In Search of Truth

[ptmatthews]

Certainly! If you don’t understand something, you must ask! But also you must be sensible.

If you are studying mathematics and you have doubts about a given theorem, you can request a demonstration of it. If it is not clear enough to you, it might be because you don’t understand one or more of the premises. Then, you can request the demonstration of those premises. But there will be a limit: it will make no sense if you request a demonstration of the axioms, because those are the very principles of all possible demonstration in the field.

If you are studying physics and you have doubts about a given statement, you can request a validation of it. Then, you might be offered an experiment so that you can see what was being said. If you are still unable to understand, it might be because you don’t know some concepts. You can ask about them. But I think it will make no sense if you ask, for example: “but why is it that the momentum in a system of particles is conserved after a collision?”, because that is a principle of the physical science.

If you ask a person about the reasons he has to perform a certain action, he might give you an explanation. And you could continue asking him if you want, but there will be a limit. For example, if he responds something like “because I love my daughter”, most probably there will be no further reasons: His love for his daughter will be the principle of some of his actions.

It is the same in religious matters: There are some principles which we accept by faith -if we decide so-, and we take them as a base to get to other statements. But it will make no sense if you request demonstrations of those principles, or if you want them to be shown to you in such a manner that you can see them, or hear, or taste, or feel, or whatever.

Also, there are some famous controversies about certain topics like “God’s Omniscience and human freedom”; or “God’s Providence and the existence of evil”, which are recurrent in this forum; and people exercise their intellect and their passions discussing about them for months, but no one convinces the other to accept his position. I don’t understand this kind of sports.

Now, all this is related to the conception of truth as an intellectual matter. But when Jesus said “I am the Truth”, I do not understand it as if he was saying that Mathematics, Physical science, History, Astronomy, etcetera, were contained in him somehow. Instead, I understand that if I obey his commands, and conform my actions to his actions, my feelings to his feelings, my thoughts to his thoughts, then I will grow exceptionally. And this is something that I must experience by myself. This is the experiment that I was suggesting you to run, and which requires great care and perseverance. I understood that it is in this sense that you are in search of truth. But if all you want is to exercise your intellect, then…, I think Mathematics will do.

I understand the point you make but see I wish to understand. *“Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you.”*Matt 7:7. Now may you help me how I can start this process to find.

 

[Bahman]

I am searching for the Truth but am having difficulties knowing what to ask and how to go about it. Any suggestions?

You see how much people are scattered about what the truth is. Not all of them could be completely right or wrong. A part of the truth exist in what people believe. You need to think critically to distinguish right from wrong in what people believe. The rest of the truth should find it yourself. You need to be honest with yourself in order to be completely judgemental with what you find. You cannot find the whole truth but you have to try very hard. Your life is your spiritual journey.

 

[womanatwell]

I understand the point you make but see I wish to understand. *“Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you.”*Matt 7:7. Now may you help me how I can start this process to find.

pt, you said previously that you can’t pray because you don’t believe in God. However, you quote a Bible verse when you talk about ask, seek and find. Therefore you already have some sense that you can find answers about what Truth is. If you thought this is a meaningless universe, you would let it at that.

You can ask people how to find Truth, but you can also ask God even if you are not sure He is there. That part would come through prayer. You can say, God, I’m not sure you are there, but I’m going to pray to you anyway and ask questions. Then, as in my experience, you may find yourself understanding more through certain experiences, reading materials, and/or conversations. It takes time, so be patient and continue seeking.

 

[ptmatthews]

pt, you said previously that you can’t pray because you don’t believe in God. However, you quote a Bible verse when you talk about ask, seek and find. Therefore you already have some sense that you can find answers about what Truth is. If you thought this is a meaningless universe, you would let it at that.

You can ask people how to find Truth, but you can also ask God even if you are not sure He is there. That part would come through prayer. You can say, God, I’m not sure you are there, but I’m going to pray to you anyway and ask questions. Then, as in my experience, you may find yourself understanding more through certain experiences, reading materials, and/or conversations. It takes time, so be patient and continue seeking.

