Can you answer this agnostic's questions?

[SicIturAdAstra]

Hello,

I am a young man exploring his life right now and thinking about higher questions. I am not posting here to try to shake anyone’s faith or make people upset. I am just searching.

I was raised in a secular household with a French mother born Catholic (stopped being faithful in her early 20s, though never abandoned the idea of performing good works and living morally) and an irreligious father who is a good person.

I am certainly a product of a society that embraces empiricism and rationalism; I just cannot accept that there is an active god out there, watching us and performing miracles. It just runs into the mental wall (I almost feel the crashing physically) of proof and rationality. I have read some of Plato and St. Augustine’s works and especially the works of Aristotle and St. Aquinas, with his emphasis on reconciling science and faith, but the practice of basing your beliefs, even if they are pro-science, on the presumption that there is some sort of powerful being seems unworkable to me.

Also, reviewing history, I see so many lives lost, so many hurt, on account of religion in general, be it crusades or jihads or pogroms or inquisitions.

At the same time, what I seem to sense, and I may be incorrect, is that focusing so much on empiricism reduces human beings to animals, or, even worse, masses of cells. Historically, in recent times we have had Hitlers and Stalins who adhere to that belief, not to mention conflicts like World War I which saw people slaughtered by the tens of thousands because of the misapplication of science into things like machine guns and poison gas. Still, logically, I must adhere to some sort of empiricism; I cannot believe in a soul or any heaven or divine being.

But something seems lacking. It seems so cold and raw to just believe some of what this empiricism implies about humanity, but it seems fanciful to believe in any higher power. Perhaps I am constructing a false dilemma here, but it seems that either I must adopt the logical view, or the faithful view.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Fr.Vincent_Serpa]

Dear friend,

The very sensitivity to the plight of suffering humanity and the value you put on human life comes from the influence that Christianity has had on you of which you have been unaware. There isn’t space here to go into this further.

But empirical science does not have the tools to deal with the ineffable. Your very words betray a sensitivity in this area. Certainly, there is more to nature than that which can be measured and analyzed empirically.

Just reflecting on the complexity of an old automobile parked next to the curb reveals the absurdity of suggesting that it could have come together by chance. This is an old clunker we’re talking about; what about the rest of existence? To consider human beings at their most selfless and exalted moments is to recognize that such must have a source. And the source must be greater. It cannot be lesser. A greater cannot be generated by a lesser.

Christians do not only believe in a God-Creator to whom they attribute infinite goodness, they believe He chose to enter the human state by taking on a human nature and allowed himself to undergo great suffering on their behalf and to actually allow his human nature to be put to death to convey to them in a way they could understand—something of what his infinite love for them consists.

In a quiet place I invite you to ask him to let you know that he exists. We will be asking as well.

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.