I’m an atheist. My Catholic father thinks I’ll go to heaven

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WillPhillips said:
I know he doesn’t believe in a fire-and-brimstone hell, but does believe there is a hell…that people choose to go to, by rejecting God (or at least something close to that)
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Our Lady of Fatima, gave three children a vision of hell and it was a burning hell. Jesus described it with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Hell is a place or state which souls are deprived of the sight of God for all eternity, and are in dreadful torments.

As our priest said this morning, there is only one way to heaven and that is through Christ and His Church.

I am not trying to scare you either but I would definitely keep seeking God. Read the New Testament. Pray and ask God to reveal Himself to you. He will. Ask the Blessed Mother to reveal her son to you. Even if you do not believe what you are doing is being heard just pray and God will answer. He will lead you. He loves you and wants you with Him for all eternity.

God bless.
 
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I failed my final for statistics for social science last semester at college but still got a B+ in the class 😛

Can safely say I learned absolutely nothing and am more confused than before.
 
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That is true, if the OP cares about what his father thinks on if he’s going to hell or Heaven doesn’t this suggest the OP has a belief in hell and Heaven and thus some sort of religious belief?
 
Your father knows you better than I do but his argument in favor of your salvation seems like wishful thinking to me because rejecting God is not the only cause of people ending up in hell. People, who through no fault of their own do not know God and thus cannot reject God, can still go to hell, if they ignore or act contrary to their conscience, as the section in the Catechism I cited earlier suggests. The Bible says, “Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” (James 4:17)

Have you always done what you thought was the right thing to do? If so, maybe your father is correct. If not, your likelihood of avoiding hell is diminished.
 
WillPhillips said:
This line of thinking is new to me so curious your thoughts. Is he blinded by his bias and love for his son (me)? Or is there some theology/history behind his rationale?
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He’s probably blinded by his love for you. Since you have the means to know the Catholic Faith and still an atheist, seems to me that you’re not in the state of invincible ignorance.
No one can please God without Faith.
 
I would say that to a person if I understood that further conversation would be futile. I would not be confident in that statement as being true.

God wants to start our heaven on earth today. He wants to walk through life with us and have us become a source of blessing to the people around us. Is that something you can get behind?

Let’s say that you’re a player in the Superbowl. The big day is here, everyone is out on the field. You make the decision to put on earphones, scroll through your phone, and really just ignore the entire game. Your team mates are struggling, there’s injuries and players carried off, you are falling behind in the score. There are your team mates calling you to get into the game, that they need your help, and you say, Get lost, I’m busy. The game is over and you’ve contributed nothing. Your team mates are busted up and battered, exhausted.

This describes our time on earth. We are stronger with you in it, giving it your best. Don’t be side lined another day. Be a source of blessing, a force for good. This is why we’re here. Get in it to win it. At one point you’ll look up and the game will be over and you’ll have to face that you did nothing. You will not have a reply.
 
Atreju said:
There are anomalies in all worldviews because humans are imperfect and lack even the capability to understand the world perfectly.
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Haha yes the things that can be justified with statistics… Would love to have this conversation, but some other time.

I couldn’t agree more with this statement btw. Thanks for the response.
 
GospelOfMatthew said:
That is true, if the OP cares about what his father thinks on if he’s going to hell or Heaven doesn’t this suggest the OP has a belief in hell and Heaven and thus some sort of religious belief?
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Of course not. A person can try to understand arguments on all sides, without holding a belief in one (or any) of them. I really am here in sincerity.
 
So this thread got quite off track. If anyone has any references or Catholic writings along the lines of my father’s argument, please let me know. Thank you all 👍
 
Sooner or later, all threads go off track. It’s the nature of threads. Personally I sometimes find the digressions more interesting than the original topics. I guess I’m just funny that way.
 
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I can see why a child becomes sort of a person of non-belief if he were raised in a rather dysfunctional family. I knew a kid that was not introduced to God during her early childhood. She didn’t know anything about God. In grade school, she didn’t pay attention to her teachers. She thought they were just hysterical women wanting the kids to behave themselves, thus telling them about purgatory and hell. Nuns were hung up on rules and regulations.

This kid used to believe that everyone lied to kids about things, like Santa Clause, where babies really come from…and other things.So the nuns said in school was taken with a grain of salt.

It would have been easy for the girl to be an atheist. She had a hard time relating to the idea that there is an invisible God because she never got to see Him. Instead she believed in fairies and magical beings that granted wishes.

When she reached 7th grade, she changed for no apparent reason. She found out about Jesus and began to make visits to the Blessed Sacrament every day. That is an example of how Jesus may intervene on the behalf of someone who thinks they are atheistic.
 
woolycaterpillar said:
I can see why a child becomes sort of a person of non-belief if he were raised in a rather dysfunctional family…
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Interesting your comment since I tend to find those in more challenging life situations to be (in general) more religious. I actually grew up in what I typically call a “Beaver Cleaver Family”. I have nothing but good memories of family, community, and church.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Two resources

www.strangenotions.com

The podcaster known as “Max Kolbe”

https://www.redpillreligion.com/author/maxkolbe/
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Atreju said:
Whew, that’s an unfortunate website name. “Red Pilled” is internet slang that a lot of alt-right, neo-nazis and other conspiracy theorists use to describe themselves.
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mrsdizzyd said:
Good grief! Definitely in the avoid column!
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No, (though, I don’t know anything about the link.)

“Red pill” is a reference to a line in the movie The Matrix. It means learning the truth, no matter how painful.

In the movie, one has a choice in his particular situation. He can either take a blue pill and doesn’t learn anymore and believes whatever he wants to believe or he can take the red pill and learn the truth.

It is a very popular phrase today, being used before someone says what is true or what they perceive to be true.
 
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🤔 … Maybe your dad has the gift of prophecy, and he knows that you are going to convert to Christianity some time in the future but unbeknownst to you.
 
I’m aware of the root origin of the word in The Matrix, but it is usually used on the internet by lonely, extremist men who have “become aware” of things like a Jewish conspiracy or that all women are evil, and stuff like that. This particular website has an anti-woman bent to it so I’m thinking the title is to draw men in from that Red Pill community.

Most prominent is a reddit sub forum called TheRedPill. You can google it if you’re interested but I wont link it as it is quite vile.
 
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