Axiomatic thought in relation to God

[ManRay]

The unbreakable axiomatic trifecta

1. Existence exists. The prime axiom necessary for all knowledge.
2. Consciousness - for this to exist there must be something to be conscious of/with - see #1
3. Identity - The things that exist must have a specific nature. They are unique, particular and the characteristics are a part of what it is. 1-2-3…

To understand nature, and to posses knowledge - we must act, and proceed in accordance to the rules already established as axiomatic. This is not a human construct. Just as humans didn’t invent earth’s gravity. A is A - to change this would be to spin reality on it’s head - changing all understanding of truth and knowledge. Since this cannot be done. Reality is an absolute. This leads us to causality - which is simply the law of identity stretched through time. Identity is axiomatic.

God is purported to be the cause that wasn’t caused. Right then and there - we break with ALL KNOWN axioms of thought, and reality. We enter into a ‘conceptual system’ that has no foundation or basis in knowledge - or reality. To maintain this thought we have to in effect break axiomatic reality - but we know this isn’t possible. So we presuppose that god exists outside of time, space, and logic. So how is it possible to be honest with ourselves and claim that this could be within any grasp of understanding? Wouldn’t that make pretty much everything capable of being true? - if we can claim that something can exist outside of the parameters of our known understanding then that in effect breaks apart everything that we could possibly understand. Anything could be true. Multiple gods, multiple universes, multiple earths, etc…etc… Space mummies that travel through time using taste buds and afro sheen. Thinking of any stupid illogical thing, and we have to give it creedence because we just acknowledged that something can exist outside of our only means of knowledge. This concept of god seems to fail because we cannot use the axioms to understand something that exists outside of them. That seems to be an absurdity of the highest level.

 

[ivebeenshown]

God does not exist outside of logic. God is the supreme example and source of logic.

 

[CatholicTrekkie]

Your argument assumes materialism: i.e. that only what is in the material universe can exist. If we don’t assume it (which philosophers have only done very recently), it’s possible to say God exists.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Man Ray

It is your wordl/universe that has no meaning because there is no reason for it to be, only God can explain why the world/universe exists. It cannot explain why every single thing that exists and its operations displays absolute order and purpose, speaking of Macro, Micro, Nano reality. Not only this but every system of order operates in co-ordered fashion.
Only God can explain why the world/universe and all in it and all that happens in it is intelligible, reasonable, has a purpose for existing, why things have meaning.

By your own logic, your world is impossible, and if it was possible you couldn’t know it with certainty, because you could not rely on it always being the same, you could make no reliable judgments about it. In fact, you wouldn’t know whether or not it was real.

True we cannot know everything about God by natural reason. But he has not left us orphans. He has been revealing himself to us from the very beginning. Then about 5,000 years ago he began REVEALING HIMSELF in PERSON and finally, in these last days, HE has revealed Himself in His Son. Reject it, ignor it, deny it but it is the only explanation, in fact, that makes any sense. Not only are the facts of Revelation accessible to all reasonable minds but, in fact, Revelation is required to make the exsistence of the world/universe and Man intelligible. For nothing makes sense unless the world/universe is meant for Man who is meant for God. Unless this is true nothing makes sense.

 

[R_C]

The issue must be faced in a different way, otherwise we miss the point. This appears to be a very logical approach, but it actually not.

The truth is that the phenomena and the very fabric of reality seem to have an extraordinary underlying order - which we discover and name according to the Greek word for knowledge: mathematics. Everything in this universe seems to behave in perfect accordance with some unbreakable laws.

Not just that: but everything seems to spontaneously self-organize into extraordinary systems. An example is protein self-organization, which takes place at speeds that are, in the eyes of many scientists, a mystery - it just happens too quickly.

You mention gravity, and we can all observe it, of course…however, we ignore where it comes from. We have many hypotheses - things that we place our faith into because they seem to work - and yet, even for gravity, we have unaccounted for events such as the flyby anomaly, dark flows, and the accelerating metric expansion of space. What do we do, then? We place our faith in additional human constructs such as dark matter and dark energy, or we theorize that one day or another we will discover particles like the massless graviton, all the while acting as if they had already been “discovered”.

And things become even more incredible when we step into chaos theory, or vice versa, into the recent discoveries of Dr. Wolfram (regardless of the fact that his research is subject to criticism, as all great discoveries have, it still shows that a basic set of rules can lead to complex (and even chaotic) systems.

