Is Religion a Scam?

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What is hard to imagine is a philosophy that after one has seen the expanse of creation, the beauty of the world, the amazing bio mechanics of life, the complexity of the “rational self” of a human being and the only statement that they can make about it is…

“Wow, that was lucky.”🤷
 
*My ten year old son if i had one could of presented a better response than the idiotic statements made by O’Reilly’s guest. IMO junk like that brings down the quality of his show. It presents the false impression that atheists are intellectually challenged or dishonest. *

Isn’t it entirely possible that some (certainly not all) atheists are intellectually challenged? O’Reilly has also debated Richard Dawkins on his show. So I don’t think O’Reilly is just picking on the intellectually challenged atheist, unless you happen to think of Dawkins as also intellectually challenged. But it wasn’t Dawkins who put up the billboards at Christmas. It was the American Atheists, who were represented by O’Reilly’s guest. What do you think of people who spend a lot of money publicly mocking Christians during the Christmas season?

I don’t always agree with O’Reilly, by the way, and I think he could have presented a better case than he did with this particular atheist. O’Reilly is another one of those intellectually sharp people who sometimes don’t prepare themselves well enough and don’t know when to zip their lips.
 
GreggAlvarez said:
People die for a lot of things. A scam is not one of them.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_Siege

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown
A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed “revolutionary suicide” by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_7th_bombings
Fifty-two people in addition to the four bombers were killed in the attacks and around 700 were injured.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11
Nearly 3,000 victims and the 19 hijackers died in the attacks.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Solar_Temple
Di Mambro and twelve followers performed a ritual Last Supper. A few days after that, apparent mass suicides and murders were conducted at two villages in Switzerland, and at Morin Heights — 15 inner circle members committed suicide with poison, 30 were killed by bullets or smothering, and 8 others were killed by other causes. Many of the bodies when found were drugged, possibly to prevent the members from objecting. The buildings were then set on fire by timer devices, purportedly as one last symbol of the group’s purification.
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🤷
 
*“There is no bigot like the atheist.” – G.K. Chesterton *

Do you happen to know what book that is from? It sounds Chestertonian, but it would be interesting to know in what context the remark was made.
 
This is a clear case of someone on the outside pontificating about something he knows little about. Consider the non-Catholic going on and on about how “misogynistic” Catholicism is. Such a charge strikes the orthodox Catholic as coming from out of nowhere given how high our view of women is - for crying out loud, the perfect example of a human being in our tradition is the Blessed Virgin Mary, a woman. Non-Catholics are simply unaware how DEEPLY she factors into our ethos. They are also unaware of the nature of the priesthood.

In this case, it is a matter of an atheist already predisposed to believe that the Church is peddling false teachings and “tricking” the masses with them. All the while, the masses give them money. Nevermind that the Church isn’t coercing anyone, and Catholics are free not to give money and totally free to do whatever they want. Under this uncharitable view, a lot of things are “scams.”
 
Tomarin

Thank you! Must have been an interesting play. George Bernard Shaw went to see it twice!
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Isn’t it entirely possible that some (certainly not all) atheists are intellectually challenged? O’Reilly has also debated Richard Dawkins on his show. So I don’t think O’Reilly is just picking on the intellectually challenged atheist, unless you happen to think of Dawkins as also intellectually challenged. But it wasn’t Dawkins who put up the billboards at Christmas. It was the American Atheists, who were represented by O’Reilly’s guest. What do you think of people who spend a lot of money publicly mocking Christians during the Christmas season?

.

I am extremely greatful I live in a country that makes it possible to express one’s beliefs publically no matter how much I might disagree with them and how disrespectfully they might choose to represent their views. I acknowledge there has to be limits to free speech but I don’t think this would even come close to qualifying. IMO, a similiar argument could have been leveled right back to OReilly’s guest that many Atheists delude themselves into living as if what they did with their lives had any ultimate significance whatsover considering their naturalistic world view. Who is more deluded a happy vs. depressed atheist or a hopeful Christian??
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Max Born Quantum Physicist

“Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly.”

