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SFTor
Guest
it’s a cold and crazy world allright. All we have is each other.
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curtishouse29
Guest
It depends on what youre tolerating…When it comes to generosity, we all have a problem with that sometimes and, just like everybody else, Im a work in progress.
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SFTor
Guest
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curtishouse29
Guest
It all depends on what they think…Do I have tolerance for racists, bigots, and such? No I don’t. Do I have tolerance for doctors who perform abortions? No I don’t. Do I tolerate atheists, agnostics, and the like? Yes I do because I know how it is to live without God and I just pray that some of my words will hit home with them. I hope that clears things up a bit.
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curtishouse29
Guest
This is my last post on this thread. I think this will just lead to an argument and I don’t want to go down this road. Take care and, even if you don’t believe, may God bless you and your entire family.
-Curtis
-Curtis
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SFTor
Guest
Are you really the same guy who started a thread titled “I just can’t believe in god?”
I know what it’s like to live without a god too. It seems fine to me.
P.S. When you lived without a god, did this god still exist anyway? And did he really not take care of your spiritual needs just because you didn’t believe?
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notsmart
Guest
At the very least, we are tolerated! This is a start.
I am really wondering how in the world this is compatible with true catholic thought. The atheist PERSON is not just to be tolerated, but loved. I don’t mind christians rejecting theology contradictory to theirs (or even thoughts contradictory) but it should never cross the line to reducing an individual to being merely “tolerated”.
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SFTor
Guest
Are you holding out for love, Monica?At the very least, we are tolerated! This is a start.
I am really wondering how in the world this is compatible with true catholic thought. The atheist PERSON is not just to be tolerated, but loved. I don’t mind christians rejecting theology contradictory to theirs (or even thoughts contradictory) but it should never cross the line to reducing an individual to being merely “tolerated”.
Best,
Tor
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notsmart
Guest
Yes.
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SFTor
Guest
Good for you! I’ll do the same.
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Jack_245814
Guest
The other thing, which I really should’ve said but didn’t, is that Religion is something to be experienced not proven. You experience it first, and then you reason about it (theology), not the other way 'round.
Just like we accept reality because of experience and then reason about it (science and such). If we start with reason alone, you really can’t believe anything.
Even Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” isn’t very good; a Catholic priest author I know of put it pretty well: “thinking is a quality of his being, not a proof of it.”
Just like we accept reality because of experience and then reason about it (science and such). If we start with reason alone, you really can’t believe anything.
Even Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” isn’t very good; a Catholic priest author I know of put it pretty well: “thinking is a quality of his being, not a proof of it.”
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nuntym
Guest
sigh It really gets tiring to hear atheists or agnostics, or even Christians, say that Christians think to have a “monopoly on decency” or a “monopoly on morals” or a “monopoly on ethics.” We don’t. The idea of morality or ethics has been with mankind for thousands and thousands of years before Christ was born. We have as examples the Ten Commandments, the Greek philosophers (especially the Stoics), Buddha, and Confucius, among so many others. And aside from that, if morals and ethics had not been present early on, man would have not even survived to welcome Christ; it is easy to see what would have happened if indiscriminate killing, stealing, raping, lying, and the like was the norm in any human society.
So what is the contribution of Christianity to the world? It is the Answer to Everything.
For millennia before Christ, man had spawned two types of answers to the question why he was on earth: mythologies and philosophies. And anyone who knows a little about Greek and Roman history can see that these two disciplines live side by side; a pagan can worship any deity he/she wants, and also live by any philosophy he/she wants. Now in today’s world that is quite bizarre, as most religions today demand total fidelity – MIND and SOUL as well as body.
But why do pagans do this? Well, one reason is because unconsciously or not, pagans know their religion (if you can call mythologies that) is not that real. Poets invented what human female Zeus and the others gods will abduct or rape the next time, and poets change the circumstances of such “known” instances. Gods change according to the needs of the people: the irresponsible gods of Olympus change to the more homely and stately gods of ancient Rome. Kings and emperors, from the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the Roman Emperors, became gods. And people even incorporate deities of other mythologies into their own, just as was the fashion in the all-encompassing empire of ancient Rome.
At the same time, philosophies sprang up because there are things that mythologies cannot provide. Mythologies sprang up because of the need of man to worship and to know his place in the cosmos; philosophies sprang up because of the need of man to know how to live properly and to deal with that uniquely human thing called ideas. And in the pagan mind, these two are very different things. Has anyone wondered why is it Buddhism is embraced by atheists and agnostics, as well as by Hindus, Shintoists, and even by some theists like some "Christians? It is because it is a philosophy, not a religion; it does not deal, and does not presume to deal, with ideas such as gods.
The problem of mythologies and philosophies is that even the best of them seemingly break down. Mythologies, worshiping the nameless forces of Nature such as health, death, sex, and life, break down to unbridled dangerous passions. The innocent worship of sex turns to having every other innocent natural thing becoming soaked and sodden with sex, from gardens, to the seasons to a whole continent to the stars. Julian the Apostate bathed in hot bull’s blood; a whole continent sacrificed men, women, and children for the continuation of sunrises and to bless the grain.