Science is, in fact, based on faith. A different kind of faith, of course, for it does find some basis - at least to some extent - on empirical evidence. Which, of course, is subject to human interpretation and to the constraints of the technology of the age.

Scientists in the past seemed to be, perhaps because of the fact that they were force to rely more on their brains and less on cold computers, a little bit more humble. I can mention dozens of great minds who had no shame in professing not only that they believed in God, but that they knew that God existed. Because, like one of them, Pasteur, wrote once: “A little bit of science moves us away from God, but a lot of science drives us right back to him.”

Everything in our reality appears to be the product of an intelligent design. The best example is within ourselves: the brain.

As someone who has had some very basic exposure to artificial intelligence research, I can confirm the words of pioneer Alan Perlis: “an hour in the field [of artificial intelligence] is enough to make us believe in God”. What our brain does is beyond mysterious - is impossible. The way in which memory works, even if we just focus on the processing of one of the senses, seems to be unreplicable. Memory storage and retrieval is not understood, nor are such things as dreams (in fact, I know very good psychologists who, when discussing about Freud’s psychoanalysis, have no problem in admitting that it’s just like a set of religious beliefs: they require faith).

When I read of people such as Euclides arguing that the laws of nature are God’s mathematical thoughts, or such as Galilei, arguing that “the values of science cannot replace the values of revealed truth, and if we truly lived in the age of science, this truth will be visible to everyone”, I, being a very ignorant person, must stop and ponder for a minute. When I read of Newton speaking of a “clockmaker”, and I study Cartesio’s ontological argument, I am forced to face a critical fact: not only ignorant people like me believe in God, great minds also do.

So far we have analyzed and discussed from a purely secular standpoint - that is, ignoring the supernatural and the mystical.

However, if we want to be open to the truth, we cannot exclude a priori part of the picture simply because we don’t like how it looks.

The truth is that the supernatural and the mystical have been witnessed ever since we have the capability to write, and that there is a corpus of works on them funded not just on beliefs, but on empirical evidence which cannot be explained on the basis of scientific knowledge. This is not to say that they are against science - only that we do not yet know how to explain them. I could mention some here, but it is a “natural” reaction for the secular world to fear, mock, and hate what it does not understand and cannot explain on the basis of the existing knowledge. We see this in all fields of science, and, of course, in the relationship between religion and science.

I conclude by mentioning that perhaps one of the best writings ever written on the relationship between faith and science is this essay. Everyone who wishes to discuss with a Catholic community on these topics should have read, if not a great deal of the writings of the Doctors of the Church, at least this one document.

 

[ManRay]

Man Ray

It is your wordl/universe that has no meaning because there is no reason for it to be only God can explain why the world/universe exists. It cannot explain why every single thing that exists and its operations displays absolute order and purpose, speaking of Macro, Micro, Nano reality. Not only this but every system of order operates in co-ordered fashion.
Only God can explain why the world/universe and all in it and all that happens in it is intelligible, reasonable, has a purpose for existing, why things have meaning.

How is meaning proof of a god? If that is your argument then explain to me why god exists? I don’t think you can without going in circles. Telling me that my world has no meaning is begging the question anyway. That seems to be an opinion and I wouldn’t agree with.

By your own logic, your world is impossible, and if it was possible you couldn’t know it with certainty, because you could not rely on it always being the same, you could make no reliable judgments about it. In fact, you wouldn’t know whether or not it was real.

That makes no sense.

True we cannot know everything about God by natural reason. But he has not left us orphans. He has been revealing himself to us from the very beginning. Then about 5,000 years ago he began REVEALING HIMSELF in PERSON and finally, in these last days, HE has revealed Himself in His Son. Reject it, ignor it, deny it but it is the only explanation, in fact, that makes any sense. Not only are the facts of Revelation accessible to all reasonable minds but, in fact, Revelation is required to make the exsistence of the world/universe and Man intelligible. For nothing makes sense unless the world/universe is meant for Man who is meant for God. Unless this is true nothing makes sense.

