Hello Taylor!
I joined the forums today when I saw your post. I just had to respond. I have known two people like you in my life. The first one… He converted to Christianity (not Catholic but close enough!), and the other… I think I failed her. I still feel ashamed about how poorly I represented my faith and so I figured I would try my best to explain my own faith journey to you. I hope it makes sense and I really hope it helps you in some small way.
I was always Catholic at least in name but I was and am very very cynical. It is hard for me to believe anything without evidence. On its surface the Catholic Faith does seem very irrational – I know this. The media DESTROYS us. It’s all about creation in 6 days and killing gay people and our enemies. None of this is true of course. I’m sure you are (or recently were) under the impression God is a male in the clouds with a white beard. Preposterous. I don’t believe in this God and neither should you.
I entered the phase of real belief primarily through reason. I found Faith through Philosophy (I will give a brief version below). It is hard to demonstrate the characteristics of a God found through Philosophy, but I would suggest Aquinas for that as many others here have. Unfortunately, summaries don’t do him justice. You have to go to the source texts and hit it for days on end to ‘get it’. Keep in mind that Catholicism is Philosophy and Theology inseparably intertwined. For the record, this is why I think it is the strongest religion. Even the Jewish Faith has far less advanced philosophy (though it is older). To be part of Catholicism is to be a part of something truly amazing!
But on to the good stuff!
The short philosophical argument for God is this:
-Our Universe is Finite. All things are born and die.
-As ancient philosophers explained (in different terms): You can’t have a train with no locomotive. SOMETHING started everything. You can’t have things just ‘existing’ where one things causes the next because you can always ask "What caused X? Y. What caused Y? Z. This is like saying: What caused Train car 1 to move? Train Car 2! No! The locomotive (a first mover) must be pulling everything or how could train car 2 move train car 1! (infinite regress problems!)
-This something CANNOT be of this realm since all things of this realm degrade and die according to observation and science. This something had to somehow exist outside everything and start everything and be outside of our concept of time or it would fall for the same train fallacy.
So there must be a truly mighty prime mover that started everything, and based on the fact we live in a world where we have free choice (i.e., we are not irrational animals), we can assume this prime mover is a pretty cool entity
According to the non-Catholic philosophers of Greece (and Catholic ones too of course) who searched purely with reason as I just have, there has to be some incredible and Good entity that has set things up. We as Catholics define Him with much more detail than this, but many of these articles of Belief require many arguments to substantiate, and I will tell you strait away that to a very skeptical person that are not convincing immediately.
But if you want to work to understand that there is a God I think you should attack the question using pure reason in the way I have outlined. There is a lot more meat to put on the bare bones I presented, but this is an intuitive start I think.
I hope I help in some small way. If you need elaboration on anything here I will do my best to try and help. I hope you try the faith on. It will be awkward and foreign, but trust me, wherever you go you will be welcomed. People are very impressed by people like you who are trying to learn to believe. Sometimes a message board isn’t as good as a face to face convo!
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