I quoted a bible verse because I was being told I can’t keep on asking why. I need help, but I will definitely try that.

 

[Abu]

ptmatthews

Quadratus writes (circa 123 A.D.) that in his day there were still persons around who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus – prime witnesses. [Eusebius, *Church History, 4.3, 1.2; See Free From All Error, Fr W. Most, p 12]

Who else, except the Christ, claimed to be God and proved it?
The reality is that:
Fact 1: There was a man called Jesus.
Fact 2: He claimed to be a messenger sent from God.
Fact 3: He did enough to prove that He was such a messenger.
Fact 4: Crowds followed Jesus and He had an inner circle to whom he spoke much more.
Fact 5: He commissioned His followers to continue His teaching and founded His Church.
Fact 6: Jesus affirmed that God would protect that teaching.

Obviously, the Resurrection of Jesus is the key, as the existence and faith of the Catholic communities is not self-explanatory, but dependent on the fact of the spectacular historical Jesus and the fact of His Resurrection.

The reality that Jesus is God and founded His Catholic Church upon St Peter and the Apostles is shown by the facts of the miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the medically attested miracles that take place at Lourdes, and the Eucharistic miracles, for instance.

 

[JuanFlorencio]

I understand the point you make but see I wish to understand. *“Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you.”*Matt 7:7. Now may you help me how I can start this process to find.

Dear ptmatthews:

If your words express a restlessness of your spirit, then you have already started the process. One day, when I was an adolescent, I heard this:

“You move us to delight in praising You; for You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You”.

And I wanted to know who it was who said those words. I felt akin to him; and it was only after several years (time flowed quite slowly at that moment of my life) that I came to know that the author was St. Augustine, and that he had written those words in his Confessions. I trembled when I finally could have his book in my hands and read it. He became my friend, my brother, my father and my mother…

You will need someone who can accompany you in your long journey, while you are immersed in the Great Silence of God… Perhaps it could be St. Augustine, the searcher of Truth.

 

[fisherman_carl]

I doubt that any of us are wise enough to determine what a Creator would do. It may simply be that He has given us the greatest gift of all, the freedom to choose. He has given us the justification to judge. He has given us the justification to hate. He has given us the justification to condemn. But most of all, He has given us the justification to forgive. Perhaps He is simply waiting now, to see which you will choose.

I think perhaps that the test isn’t between one religion or another, but between judgment and forgiveness. I wonder if He’s not nurturing a relationship, but a child.

God has given us the freedom to choose. But what choice would you choose? Truth or a lie? Is it the same to embrace truth as it is to embrace a lie? Surely, you would recognize that truth is better than a lie?

 

[Bahman]

ptmatthews

Quadratus writes (circa 123 A.D.) that in his day there were still persons around who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus – prime witnesses. [Eusebius, *Church History

, 4.3, 1.2; See Free From All Error, Fr W. Most, p 12]

Who else, except the Christ, claimed to be God and proved it?
The reality is that:
Fact 1: There was a man called Jesus.
Fact 2: He claimed to be a messenger sent from God.
Fact 3: He did enough to prove that He was such a messenger.
Fact 4: Crowds followed Jesus and He had an inner circle to whom he spoke much more.
Fact 5: He commissioned His followers to continue His teaching and founded His Church.
Fact 6: Jesus affirmed that God would protect that teaching.

Obviously, the Resurrection of Jesus is the key, as the existence and faith of the Catholic communities is not self-explanatory, but dependent on the fact of the spectacular historical Jesus and the fact of His Resurrection.

The reality that Jesus is God and founded His Catholic Church upon St Peter and the Apostles is shown by the facts of the miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the medically attested miracles that take place at Lourdes, and the Eucharistic miracles, for instance.

Why God should need a messenger supported with miracles and all the complication to tell the truth?

 

[Bahman]

God has given us the freedom to choose. But what choice would you choose? Truth or a lie? Is it the same to embrace truth as it is to embrace a lie? Surely, you would recognize that truth is better than a lie?