This argument from personal experience is clever, but it also breaks down logically. Do you believe the Jersey Devil is a real creature…but people have experienced it? It has revealed itself to them? These experiences aren’t evidence of anything. Murderous people have claimed god talked to them. Bush basically claimed god told him to invade Iraq. It seems we have designations for people who believe in things that have no rational explanation. If it’s common it becomes religion…but quite possibly myth, legend, or even phenomena. If not these people can easily be referred to as insane, delusional or psychotic. There is no historical evidence that sanity exists in numbers.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

This argument from personal experience is clever, but it also breaks down logically. Do you believe the Jersey Devil is a real creature…but people have experienced it? It has revealed itself to them? These experiences aren’t evidence of anything. Murderous people have claimed god talked to them. Bush basically claimed god told him to invade Iraq. It seems we have designations for people who believe in things that have no rational explanation. If it’s common it becomes religion…but quite possibly myth, legend, or even phenomena. If not these people can easily be referred to as insane, delusional or psychotic. There is no historical evidence that sanity exists in numbers.

It depends on the number of people claiming they’ve personally experienced God, no? If hundreds of thousands, maybe millions or more, have had experiences of the divine throughout the centuries I certainly find that more credible than some alleged sightings of the Jersey Devil.

 

[ManRay]

The issue must be faced in a different way, otherwise we miss the point. This appears to be a very logical approach, but it actually not.

It’s completely logical.

The truth is that the phenomena and the very fabric of reality seem to have an extraordinary underlying order - which we discover and name according to the Greek word for knowledge: mathematics. Everything in this universe seems to behave in perfect accordance with some unbreakable laws…

The argument from design huh? Which is basically the argument of irreducible complexity which is extremely flawed. Natural selection handles it in a very tidy way - but I realize that we aren’t allowed to talk about that. Besides - the famous eye - or wing example doesn’t prove that it is irreducibly complex. We can in fact see with part of an eye. A bird with half a wing is better off in a fall from a tree than a bird with no wing. A damaged eye is better than no eye - There doesn’t exist an irreducible complexity - there are gradations. Design theorists citing biochemical and cellular cases as being irreducibly complex are certain to not have looked carefully enough at the details, and thought carefully enough about it.

You mention gravity, and we can all observe it, of course…however, we ignore where it comes from. We have many hypotheses - things that we place our faith into because they seem to work - .

Religionists have to argue theory as a fact or they don’t have an argument. But basically these are rampant straw men defenses. Real scientists have never defined it as such. It is simply a working position. When we can measure the changes in a finch’s beak over real time based on food sources and conditions, we can document it. We don’t assume that god just created an new finch Automagically. Arguing over the source of something like gravity is to acknowledge it’s existence period. I may not know how a baseball landed in my yard - but I can demonstrate it’s existence. I don’t HAVE TO KNOW how it got there to verify it’s existence (existence is axiomatic) - and yet I could as an after thought. This is what I’m talking about - real logical thought goes out the window when god comes into play. You can’t demonstrate god to me in anyway that I couldn’t explain other wise. There is no school of thought regarding where god came from - or why. God was just always there - it exists outside of space and time. That’s what I’m talking about! What thing do we know of in any recorded history exists outside of space and time? Nothing - so we have no reference point - no basis of understanding. It’s absurd. You may as well be saying that bunnies bleed flowers - It’s just absurd.

Science is, in fact, based on faith. A different kind of faith, of course, for it does find some basis - at least to some extent - on empirical evidence. Which, of course, is subject to human interpretation and to the constraints of the technology of the age …

Stating that science is a different kind of faith because it has basis in empirical evidence is a weak argument, and makes no sense. We are still talking about things that have a reference in the natural world. Things that don’t purport to defeat the axioms of understanding. A scientist stating that he KNOWS god exists proves absolutely nothing. There are intelligent people throughout the world who know things, and have known things that turn out to be completely absurd. Logic has to be verified. Just because we use our consciousness to interpret something - doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be validated. I had no idea about a Christian god until someone told me about it - now that I’m seeking the validation of this claim - people who made the claim are now stating that - oh well bro - god exists outside of space in time - so it’s like a personal revelation type thing. And I’m crazy for calling bunk? My world has no meaning? Really - seriously??

So far we have analyzed and discussed from a purely secular standpoint - that is, ignoring the supernatural and the mystical.

Supernatural is a word in the dictionary. Words in the dictionary are decided on every year by the oxford group based on amount of usage - so they feel they have to give them a definition so people know how to use them in context. Makes sense but this isn’t some claim on the validity of whether something is real. Dragon is also in the dictionary. Something cannot logically be supernatural. Once you recognize it, and validate it’s existence - then you have just made it part of the natural world - it exists in the natural world because YOU exist in the natural world. The concept of ‘supernatural’ is bunk.