Philosophies became too narrow and too simplistic and became a bore. One can be virtuous but never happy (the Stoics), one can be happy but never from this universe (Buddhism), one can be happy but screw everything and everyone else (Hedonism, Egoism)…the list goes on.
And the thing is, these man-made objects did nothing but stagnate. The greatest example of this in my mind is Asia, and especially China, which remained almost the same from ancient times until early 20th century. Never mind the invasions China had before the 19th century; Chinese culture just absorbed them (see here and here). Yet China possessed almost all the inventions that the West subsequently used to dominate the world: paper, the compass, the rudder, the printing press, and so on.
So what did all of this have to do with Christianity’s contribution to the world? Only the Answer to why all the mythologies and philosophies in the world failed in the end. And it is also the Answer to why when you lie on your back in the outdoors you have this distinct feeling in the deepest part of your heart that, somehow, you do not belong where you lie, but you belong up there among or even above the clouds. It is the Answer why you know there are people who love doing evil, who feel exquisite pleasure doing unspeakable horrors to people. It is the Answer why it is a literal war with yourself to do good, and be good.
The Answer is the greatest contribution of Christianity to Western thought. It is the Dogma of the Fall, the Dogma of Original Sin. The dogma that says man is fundamentally flawed and thus cannot save himself, and 198,000 years of man’s existence before the coming of Christ proves that. The dogma that tells us the God was NOT with us, until the coming of Emmanuel, and is most of the time still NOT with us, until Emmanuel’s second coming.
What flows out from this dogma is that since man cannot save himself, something, or Someone, that is beyond man needs to save man. And we believe this to be a God who became Man, the Creator among his creation, who humbled Himself to give Himself as a Gift to and Sacrifice for mankind so that man can go beyond his limitation and become, once more, God-like, with his passions and intellect in their rightful place once more, that is, to create according to God’s plan, and a reward fit for gods in the end; and He then left a visible Mother of mankind, the Church, to guide it.
And thus, with the coming and going of Christ, and with the guidance of Mother Church, Western civilization fell to the Dark Ages, seemingly to rid itself of its previous pagan influences, and rose back in the Middle Ages thoroughly Christian. And then the Renaissance of Western culture, nurtured by Mother Church, happened; the West regained its heritage from the ancient world, now ready to incorporate the best of it and leave out the worst of it; and the world never became the same again.
To those who doubt the role of Christianity in the flowering of Western civilization that is visible today, I would just point out the fact that while the rest of the world fell into stagnation, wherever Christianity is, countless revolutions and counter-revolutions happened. During the Dark Ages, slavery died out to be replaced by serfdom; slavery returned subsequently, but again was subsequently abolished by Christian nations. Compare this with the iron grip of the caste system in Asia, especially India, over the millennia. Modern Democracy, Communism, the Emancipation, Capitalism, Science… all of these powerful ideas came forth from Christianity. And the idea of nationality? Just when did the current nations of the world come? The Mother Church is in more ways than one a mother, for she is the Mother of All Nations.
Christianity does not kill ideas; rather, it IS the Mother of the greatest ideas in the world.
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Lisdogan
Guest
A correction: I spoke of histoical scepticism - meaning that we cannot trust all that we read. My rather used to say believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see. I have argued elsewhere that if God prepared humans to do his work on earth, we have to speed up the evolution of brains (which is happening). I am a historian (cv elsewhere), and agree that humans and their constructs are just as liable to criticism and analysis as religious beliefs.
More later,
In Christ, and thanks,
L
Lisdogan
Guest
More on Faith
There are a number of ideas that I have found useful to meditate upon. These are in addition to the thinkpiece I set out above.
1.St Julian Mary, of the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Lesotho was quoted as saying: It is not so important to believe: it is all true anyway!
2.We must prefer, as human beings, to move on from daily existence to meaningful being. One way to do this is to do it with The Trinity.
3.The Greek word ‘pistis’ is usually translated as ‘faith’. There is another interpretation which I find more useful: ‘trust’ and ‘abandonment’. We may learn to trust that God is; to trust that God is with us; to trust what we know and love about God. It is like a blind diver: he trusts the board is in place for his dive, and that there is water in the pool below. It is a far more textured word than ‘faith’.
4.My mentors keep reminding me that faith or trust does not arrive overnight - as you have discovered. Being a cradle-Christian is relatively easy; conversion is more difficult. Do not rush, push or get frustrated: this journey sometimes takes a lifetime. Patience. ‘Be still and know that I am God.’
5.Habitual practice: attending a place of worship of your choice (Quakers are good to start with), praying and listening for a response. meditating, or just emptying the mind have a habit of working to grow a tiny seed into a rather larger, if still wobbly, bush. Keep up the habit: do not lose heart.
6.Take a look at the religious beliefs of others: Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists for example. They will help you to get a better and very different take on the Christian faith - and to learn that many of the basic principles overlap consistently.