Max Born was one of those scientists who could see the sharp line of distinction between science and wisdom. Unlike the famed biologist Richard Dawkins, who claimed that evolution made it intellectually respectable to be an atheist. 🤷
 
thanks to everyone who posted such nice things to say about my earlier post in this thread. as requested by them, i will offer here to the readers of this thread some more of my thoughts on scientific atheism, thoughts about a few of the other powerful intellectual threats of today to christianity, some of my thoughts about why christianity really is the holiest faith on earth and why catholicism really is the best way to learn about and to worship and to follow the teachings of our lord and savior, jesus christ, and a few more ideas i have which i hope might help other christians proselytize and save souls. i hope all of the information below helps all who read it, and, from the father and me, god bless everyone, including any atheists and others of other faiths and belief systems who choose love, hope, faith in the human spirit, truth, mercy, joy, forgiveness, kindness, self-sacrifice, service, humility, morality, honor, justice, general goodness, etc, and an open mind to things like the possibility of heaven, the evidence for miracles and prophecies, and the idea that a real omnipotent entity/force which we christians call “god” created everything in this universe including the so-called big bang singularity postulated by contemporary cosmologists.

first, i would like to state that atheists generally rely on, when they attempt to dismiss the concept of god, philosophical arguments that reduce to nihilism. that is, atheism presupposes that the big bang event which modern astronomers have discovered and have verified which occurred at the dawn/origin of this multidimensional universe suffices to disprove god’s existence. this is fallacious. the big bang, in my opinion, must have been the dawn of god, who is omnipresent as well as omnipotent, and must have been part of god’s existence, which existence is surely something we cannot fathom and which is something that transcends ordinary human understanding of dimensions such as time and space. i believe god is all of this universe and all of its dimensions and “stuff” (matter, antimatter, energy, dark energy, etc) as well as the power behind all of the love and light and purpose within it. regarding the devil, i believe that that spiritual entity/force was created by god, as part of this universe, in order that god might allow for some struggle within moral beings (which i believe includes other social, sapient, sentient, painient humanoid entities from other star systems) in order to test those souls of his, within this universe, for information about their will and their desire to serve god’s love and light and divine purpose, etc, in order that god might experience, in some manner which we humans can only relate to in our limited way as akin to our love for others, a love for his creations (which i hold includes his love for all of the nonhuman animals of earth, as well as the plants).

regarding the other mainstay of scientific atheism, the idea that the fossil record and the other overwhelming scientific evidence proving that biological evolution has been occurring on earth since the dawn of life on this planet suffices to disprove god’s existence and suffices to disprove the idea that human beings are morally unique organisms on earth, i have this to offer: we humans enjoy intellectual capacities enabling us to grapple with our moral selves and to communicate with god, which the other complex organisms of earth do not. i believe that at some place in our evolution, our species, homo sapiens sapiens, encountered god for the first time (at least for the first recorded time), likely, given the accounts from the torah and from earlier religious sources, in the iraqi fertile crescent valley, and that the biblical characters adam and eve represent either the literal or the legendary first two humans who knew intellectually that god was real and without them and who were the first two humans to communicate with god. whether the genesis account of the garden of eden is literally true or not, is, to my mind, largely irrelevant. instead, i believe, christians and others ought to understand that moses (or, given the debate among biblical scholars over authorship of the torah, whoever wrote genesis) was granted, through divine inspiration (such as that divine inspiration many others, such as popes, saints, our lord and savior, etc, have clearly enjoyed), the words of the torah, which god intended for his chosen people of that era, the israelites. i believe that the problems modern academics and skeptics of christianity have had reconciling the old testament stories with our present-day knowledge concerning evolution, similarities in sumerian and babylonian mythology to the torah’s stories, archaeological evidence against a worldwide flood of that era, etc can be solved with an understanding of the fact that human of moses’ era could not have known the things we humans know today and that therefore any logical inconsistencies we can detect today inherent in the old testament’s accounts are not necessarily indicative of the falsehood of the bible or even of just the old testament, but rather only provide evidence that moses was inspired by god in his era to write those commandments and those stories which god believed at that time would help his chosen people to walk in faith and to serve him and to continue to survive and to prosper.