However, if we want to be open to the truth, we cannot exclude a priori part of the picture simply because we don’t like how it looks.

The a prior ontological argument is a joke - I believe it was originally written to god. A 5th graders would approach it this way:

Bet I can prove there’s a god!
Bet you can’t.
Ok then imagine the most perfect perfect thing you can.
Ok- what now
Ok - does that most perfect thing exist - is it real?
Of course not - it’s only in my mind.

ohhhh-so if it was real then it would have to be more perfect than what is in your mind right? - because something real would have to be better than a silly imaginary thing!
Nanny nanny boo boo - atheists or fools.

Just witnessing something alone doesn’t make it real - it has to be verified and validated. Have you ever heard of the test where they showed a scene to multiple people - it was like 15 or twenty people - and then had them describe what they ‘witnessed’? It was amazing - not only were they all over the map on what they saw - but people were making things up and describing things that never even happened!

 

[R_C]

ManRay, what is your opinion on exorcisms?

Please, for the sake of a decent discussion, spare me sardonic remarks on this topic. This is a delicate topic, but one that is both supernatural and yet based on empirical evidence. Since you are open to learning - though you have all the right to not accept or even dismiss everything - I would be glad to have a serious debate on this, so that perhaps we can both learn something.

Of course, do not even start if you are not going to accept official documents and witnesses and dismiss them as fake. Of course, you have the right to do so…

 

[Linusthe2nd]

How is meaning proof of a god? If that is your argument then explain to me why god exists? I don’t think you can without going in circles. Telling me that my world has no meaning is begging the question anyway. That seems to be an opinion and I wouldn’t agree with.

That makes no sense.

This argument from personal experience is clever, but it also breaks down logically. Do you believe the Jersey Devil is a real creature…but people have experienced it? It has revealed itself to them? These experiences aren’t evidence of anything. Murderous people have claimed god talked to them. Bush basically claimed god told him to invade Iraq. It seems we have designations for people who believe in things that have no rational explanation. If it’s common it becomes religion…but quite possibly myth, legend, or even phenomena. If not these people can easily be referred to as insane, delusional or psychotic. There is no historical evidence that sanity exists in numbers.

Sorry you can’t see the light. Wish you well.

 

[ManRay]

Sorry you can’t see the light. Wish you well.

See - this is a very small examples of the divisions of the world. The plain reasons that people fail themselves and everyone around them. To suggest that I cannot see something in spite of the fact that you cannot validate this thing that I cannot see is a little offensive…don’t you think? It’s bizarro world. People are having their arms hacked off in africa, but god helped jimmy jo bob get a good job in ohio. Oh - but god works in mysterious ways - sorry you didn’t understand - sorry he didn’t reveal himself to you…good luck! wow.

 

[R_C]

People are having their arms hacked off in africa, but god helped jimmy jo bob get a good job in ohio. Oh - but god works in mysterious ways - sorry you didn’t understand - sorry he didn’t reveal himself to you…good luck! wow.

Your speech is so high-grounded, yet your remarks are of such great ignorance, that one does not understand how can the two coexist!

What’s wrong with God helping a poor man find a job so that his children don’t starve?

Is it God’s fault if people keep killing each other and nobody does anything to stop them?

At least us who know God pray Him to further help the innocents. What do YOU do to help the people in Africa and all the Jimmy Jo Bobs who need a good job to keep themselves and their families from starvation and homelessness? What do YOU do for the homeless, the unemployed?

People like you will gladly embrace Antichrist when he arrives, performing great wonders, yet claiming that they are all fully rational, and destroys all those crazy irrational people, good and bad, enforcing his will with no mercy, taking away all freedom. It will happen, because the Scripture must be fulfilled:

have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him

You’d be happier if God destroyed all those murderers in Africa, and why not destroy all those who lie, cheat, steal…which is all of us, at one time or another…and why not snap His fingers and take away our free will, turning us into pretty little robots only doing what He wants…THAT is bizzarro world, my friend.

