This is a matter of faith, which I respect.
I used to be a materialist like you and I am familiar with all the arguments. I think a quote from Schopenhauer sums up how I felt during those times:
We begin in the madness of carnal desire and the transport of voluptuousness, we end in the dissolution of all our parts and the musty stench of corpses. And the road from the one to the other too goes, in regard to our well-being and enjoyment of life, steadily downhill: happily dreaming childhood, exultant youth, toil-filled years of manhood, infirm and often wretched old age, the torment of the last illness and finally the throes of death - does it not look as if existence were an error the consequences of which gradually grow more and more manifest?
Sound rather depressing, but as a materialist, I did put my hope in death which I saw not as the beginning of Eternity but rather Annihilation from the pains of this life of suffering.
But there was a problem, I had been Baptised as a child and had been raised in a devout Catholic household. I couldn’t quite shake that experience, especially the effects of the Sacraments. I also knew that there was objective right and wrong and knew that evil was a real, personal force in this world. I also knew that Love, especially the Love that dwells in children and the innocent, was a real Person. I couldn’t really shake my Faith even when I was a hardcore atheist.
In any case, Reason prepares the way to Faith. The Catechism makes it clear that “the existence of God the Creator** can be known with certainty **through his works,
by the light of human reason.” Reason can show that that there is a Creator and can demonstrate his primary attributes. Reason lays the foundation for faith. Reason is thus the common ground between believers and unbelievers. Faith without reason withers into myth or superstition.
The Catechism teaches that, "by natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works. But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine Revelation. Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man… He has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
The Catechism goes on to teach that, "Indeed Baptism is “the sacrament of faith” in a particular way, since it is the sacramental
entry into the life of faith.
So, I would just ask you atheistgirl, “Have you been Baptised?” If the answer is “yes” then Faith is still somewhere inside you. If the answer is “no” then perhaps you should look into it, because Faith, while based on Reason, is still a gift.
Since I started off quoting Schopenhauer, I will end on a more positive note with Venerable Fulton Sheen:
The awful seriousness of the pagan centuries lay like a pall over mankind: All the genius of the Greek playwrights could not conceal the deep despair that filled the cramped hearts of those who found no greater meaning in the world than its own brittle beauty of color, line, and rhythmic harmony. Truth was the noblest master any pagan poet or philosospher had found to serve - but truth, when seen, appeared as loveless and impersonal.
The pagan’s sad despair heard, on the stillness of a winter breeze, the cry of the Babe. The great ones of the earth did not hear the cry, for they were occupied with the concerns of self. There were only two classes of people who heard that cry: shepherds and wise men. The shepherds represented those who know that they know nothing; and the wise men stood for those who know how little learning teaches us. The two kinds of simple-hearted pilgrims saw a Babe, and they saw It with a Divine sense of humor. They saw God through that human form. It was the Word, Who had become Emanuel, God with us.
And when the Babe grew in age and grace and wisdom, He went into the public lanes and marketplaces and began to teach a new doctrine: the doctrine of the Divine Sense of Humor. It could all be summed up in these words: “Nothing in this world is to be taken seriously - nothing except the salvation of a soul. The world, and the things that are in it, will one day be folded up like an Arab’s tent; you are not to live exclusively for this life.” It came as a shock to those who were taking the world seriously to hear Him, the God-Man, thunder out: “How is a man the better for it, if he gains the whole world at the cost of losing his own soul?”
There is only one place in Sacred Scripture where God is said to laugh: “He Who Dwells in Heaven is laughing at their threats, the Lord makes light of them” (Psalm 2:4). So when the materialist or atheist sets himself up as God, denying any dependence on a Creator, repudiating his need of a Savior to forgive his faults and sins, then he becomes so ridiculous as to provoke the laughter of God Himself…But while God laughs at the atheists, the saints and those who have a Divine sense of humor laugh at themselves. Their faith has taught them that this life is only a vestibule to the next and that everything in it is a kind of sacramental, leading the soul to God. They envisage the world as a scaffolding, up which soul would climb to the Kingdom of God. When the last soul shall have climbed up it, the saffolding wil be torn down and burnt with fervent fire - not because it is base, but because it will have done its work of bringing us back again to God.
It may well be that on the Last Day, when the Good Lord comes to judge the living and the dead, He will give a very special gift to those who have not taken the world too seriously but have made every material thing in it a steppingstone to Heaven. To those who have not taken either themselves or the world too seriously - to those who have a Divine sense of humor - He will show His smile.
@
who knows?