part two below…
 
one other cogent argument academics and skeptics against christianity often bring up against our faith is this: the idea that god is male, given christian references to “our father who art in heaven”, etc, lends support to the argument that christianity, like the other monotheistic faiths of earth, is a religious belief system created by men and perpetuated in patriarchal societies throughout human history for the furtherance of male domination over women and society and nature. many feminists and others believe that this patriarchal concept of god has relegated women to inferior status within our church and within christian societies in general and throughout christendom’s history. i agree with them to some extent, which i will not, for time constraint reasons, go into much detail concerning here. however, i maintain that humanity is a naturally patriarchal species, given that all but an infinitesimally small number of cultures have been male-dominated throughout our history, and that this fact has been incorporated into christian teachings and culture as a consequence of humanity’s nature, which is rooted in the family, not in any male-constructed plan or pattern of subjugation in the name of christ. jesus christ, according to the gospel accounts, was not chauvinistic towards women, but instead was loving and kind towards all, including towards a divorced woman, a prostitute, and an adulteress in his day, which fact proves, to my mind, that his christianity, which all good christians serve and strive towards, was never intended to relegate women to inferior status.

another powerful argument which certain skeptics might bring to bear to challenge our faith concerns the history of the gospel writings. scholars now believe that all four of the christian gospels were written decades after the death of jesus. this fact might be brought up as evidence that the gospel writers intended, with these most holy and inspired works of god, to further some sort of cult and/or to garner fame or fortune for themselves in their lifetimes. the gospels themselves, i believe, offer testament to their genuineness. that is, the words that the gospel writers left us, in old greek, have withstood the test of time and the crucible of scrutiny and have proven to represent arguably the greatest collection of moral thought in earth’s history, all from the sayings of one man who lived over 2,000 years ago. to my mind, the fact that christ spoke in parables in order to allow others to find meaning for themselves and in order to prevent any perversion or hard criticism of his words, the fact that he redirected the deceptive and hard questions of those self-serving naysayers who challenged him continually throughout his ministries, the fact that he taught messages of love and hope and faith to all who would listen to him, the fact that he lived as humbly as could be imagined and survived off the charity of others, the fact that he proved expert beyond his years and to a genius degree when he argued for and against the religious teachings of those who oversaw the spirituality of his day, the fact that he performed many miracles (including resurrecting lazarus, healing the blind and the sick and the leprous, casting out demons, etc), the fact that he fulfilled in his works and in his life and in his suffering and in his death the prophecies of a few of the old testament hebrew prophets, etc all prove beyond any shadow of any doubt that he truly was both a human being endowed by god with god’s power and, for those members of humanity who choose to have faith in him, to follow his teachings, and to serve his father of whom he spoke, the salvation of us all.

regarding the virgin birth of mary, i once, as an entrenched atheist, criticized christianity with the argument that any sort of parthenogenetic birth of our lord and savior, which we christians accept, as an article of faith, was heralded by the archangel gabriel and was brought about through the holy spirit of god entering mary, had to have entailed certain genetic and developmental biological processes. that is, i used to ask the question, irreverently and in order to humiliate the belief that the virgin birth could have occurred: “what did the 23 chromosomes of god encode for?” this attack connected genetics and developmental biology, two hard science disciplines undergirded by the principles of biological evolution, with an intellectual problem for which we humans will likely (at least on earth) never have an answer. as an atheist, i had come to the point where i was not attacking christianity in any straightforward sense, but rather was doing something that many young people do these days throughout america, which was to humiliate christianity and christians for social power and to feed my ego with the idea that my identity and beliefs were superior than others. now, as an adult convert to christianity, all i believe about christ’s human genetic makeup is that he was born into an israelite family approximately 2,000 years ago, and therefore almost assuredly looked like the hebrews of his day, and probably not much like the images of him typically depicted and often worshipped. if any atheist who reads this thread ever believes that the miracle of the virgin birth (or any other christian miracle) is impossible for her or him to entertain, i invite her or him to investigate the evidence for christian miracles intensely, including by consulting catholics and other christian ministers and other religious experts worldwide. there is beyond any shadow of any doubt absolute factual evidence that medical, supernatural, conversion, etc miracles have occurred and continue to occur all over earth, for which no scientific explanation can prevail.

part three below…
 
whitecrayon

Well done! 👍 Even if you aren’t done!