And what is the truth and what is the lie?

 

[womanatwell]

And what is the truth and what is the lie?

Well, that’s what philosophers have been after throughout the ages. But what I think of first is from the Bible where St. Paul says people should know about God through His Creation (Romans 1:19-20) : 19 For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made…

usccb.org/bible/romans/1 .

I invite you to look at some cell biology at a post which has pictures and a short video. It is about a protein complex called “ATP Synthase” that serves as a source of metabolic energy. It is in every organism, from tiny bacteria to the cells of humans:

womanatwell.blogspot.com/2013/01/microbiology.html .

And this is only one of many, many cell machines which are needed to sustain life. To me it is obvious that one and only one super-genius God came up with the means by which life could come about and be sustained. These Bible verses deeply resonate with me, as do other things which the Bible reveals. I feel the Christian point of view makes more sense of life than any other I have encountered.

 

[Abu]

Bahman #29
Why God should need a messenger supported with miracles and all the complication to tell the truth?

The real question is:
Since Adam and Eve disobeyed God and became unable to attain salvation and thus enter heaven, how could they and their descendants be saved?

The evidence of history which attests Christ as the Son of God, sent to redeem humanity, also attests, to this day, to His reality and His truths through the facts of the miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the medically attested miracles that take place at Lourdes, and the Eucharistic miracles.

Christ proved that He is God by His death on the Cross and Resurrection which no other can show. This redeemed humanity from the cataclysm of Original Sin. No other religion has faith in a God who has taken a human nature, historically has been crucified and risen, with the testimony of many eye-witnesses. The historian Eusebius in his Church history, 4.3, 1.2, tells us that writing about 123 A.D., apologist Quadratus cited those in his day who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus of Nazareth – prime witnesses – long after the miracles, crucifixion and death of the Son of God. No other religious founder claimed to be God and proved it – not Mohammed of Islam, not in Hinduism, not in Buddhism, not in Taoism, not in Confucianism.

His miracles “were so frequent, the eyewitnesses so numerous, and the evidence so stark, that not even Christ’s enemies disputed the fact of their occurrence. Instead they ascribed them to the power of the devil, or defied Him to perform another one in His own favour.” (See Mt 12:24; 27:39-42; Jn 11:47). Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Sheehan/Joseph, Saint Austin Press, 2001, p 104].

The evidence is overwhelming that Catholicism is God’s design, the fullness of Christ’s teaching and His mode of salvation for everyone, whether one knows it or not.

 

[Bahman]

Well, that’s what philosophers have been after throughout the ages. But what I think of first is from the Bible where St. Paul says people should know about God through His Creation (Romans 1:19-20) : 19 For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. 20 Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made…

usccb.org/bible/romans/1 .

I invite you to look at some cell biology at a post which has pictures and a short video. It is about a protein complex called “ATP Synthase” that serves as a source of metabolic energy. It is in every organism, from tiny bacteria to the cells of humans:

womanatwell.blogspot.com/2013/01/microbiology.html .

And this is only one of many, many cell machines which are needed to sustain life. To me it is obvious that one and only one super-genius God came up with the means by which life could come about and be sustained. These Bible verses deeply resonate with me, as do other things which the Bible reveals. I feel the Christian point of view makes more sense of life than any other I have encountered.

This is a huge claim that what we know about universe and very well described by science (evolution) is made by God. Everything seems to work well without any intervention from God.

 

[Bahman]

The real question is:
Since Adam and Eve disobeyed God and became unable to attain salvation and thus enter heaven, how could they and their descendants be saved?

There is an easy answer to this question. God just need to forgive them.

The evidence of history which attests Christ as the Son of God, sent to redeem humanity, also attests, to this day, to His reality and His truths through the facts of the miracle of the Sun at Fatima, the medically attested miracles that take place at Lourdes, and the Eucharistic miracles.