All your logic and high thoughts are not helping you understand things that are very simple and as such are to be treated. That because of our freedom, of our free will, we can hurt each other, and we can’t expect God to be fixing things for us all the time! We ask him to help us get things straight, to help us because we are limited in our capabilities. But ultimately is OUR job to make things right, by His help, grace, and merits.

 

[ManRay]

ManRay, what is your opinion on exorcisms?

Please, for the sake of a decent discussion, spare me sardonic remarks on this topic. This is a delicate topic, but one that is both supernatural and yet based on empirical evidence. Since you are open to learning - though you have all the right to not accept or even dismiss everything - I would be glad to have a serious debate on this, so that perhaps we can both learn something.

Of course, do not even start if you are not going to accept official documents and witnesses and dismiss them as fake. Of course, you have the right to do so…

I would liken exorcism to any other ritual that purports to defy the parameters of reality. No different than a seance - predictions of the future - yoga levitation etc…etc… Are there any statistics on how many atheists have had to be exorcised? Any atheist families ever believe their family member is possessed? Do we have data on this? The people who see ghosts have already entertained the possibility that ghosts already exist. Do we have irrefutable proof that has been validated across different peer groups (not just the church) regarding people who can speak languages that they never learned? Do we have video of someone speaking in Arabic, and proof that they have never heard nor learned the language validated by an Arabic speaking person outside of the church? it doesn’t seem to me that the church has rigorously validated these claims, except to satisfy their own truth. In Germany a couple of priests were jailed I believe in the 70’s. Show me something that is incontrovertible. Show me something that doesn’t have plausible and alternate explanations. I’m game.

 

[ManRay]

What’s wrong with God helping a poor man find a job so that his children don’t starve?
Is it God’s fault if people keep killing each other and nobody does anything to stop them?

The point was lost on you - my apologies. I’m trying to drive home the fact the children in Africa got their hands hack off because of their race and religion, but Jimmy jo bob prayed to god to get a job. The only way you can explain this is 1. god doesn’t care about certain people. or 2. god cares about certain people more than others - the other only explanation is that god works in mysterious ways, and we can’t understand the reasoning. But of course - that’s very convenient - soaked in dissonance - because that wouldn’t fly in any other aspect of life except religion.

People like you will gladly embrace Antichrist when he arrives, performing great wonders, all fully rational, and destroys all those crazy irrational people, good and bad, enforcing his will with no mercy.

There isn’t going to be any antichrist. Sorry. You are going to die, and you are never going to know that you even existed. Just like how it was before you existed.

All your logic and high thoughts are not helping you understand things that are very simple and as such are to be treated. That because of our freedom, of our free will, we can hurt each other, and we can’t expect God to be fixing things for us all the time! We ask him to help us get things straight, to help us because we are limited in our capabilities. But ultimately is OUR job to make things right, by His help, grace, and merits.

Free will is a complete joke - god is supposedly all knowing and all powerful - He could have simply made the world one great utopia, and no one would have ever known the difference!!! You wouldn’t long for some conceptual freedom that you didn’t even know existed - God could have made it that way - you would have never known the difference!!! Cmon.- Besides claiming that god knows every decision and thing that is going to happen pretty much makes the concept of free will ludicrous anyway. Are you telling me you can decide to do something in spite of what god already knows you will do? That’s a weird definition of free will. I have free will because I can make decisions in spite of what something else wants or think they know I will do - that’s freedom my friend.

 

[R_C]

:sad_yes:

I’ve come to realize that there’s no point in arguing with you. I am no Thomas Aquinas, and my language fails because I speak with a simplicity that is on one side a reflection of my ignorance, on the other side a reflection of my childlike trust in God.

I will therefore suggest that you go ahead and start reading the writings of the notable Doctors of the Church, who have addressed these questions with the appropriate language and cultural level in ways that I would never be able to do in a lifetime. Perhaps you will indeed be able to dismiss all of their arguments, but at least you will not be left with the impression that we do not know what we are talking about.

I will, however, mention to you an example of something that cannot be otherwise explained. There was this priest, in the last century, who had on his hands, feet, and chest wounds that resembled those described in the gospel with regards to the crucifixion. Many doctors and scientists visited him, and acknowledged that, indeed, this priest had holes that went throughout his hands, feet, and a cut in the chest. These wounds were always bleeding and painful. Of course, there was a threefold division: some doctors stated that the phenomenon was supernatural; others simply said that science could not yet explain it; others stated that either he had wounded himself or it was something caused by the mind. This priest had these wounds for 50 years, and not only the secular world, but the very Church gave him a lot of trouble. Very few believed that his wounds had supernatural origin, and they were very simple people.

