Faith from the ground up (no assumptions)

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aMuse

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I’m a cradle Catholic.

I’m active in my faith.

I go to weekly mass with my family.

I used to take my faith very seriously:
  • daily rosary
  • daily mass
  • daily adoration
  • night midday and night prayers
  • Christian music
  • meal prayers
  • frequent retreats
  • multiple WYD’s
  • trips to seminary for seeking vocation
  • Various pro-life missions/prayer rallies (march for life in DC several times)
  • helped friends discern their vocation (bestfriend in seminary)
I’m slowing up now because I don’t have a faith of my own. I’m very into following authority and not trying to buck the system, so I haven’t allowed myself to question the faith of my surroundings outwardly. I still would like to be a Catholic, but I think I want truth, and to this point Catholic as an adjective towards myself has been an ethnic experience and something to please others more than my own love for truth.

I want to derive faith. (Similar to how a Calculus proof can list it’s assumptions down to the basic equations of math). Why is it reasonable to believe in a God? Once I demonstrate there’s good reason to believe in a God, how do I transfer that to a specific faith-tradition?

I don’t need people to try to argue or prove anything in this thread. What I want is links to sites with what I’m looking for. I looked over Catholic.com (only for a few minutes) and see many things intended for apologetics to Protestants. I don’t want to approach my derivation of faith with the assumption of the Bible being the inspired word of God, but rather would like to demonstrate why the Bible is better as a source of truth than, say the Koran?

I appreciate any attempts to assist me in my request for truth and I look forward to your responses.
 
aMuse said:
I’m a cradle Catholic.

I’m active in my faith.

I go to weekly mass with my family.

I used to take my faith very seriously:
  • daily rosary
  • daily mass
  • daily adoration
  • night midday and night prayers
  • Christian music
  • meal prayers
  • frequent retreats
  • multiple WYD’s
  • trips to seminary for seeking vocation
  • Various pro-life missions/prayer rallies (march for life in DC several times)
  • helped friends discern their vocation (bestfriend in seminary)
I’m slowing up now because I don’t have a faith of my own. I’m very into following authority and not trying to buck the system, so I haven’t allowed myself to question the faith of my surroundings outwardly. I still would like to be a Catholic, but I think I want truth, and to this point Catholic as an adjective towards myself has been an ethnic experience and something to please others more than my own love for truth.

I want to derive faith. (Similar to how a Calculus proof can list it’s assumptions down to the basic equations of math). Why is it reasonable to believe in a God? Once I demonstrate there’s good reason to believe in a God, how do I transfer that to a specific faith-tradition?

I don’t need people to try to argue or prove anything in this thread. What I want is links to sites with what I’m looking for. I looked over Catholic.com (only for a few minutes) and see many things intended for apologetics to Protestants. I don’t want to approach my derivation of faith with the assumption of the Bible being the inspired word of God, but rather would like to demonstrate why the Bible is better as a source of truth than, say the Koran?

I appreciate any attempts to assist me in my request for truth and I look forward to your responses.
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Been there…

Try this read: amazon.com/Mere-Christianity-C-S-Lewis/dp/0060652926/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-7947007-5068936?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173068833&sr=8-2

and this site: peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm

This should get you started.
 
aMuse said:
I’m a cradle Catholic.

I’m active in my faith.

I go to weekly mass with my family.

I used to take my faith very seriously:
  • daily rosary
  • daily mass
  • daily adoration
  • night midday and night prayers
  • Christian music
  • meal prayers
  • frequent retreats
  • multiple WYD’s
  • trips to seminary for seeking vocation
  • Various pro-life missions/prayer rallies (march for life in DC several times)
  • helped friends discern their vocation (bestfriend in seminary)
    I’m slowing up now because I don’t have a faith of my own. I’m very into following authority and not trying to buck the system, so I haven’t allowed myself to question the faith of my surroundings outwardly. I still would like to be a Catholic, but I think I want truth, and to this point Catholic as an adjective towards myself has been an ethnic experience and something to please others more than my own love for truth.
I want to derive faith. (Similar to how a Calculus proof can list it’s assumptions down to the basic equations of math). Why is it reasonable to believe in a God? Once I demonstrate there’s good reason to believe in a God, how do I transfer that to a specific faith-tradition?

I don’t need people to try to argue or prove anything in this thread. What I want is links to sites with what I’m looking for. I looked over Catholic.com (only for a few minutes) and see many things intended for apologetics to Protestants. I don’t want to approach my derivation of faith with the assumption of the Bible being the inspired word of God, but rather would like to demonstrate why the Bible is better as a source of truth than, say the Koran?