Christ proved that He is God by His death on the Cross and Resurrection which no other can show. This redeemed humanity from the cataclysm of Original Sin. No other religion has faith in a God who has taken a human nature, historically has been crucified and risen, with the testimony of many eye-witnesses. The historian Eusebius in his Church history, 4.3, 1.2, tells us that writing about 123 A.D., apologist Quadratus cited those in his day who had been cured or raised from the dead by Jesus of Nazareth – prime witnesses – long after the miracles, crucifixion and death of the Son of God. No other religious founder claimed to be God and proved it – not Mohammed of Islam, not in Hinduism, not in Buddhism, not in Taoism, not in Confucianism.

There are many human beings who claimed that they are God, Mithra for example. They apparently made miracle as well.

His miracles “were so frequent, the eyewitnesses so numerous, and the evidence so stark, that not even Christ’s enemies disputed the fact of their occurrence. Instead they ascribed them to the power of the devil, or defied Him to perform another one in His own favour.” (See Mt 12:24; 27:39-42; Jn 11:47). Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Sheehan/Joseph, Saint Austin Press, 2001, p 104].

The evidence is overwhelming that Catholicism is God’s design, the fullness of Christ’s teaching and His mode of salvation for everyone, whether one knows it or not.

This is what any religion claims.

 

[womanatwell]

This is a huge claim that what we know about universe and very well described by science (evolution) is made by God. Everything seems to work well without any intervention from God.

Proteins are the molecules that do the work of the cell. They are made up of subunits called amino acids which have to be in a certain specific sequence in order to work. Many people do not realize the extreme rarity of functional proteins. Experiments have shown that of proteins of average length, you have only about one in 10^70 that can do a biological job. That’s a 1 with 70 zeroes after it. To compare, our galaxy has about 10^65 atoms. Evolution is supposed to work by chance to provide something for natural selection. However, the correct sequence of amino acids for all our proteins, even after billions of years, could not have come up by chance to make the functional proteins working together in our bodies as they do.

To give you an example of how long it takes for chance to form a functional sequence, my husband worked out how long it would take one million monkeys on one million typewriters to type, by chance, the sentence, “It was a dark and stormy night.” They type 60 words/minute, 24/7/365, 5 letters per word (including spaces). On average, it takes them 7 thousand trillion, trillion, trillion years.

Evolution is not just about bones or beaks any more. It is about the phenomenal complexity of the bodies of organisms. To learn more, a website by the Intelligent Design community that is dedicated to design and complexity in biology is “Evolution News and Views.” They are doing an end-of-year series right now of the best articles, so it is a good time to check it out:

evolutionnews.org/ .

Some Intelligent Design advocates believe God brought about humans through a common ancestor with changes through time, and others believe in direct Creation. But none of them think life came about by chance.

 

[tifischer]

This is a huge claim that what we know about universe and very well described by science (evolution) is made by God. Everything seems to work well without any intervention from God.

That’s what children say about the laundry and the chaos of their legos becoming orderly seemingly spontaneously and effortlessly. I wonder sometimes if they think a magical lego fairy comes in and organizes their legos into an orderly fashion or if they think it happens by random chance. God have mercy on my children and I and provide us the insight and wisdom through grace to realize that it is by your love that you do so much for us. Jesus, Amen.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

But if there is a god, a creator of everything, the this god would have one of two qualities. Either it will pursue to form a relationship with its creations or it will not care about us as we are just a spec of dust.

In order to have a relationship with God, you have to do something…

The greatest commandment is to love God, but he is invisible, and we do not know him. the next greatest commandment is to love our neighbour as we love ourselves.
The way we love our neighbour, is directly linked to how we show our love for God, we cannot separate these two commandments.

Mathew 25
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

 

[Eric_Hyom]

Originally Posted by **ptmatthews **
If this creator does want to form a relationship, then us humans would be able to find it and it would hold the ultimate truth. We may not fully understand it but we would be able to find it.

I believe the ultimate truth is that God loves each and everyone of us as he loves himself.

Can God love us more than he loves himself?

God gave us the greatest commandments, does this make them a greatest or ultimate truth? Because first, they had a greatest meaning for God our Father.