist humility. Call to him and ask him to reveal himself to you.

God bless.
 
I used to see God everywhere. Having seen many convincing refutations of miracles, and many things proclaimed to be miraculous that do not seem to be at all so to those not looking for miracles, I don’t know what to believe anymore. I am not convinced enough by the atheistic viewpoint on such things either, which is why I have chosen to persevere.

I also used to have an easier time as seeing the Bible as infallible before I realized how confusing it is. There are so many things which contradict each other, at least on the surface, and it puzzles me that God would give us such a confusing collection of books. Their are also things like God’s commands to wipe out entire races of people which seem to go against Jesus’ teachings of mercy. Or the command to expel people with non-contagious skin-diseases from the community (many of the “leprosies” described in Leviticus (or maybe it was Exodus?) are not leprosy at all according to the footnotes in my Bible, which is the New American Standard Version).

However, I see to much evidence against an atheistic point of view to dismiss my religion. Hopefully someday I will find a resolution to all the problems I see now.
 
lonelyalgorithm said:
So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
Click to expand...
I don’t know if this will help, but if you are of a scientific bent, there is periodically on EWTN (also can be viewed by streaming on the Internet) a series called “The Heavens Declare The Glory Of God” - which is a science based program detailing the Big Bang Theory which is very widely accepted by science, and how all known scientific theories associated with said Big Bang Theory prove the absolute necessity of God to create the universe and the conditions for human life on Earth.
 
You know, I can sympathize with you. I became Catholic in 2006 but recently I started having a lot of doubts and now I just flat out don’t believe everything that the Catholic Church teaches.
 
Linusthe2nd said:
Here are 20 proofs for the existence of God by Dr. Peter Kreeft.

strangenotions.com/god-exists/

You need to know exactly what the Catholic Church teaches and what it teaches about God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is linked below.

You should also start reading the Bible, but use a Catholic Bible like the NARB, the Jerusalem, the Ignation, the RVS, or the Douay Rheims Bible.

You should examine exactly what it was that made you leave the Church in the first place. When did you start thinking God did not exist and why. And at the time did you know all you should have about what the Church taught and who God really was? Did you ever really practice your faith, it requires steady work and prayer, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum?

Peace
Linus2nd
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Thanks for the links I will certainly look in to it.
 
Another_Andrew said:
I used to see God everywhere. Having seen many convincing refutations of miracles, and many things proclaimed to be miraculous that do not seem to be at all so to those not looking for miracles, I don’t know what to believe anymore. I am not convinced enough by the atheistic viewpoint on such things either, which is why I have chosen to persevere.

I also used to have an easier time as seeing the Bible as infallible before I realized how confusing it is. There are so many things which contradict each other, at least on the surface, and it puzzles me that God would give us such a confusing collection of books. Their are also things like God’s commands to wipe out entire races of people which seem to go against Jesus’ teachings of mercy. Or the command to expel people with non-contagious skin-diseases from the community (many of the “leprosies” described in Leviticus (or maybe it was Exodus?) are not leprosy at all according to the footnotes in my Bible, which is the New American Standard Version).

However, I see to much evidence against an atheistic point of view to dismiss my religion. Hopefully someday I will find a resolution to all the problems I see now.
Click to expand...
God’s commands were given for a reason and you need to search out that reason. It may have been for something other than ‘leprosy’. God always wanted to protect his ‘chosen people’ who were to become the bloodline through which His Son, Jesus Christ, took on human form. He laid out some very specific commands in order to do that.

Remember: (And you will find this in the Bible) Man makes plans but God has a purpose.
 
lonelyalgorithm said:
So I was baptized as a Catholic and performed communion and everything else but I became an atheist about 3 years ago. I want to believe in GOD and be part of the Catholic church but I simply don’t believe that there is someone who watches over our every move. I would like to receive some advice from Catholic members on how to deal with this because I really want to think there is a GOD but I see no evidence of the existence of a GOD.
Click to expand...
I might suggest a book. Dean Overton wrote a book some time ago called The Case for the Existence of God. I identified all my life as an atheist. That book changed my life. After I read it, it still took some time. It was the start of a process for me.
 
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