Then, the day before he died, he celebrated Mass and everyone saw something truly unexplainable: the wounds were gone. I mean, completely. Not even scar tissue.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the wounds were there. Atheists and others have accused him of hurting himself, but nobody could argue that they were not there. They were seen, photographed, analyzed.

Science cannot explain first how could someone have such wounds for 50 years without the hands or feet suffering infection, or vice versa without them healing. And science cannot explain how could such wounds vanish.

In the meanwhile, I repeat to you: “wisdom is justified by its works”. Let us go and act in the world according to our principles - yours, based on logic and, perhaps, on moral relativism. Mine, based on charity and self-sacrifice for the sake of the innocents who suffer. In the end, if you are right and there is nothing after death, at least I know me and those who reason like me would have done some good things for the people in need. Can you say the same about you and people who think like you?

And if I am right, and there is such thing as an afterlife in which everyone receives an eternal reward or punishment based on an infallible justice, then we will meet again in person, face to face with God in ways we cannot understand now, and we will see who did a better work to make the world a better place.

Please accept my respect for your knowledge, which I know - if you seek the truth - shall lead you to be a great human being and in due time lead you to discover God, like many great minds before you did, and know that I will be praying for you, because you don’t believe, but if you did then you’d be praying too.

 

[ManRay]

I will therefore suggest that you go ahead and start reading the writings of the notable Doctors of the Church, who have addressed these questions with the appropriate language and cultural level in ways that I would never be able to do in a lifetime. Perhaps you will indeed be able to dismiss all of their arguments, but at least you will not be left with the impression that we do not know what we are talking about.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

How is meaning proof of a god? If that is your argument then explain to me why god exists? I don’t think you can without going in circles. Telling me that my world has no meaning is begging the question anyway. That seems to be an opinion and I wouldn’t agree with.

That makes no sense.

This argument from personal experience is clever, but it also breaks down logically. Do you believe the Jersey Devil is a real creature…but people have experienced it? It has revealed itself to them? These experiences aren’t evidence of anything. Murderous people have claimed god talked to them. Bush basically claimed god told him to invade Iraq. It seems we have designations for people who believe in things that have no rational explanation. If it’s common it becomes religion…but quite possibly myth, legend, or even phenomena. If not these people can easily be referred to as insane, delusional or psychotic. There is no historical evidence that sanity exists in numbers.

Certainly sorry you think that way ( notice I didn’t use the word " believe " which is apparantly not allowed in your world view.). Pax

 

[R_C]

Hey I enjoyed talking with you. …] I just wish a devotee of any religion would just admit that none of it really makes sense - but they are choosing to believe it. …] No offense, but some of the most hateful and hypocritical people I know are christians. Remember this whole country was founded by people who claimed to be Christians …]One never knows…

Thanks, me too.

I don’t know what to tell you about whether it all makes sense or not…whether it is logical or not…all I know is that it’s there…I never claimed I can explain it or understand it…perhaps it’s all a deception and a product of our mind…but there are simply too many things out there that I cannot dismiss only because I cannot understand them…I am too simple for this.

I’ve had the very same experience, but at least a Christian has no excuse, because our God commands us very clearly, by word and by example, to be full of charity towards one another, to pray for those who persecute us, and to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the suffering innocents. If a Christian does not do that, he may call himself Christian, but he is not one. It’s amusing, though…when others behave in hateful ways, on one hand us Christians actually understand that it’s not entirely their fault, because either they never learned about these teachings or refuse to believe in them…and we blame ourselves, for not having presented them in a way that is clear enough…

As for the founders, I beg to disagree…we are talking of (no offense intended) heretic and schismatic groups that fundamentally distorted the corpus of the Christian tradition…and there was too much freemasonry involved…with principles that often directly contradict those of Christianity…

And I do appreciate very much that last sentence, which - though I am nobody to say this - has made you grow a lot in my poor esteem. It reminds me of the one verse of the Mass that I love more than all others:

as we await the blessed hope

That’s all it is, a blessed hope…that’s all I’m holding on to…until the last instant of my life…because if I and billions of others were wrong, and there’s nothing, then I won’t even know and I will die in peace…