I appreciate any attempts to assist me in my request for truth and I look forward to your responses.
Click to expand...

Ultimately, the solution goes back to how we answer the question “Who do you say that I am ?” - IOW, it is not a matter of knowing things, but of knowing a Person. All the facts in the world *about *a single person, will not & cannot amount to knowing that person as a person - any more than measuring the chemicals in paint, can give one an appreciation of a great painting. That would be as foolish as trying to use scientific means to measure moral qualities - we know people are trustworthy by knowing those people, not by measuring or weighing or analysing them by scientific methods.​

 
You might also try Theology for Beginners, by Frank Sheed, and How To Think About God, by Mortimer Adler.

If you really want to start from scratch, there’s always the *Summa Theologiae *by Thomas Aquinas, but that’s kind of heavy for my taste.
 
JimG said:
If you really want to start from scratch, there’s always the *Summa Theologiae *by Thomas Aquinas, but that’s kind of heavy for my taste.
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The last time I tried tackling the Summa I wasn’t able to follow the logic of some of the arguments, but I own it so I should probably take the prompting and look at it again.
Gottle_of_Geer said:
That would be as foolish as trying to use scientific means to measure moral qualities - we know people are trustworthy by knowing those people, not by measuring or weighing or analysing them by scientific methods.
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When you “know” a person, you are using your brain’s methods of taking in data and interpreting to apply it to your self-developed definition of “trustworthy.” You just probably don’t think of your interactions with people as scientific, but when placed in the right terms your interactions can be grouped, summarized and even predicted. Perhaps you don’t have an analytical background and don’t think of things against a scientific backdrop, but failing to acknowledge the reality of science in human dealings merely demonstrates a personal preference against an abstract concept of “science.” (not trying to be harsh)
 
You might find Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity” helpful. Reading it is a lot of work, and I don’t think it set out to prove Christianity in the way you are describing, but there probably are some insights like that. But what made me think of suggesting it is that it talks about how we should think about matters of religion. I think there is value in assessing your assumptions and checking your logic, but there is danger of going too far here. I think that positivistic thinking is a useful tool, but it can’t be used to the exclusion of everything else. It’s not practical to only act on what you can prove… you’d never be able to get out of bed in the morning. And anyway, there are other forms knowledge can take - which is something talked about in the book. It’s all very confusing and I can’t explain it, but he does. Sorta. 🙂
 
Hi,

I believe you know enough of Chritianity and I don’t think there is any man who can give you the intellectual challenge you are asking for.

I had a period sort of what you descrive and even read a logic book disproving the existence of God and became ahteist for some time. Of course now I’m back to the Church and into my Faith.

My best suggestion is: Take the new testament and read it from the beggining, just like a book, take it and read it, with an open mind. If you read it all in the order it is in the Bible, by the time you finish the last parragraph of Revelation you’ll be not only convinced of your Faith but renewed in the spirit.

Blessings,
J.C.
 
Catholic_Mike said:
You might find Joseph Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity” helpful. Reading it is a lot of work, and I don’t think it set out to prove Christianity in the way you are describing, but there probably are some insights like that. But what made me think of suggesting it is that it talks about how we should think about matters of religion. I think there is value in assessing your assumptions and checking your logic, but there is danger of going too far here. I think that positivistic thinking is a useful tool, but it can’t be used to the exclusion of everything else. It’s not practical to only act on what you can prove… you’d never be able to get out of bed in the morning. And anyway, there are other forms knowledge can take - which is something talked about in the book. It’s all very confusing and I can’t explain it, but he does. Sorta. 🙂
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That sounds amazing. Thank you so much for the post.
 
aMuse said:
I want to derive faith. (Similar to how a Calculus proof can list it’s assumptions down to the basic equations of math). Why is it reasonable to believe in a God?
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I am short on time so I will awnser this for now.

We live in a world that is complicated for instance this computor im using, I type it makes letters simple isnt it? But its much more complicated it is a system of circuits and machinary and computor chips.

Atheism is simple there isnt a god period.

Religion is complicated therefore it fits our world.

I suppose if I had more time I could explain this in a better way. I recommend reading mere christianity by C. S. Lewis which is where the arguement i just made comes from.
 