7.I am astounded by the persistence of religious beliefs over millennia: anthropology, sociology, history, archaeology, all show us that where man is, there is almost inevitably a desire for communication with, being with, a Supreme Being, however characterised. God and man are almost always linked throughout the ages. (I am not sure about the Chinese: the Analects of Confucious are more administrative, legal and managerial.) Whether this is because there is a need or an instinct to believe in a higher being, or because the creation myths developed by various cultures (as Genesis in the Bible) always point to a core being, or because a longing for religious belief is lodged deeply in the hypothalamus of the brain - as is our fear of snakes - I don’t know. But there sure is something out there that leads the majority of humankind to belief in a ‘real reality’ and a supreme being.
In Christ,
There are a number of ideas that I have found useful to meditate upon. These are in addition to the thinkpiece I set out above.
1.St Julian Mary, of the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Lesotho was quoted as saying: It is not so important to believe: it is all true anyway!
2.We must prefer, as human beings, to move on from daily existence to meaningful being. One way to do this is to do it with The Trinity.
3.The Greek word ‘pistis’ is usually translated as ‘faith’. There is another interpretation which I find more useful: ‘trust’ and ‘abandonment’. We may learn to trust that God is; to trust that God is with us; to trust what we know and love about God. It is like a blind diver: he trusts the board is in place for his dive, and that there is water in the pool below. It is a far more textured word than ‘faith’.
4.My mentors keep reminding me that faith or trust does not arrive overnight - as you have discovered. Being a cradle-Christian is relatively easy; conversion is more difficult. Do not rush, push or get frustrated: this journey sometimes takes a lifetime. Patience. ‘Be still and know that I am God.’
5.Habitual practice: attending a place of worship of your choice (Quakers are good to start with), praying and listening for a response. meditating, or just emptying the mind have a habit of working to grow a tiny seed into a rather larger, if still wobbly, bush. Keep up the habit: do not lose heart.
6.Take a look at the religious beliefs of others: Moslems, Hindus and Buddhists for example. They will help you to get a better and very different take on the Christian faith - and to learn that many of the basic principles overlap consistently.
7.I am astounded by the persistence of religious beliefs over millennia: anthropology, sociology, history, archaeology, all show us that where man is, there is almost inevitably a desire for communication with, being with, a Supreme Being, however characterised. God and man are almost always linked throughout the ages. (I am not sure about the Chinese: the Analects of Confucious are more administrative, legal and managerial.) Whether this is because there is a need or an instinct to believe in a higher being, or because the creation myths developed by various cultures (as Genesis in the Bible) always point to a core being, or because a longing for religious belief is lodged deeply in the hypothalamus of the brain - as is our fear of snakes - I don’t know. But there sure is something out there that leads the majority of humankind to belief in a ‘real reality’ and a supreme being.
In Christ,
A
Aleii
Guest
There is only truth in it if it is actually true! There is nothing to lose by simply asking instead of suggesting (assuming), and by doing that you prevent alienating and offending people. There exists a large body of people who have sudied Catholicism, prayed, etc, but Catholicism does not make sense to them - therefore, they can’t believe.
First off, I am sorry to hear about your sick newborn, and wish you strength through this difficult time. I am glad that for you, existence of God is undeniable. It can be a real comfort especially in the face of difficulties you are experiencing now.
But faith is not all about what can be seen/tasted/smelled/touched. It is, to me, about what is logical or not to the person. I don’t see God’s influence in the world; only man’s. Where I’m at right now is the thought that if God exists, it is a very uninvolved God.
Swan - well put.
Hmm, well, for me, there are a lot of things in this world which are astounding, very extraordinary to me. How the human heart works, for example, when one electrical pathway is broken, there are built-in detours, built in fail-safes, to keep things going. That’s pretty astounding to me, and it is true.
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Aleii
Guest
hmm… there was nothing else that happened in the last 4 days that reversed your last 10 years of struggle?
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Aleii
Guest
Curtis, could you please elaborate about this? I looked back a past couple months of your posts, and you spend a great deal of time defending Catholicism, quoting the Bible, talking about Jesus, talking about how Catholicism is the true religion, and talking about how you are currently in the process of converting to Catholicism. This seems very at-odds with your OP, and with the subsequent posts. When I initially read it, it seemed like you had a 10 year “dark night of the soul”, and then suddenly in the past 4 days you are going to RCIA. Could you please elaborate more on what you meant in the OP? Was it a 10 year crisis of faith, or, was it a momentary crisis of faith, or, was it something else?
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SHJIHM
Guest
I’d certainly love to know moreIf you want, I can tell you more.
Could you email me or stop by runboard.com/bshjihm?
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Pinkyyy
Guest
Hi, maybe reading some people’s experiences may help - I doubt too many on here would agree with Near Death Experiences, but I find them fascinating - type in NDE or Near Death experiences in google, and there is one site in particular that comes up near the top of the list with so many topics and experiences. It’s hard to ignore that there is something out there after death when you are done reading those (And alot of the people had no faith either before their NDE’s).
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anon52328184
Guest
went to the link. that is nice!!
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