For former atheists/agnostics...

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What made you come to believing in God or come to the Catholic Church?

And, most important of all, how do you know that you are certain it’s true?
 
M31 said:
What made you come to believing in God or come to the Catholic Church?

And, most important of all, how do you know that you are certain it’s true?
Click to expand...
It’s a combination of things for all of us. There is no such thing as certainty. That’s an illusion given the axiomatic basis of all knowledge. I accept there is a G-d because it is logically necessary, I accept that it is the Judeo/Christian G-d based on the mathematics of fulfilled Messianic Prophecy. I accept that Catholicism in that it’s claims to primacy come from Jesus’s grant of authority to Peter. That’s my buildup to G-d in a nutshell if it helps.
 
warpspeedpetey said:
It’s a combination of things for all of us. There is no such thing as certainty. That’s an illusion given the axiomatic basis of all knowledge. I accept there is a G-d because it is logically necessary, I accept that it is the Judeo/Christian G-d based on the mathematics of fulfilled Messianic Prophecy. I accept that Catholicism in that it’s claims to primacy come from Jesus’s grant of authority to Peter. That’s my buildup to G-d in a nutshell if it helps.
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Just curious, were you ever Jewish because Jews use “G-d”?
 
Well , I was born in a non catholic practicant family.
And I believed in God until I was 16 years.After this I became agnostic for 2 years.
And then I started to question somethings.

I will say what I remember by now , some questions I asked to myself was like , why we are here ? why almost everything is avaliable for us(why we don’t need a torch to see each other in the day and the necessity of the night for the plants and even for us , for example), the complexity of the dna , the complexity of the universe , for example the gravity and the origin of the universe,etc.
For example , I’ll give you two example , let suppose you give 14 billions years to Albert Einster or any human being you want to build the universe , will he build the universe?
And then you give 14 billions to a rock that has IQ of 0 .
Although we have many theories for the origin of the universe , the big bang is the most known and for me this theory needs a creator.
I’ll give other example , nowadays is extremely common build games with the new and more developed programming languages,better processors ,better video cards and better ram memory and we can use the artificial inteligent to give some knowledge to the creation(game) .
There are some games that you can control a character and the character can even “think” by himself.
The programmers can build this game and even simulate a life , but the computer will not create the game without the help of the programmers(creators).

Other thing that helped me in this jorney was that my grandfather has a farm and he creates bees and other animals , and I see the complexity of the animals , principally the bees and I was really surprised in what they can do , for me this complexity needs a creator.

Another thing that I remember is that I saw so many cases of people that were healed by their faith and some promises that they made to saints.But I don’t have sure if this is true.
Even in my family I have a case of this.

Now I don’t remember more reasons that converted me to the deism , but this was some of them .And I used to believe in evolution , but nowadays I don’t believe anymore or at least a little.But in my opinion a person can be catholic and evolutionist.
When I had 18 years I started my conversion to catholicism (I’m 20 years now) , but I don’t consider myself a true catholic yet.

Well , now I need to sleep .
If you want to ask something you can ask .
Sorry because I’m not a english native speaker and probably I did some mistakes in my text.

Recently I was searching for some books and I found this book , maybe you want to read it .
There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
Authors : Anthony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese
 
M31 said:
What made you come to believing in God or come to the Catholic Church?

And, most important of all, how do you know that you are certain it’s true?
Click to expand...
I was an agnostic before I became a Catholic.

I believed that a God most likely existed for a number of reasons, most of which stem from the uncaused cause idea. I think what really made me believe that God existed was the existence of human intellect, will, self-awareness, etc. I couldn’t see how sentience could come from an insentient universe. Therefore, if sentience cannot come from insentience, then sentience must have always existed. I couldn’t really subscribe to a pantheistic view, where all matter is sentient and somehow part of this vast, super-awareness, because as far as I know sentience only exists in individual forms (as it does in humans) and thus can’t really exist in a sort of “collective” state. Hence, God must be that sentience which always existed in its highest form. The problem was, I didn’t know who God was, and felt there was no reason he wanted anything to do with me. This wasn’t good enough for me. You know how believers will claim that all men have a God-shaped hole inside of them and only God can truly satisfy that longing? I had that God-shaped hole. There came a point when I wanted, more than anything in the world, just to know God, my creator.

I had grown up in a pretty devout evangelical home. I sort of abandoned the faith while in college. But in this case I still had a pretty solid Christian background, and a good understanding of scripture. I first started to learn about the Catholic Church via wikipedia. Really, the Catholic faith sort of forced me to reexamine Christianity. It totally changed the way I saw Christianity forever. And so much of it was just rediscovering the old truths I learned as an evangelical, and marveling over them, as if I had heard them for the first time. That was my favorite part about RCIA. I knew that, if Christianity was true, then Catholicism must be the truest form of Christianity.
Given what little I knew about other religions, I figured Christianity was probably the best choice. It appealed the most to my conscience and my reasoning. I was completely turned off to Islam, I thought (and still think) Buddhism is one of the most depressingly empty philosophies in the world, and most other religions were either too morally corrupt in their teachings, too bizarre or too small to be worthy my consideration. I figured, if God has ever revealed himself to man, he must have done it through some world religion. And frankly, I haven’t heard of any God that is really worth my worship, save for Jesus Christ. Of all gods Jesus alone has proven himself beyond worthy of human worship.

Aside from the intellectually stimulation that comes from reading Catholic apologetics, I found that, in its spirituality and practices, Catholicism fit me like a glove. Do I believe what the Catholic Church teaches? Yes. I have good reason for believing it. Can I know with absolute certainty that it is not wrong? No. If I could, it would not be faith. But I think the reasons are good enough that they are convincing to me. And I have seen the fruits of an active Catholic faith and continue to praise God for them.
 
M31 said:
What made you come to believing in God or come to the Catholic Church?

And, most important of all, how do you know that you are certain it’s true?
Click to expand...
Used to be in eastern religion, turned agnostic. But I will be brief how I went from agnostic to an eager soon to be catechumen.

My eldest brother and mother were converting. I wanted to prove my brother wrong, did research and ended up proving his case. How? Four words:

Humility, Thomism, History, Absolutism

Was actually easy come to think about it. My conversion from the beginning of looking into Catholicism of trying to disprove my brother to being convinced it is truth, took four months. Thank God everyday for such expedient grace He gave me.

Not an elabroate story, sorry to say. Just was intellectually honest and did the homework. 🤷
 
M31 said:
What made you come to believing in God or come to the Catholic Church?

And, most important of all, how do you know that you are certain it’s true?
Click to expand...
I think one has to start at the beginning.First:Do you believe there is a God?2)Do you think you commit sin?If you answered no to both then either you think you are perfect or you don’t take any responsibility for your actions.
 
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