Well, unfortunately faith is not like Calculus. Then again, if it was, it wouldn’t be called faith, it would be called proof. Calculus and all mathematics is provable if you accept the basic premises that they are based on (and since they usually reflect the observed world, it is not hard to accept those premises).

Now, regarding determing whether a belief in God is reasonable or not… I would recommend, personally, reading books on Cosmology. The more I read about the Big Bang and the Universes’s creation ex nihilo the more convinced I am that there had to be something to cause it, something greater than the Universe itself.

After trhat… well linking that to a faith tradition is tougher, but believing God is a reasonable belief is probably enough for a first step :).

–
Bill
 
Ok well, I’m not sure how much my opinion will count towards this, seeing as I’m Not Catholic or a bible believer in the traditional sense.

You said this:
I want to derive faith. (Similar to how a Calculus proof can list it’s assumptions down to the basic equations of math). Why is it reasonable to believe in a God? Once I demonstrate there’s good reason to believe in a God, how do I transfer that to a specific faith-tradition?
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I think that MChale has an excellent idea.
Plus, Faith is just that faith.
Doesn’t Hebrews define it pretty well for you:
1 Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence 2 of things not seen.
Because of it the ancients were well attested.
By faith we understand that the universe was ordered by the word of God, 3 so that what is visible came into being through the invisible.
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For me, being a pagan, I actually just went through a pretty testy period with faith.
And lo and behold guess where I got my reminder? That darned book ya’ll call the Catechism.
26 We begin our profession of faith by saying: “I believe” or “We believe”. Before expounding the Church’s faith, as confessed in the Creed, celebrated in the liturgy and lived in observance of God’s commandments and in prayer, we must first ask what “to believe” means. Faith is man’s response to God, who reveals himself and gives himself to man, at the same time bringing man a superabundant light as he searches for the ultimate meaning of his life. Thus we shall consider first that search (Chapter One), then the divine Revelation by which God comes to meet man (Chapter Two), and finally the response of faith (Chapter Three).
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31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.
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32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.
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As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7
And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8
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33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.
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34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10
35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.
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Whew that’s a lot of werds 😉
My point is pretty simple and it does go along with MChale’s.

You asked why is it reasonable to believe in God? Then you asked for links.
The best I can say is this:
When the time comes and it will.
You will be asked whether or not you believe.
There will be mountains of “evidence” both for and against the issue of God.
Scholars from each side will have an argument.
The simplest evidence is around you and inside you.
Sometimes, we search the world over looking for the answers, when all along the answer was right there inside us.
But the search has helped us appreciate the answer that much more.
 
You should look at the arguments for belief in God. Some are quite good, some aren’t that great. The various cosmological arguments do, however, make belief in a theist God reasonable.

Peter Kreeft’s Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God - If you haven’t checked this out already, it’s a nice summary and it isn’t a long read.

About half the world’s population believes in the God of Abraham, which, is quite a good anecdotal argument that if indeed there is a theist God that has revealed Himself to the world, then that God might be the one. That would narrow it down to three major religious traditions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism. By no means am I saying that you shouldn’t look into other religious traditions, however. But in looking at the Abrahamic faiths, you should, I hope, find that Catholic Christianity is indeed reasonable.
 
I am reading a book called "From the Angel’s Blackboard: the Best of Fulton J. Sheen."

This is a remarkable book about the meaning of life, our relationship with God, our inherent motivations that guide us and so many thought-provoking insights into humanity and faith that I can barely even scratch the surface in a simple post.

This is not a “preachy” book by any means. It is deeply compassionate and very insightful. Often times, I have to re-read passages a few times over to grasp the depth of understanding protrayed in these published works by Fulton J. Sheen.

Praise the Lord!
 
I’ve gotten what I wanted and more. I thank everyone for pooling your resources to help me out. I’m very grateful.

I wanted to especially thank curiousM. That was a lot of intense quoting and was extremely well crafted. Thanks so much.

Catholic_Mike, I bought Ratzinger’s work from Ignatius press and it’s in the process of being shipped to me as we speak. Thanks.

Looks like I’ve got some reading to do 🙂
 
You are experiencing what many go thru; the transition from childhood faith to the personal commitment of adult faith.

If you are seeking absolute truth, you are seeking God - whether you realize it or not. And maybe that’s one of the first beliefs you should pursue. If you want the truth, Who has it?; Who is the One that knows absolutely whether something is true or not? When you know with all your heart and mind that it is God, then take Him as your constant companion, guide, and confidant in your search for further truth.

Nita
 
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