Am most interested in what authors and books, if any, were most influential in turning you away from atheism. How long have you been a theist? Is there any particular book you would recommend for atheists to read?
 
as to the problems inherent in the philosophy and ethics of cultural relativism and any related christian analysis of the validity of the other, nonchristian faiths of earth, which problems are especially relevant, i believe, in this modern era of multiculturalism and globalization and other world-binding changes, i offer the following facts and ideas, all of which have helped me to overcome those temptations i used to fall back on which led me for some time and which might lead others to the belief that all of the major religions of today are equal.

should christians accept that god loves less or not at all those souls of earth who grew up in and/or who live in nonchristian societies? no. rather than to exclude others from our love and from our beliefs that god loves them too (with the obvious exceptions of those individuals who are full of hate and who enjoy hurting others in any way), we need to understand that our lord and savior set the prime example regarding this problem which we ought to follow. jesus was sent by god, in part, to unite the hebrews and the gentiles in the holy land who learned of him and his miracles and his teachings, not to proclaim that one set of beliefs ruled over another in his era. from this fact, i believe we christians ought to derive the idea that syncretisms of christ’s holy teachings with the holy and sacred teachings of others is something we ought to strive for today. generally speaking and without getting into comparisons and specifics, the other major religions of earth all teach powerful and truthful spiritual messages of love, faith, morality, mercy, charity, etc, which we christians, in my opinion, ought to respect and to join together with those theological and spiritual beliefs of christianity in order to convert and to save as many souls as possible, all, presumably, towards the goals of helping god in any way possible, helping to make earth a better place with more hope and more shared love and more love directed towards others, and facilitating the return of jesus christ to earth, as most christians believe intrinsically is prophecied in the book of revelations. the question of who goes to heaven, i believe, can be answered only by god, not by any group of religious scholars or any self-proclaimed chosen few. granted, christ offered us some straightforward rules and some straightforward ideas of what we must do if we hope to enter heaven, and all christians who have read his words to these effects ought to remain aware of these rules and ideas. however, as contemporary catholic faith teaches, souls who serve and love god and others are in god’s hands, and only he can choose how to judge them and us and others. in my opinion, too often, just like religious leaders of other faiths, christian religious leaders pronounce that they know who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. this general attitude, which, in my opinion, stems from typical human frailty of the mind and typical human desire to be regarded as powerful leaders (something that, perhaps ironically for some christians, including me, is more likely to arise in men, who have certain biocultural predispositions towards needing to be in charge or dominant or at the top of some hierarchy), has allowed many atheists, skeptics and naysayers to conclude that christianity appears to be just another monotheistic faith proclaiming the same thing all of the other ones do, that its adherents are somehow terribly lucky or uniquely divinely endowed or party to some monopoly on truth and revelation and holy status, etc. it is my present belief (although as i learn more about christianity in general and catholicism in particular, i am swayed more and more towards a more traditional understanding of certain core tenets of christianity) that god loves all of those human beings on earth who love him, as he exists in the form of the others around them, including the less powerful, such as children and animals, their peers, such as spouses and coworkers and strangers, and their “masters” (if you will please pardon some of the connotations of the term), such as their bosses, leaders, priests and ministers, etc.

regarding the ongoing debates among protestants and catholics, i offer the following ideas (and please all readers bear in mind the facts that i am not any sort of expert on either tradition and that they should therefore not subscribe necessarily to my beliefs, as offered below, over those of their clergy and true experts, no matter how well i write or how persuasive my beliefs may be!), which i explain, apologetically here, have helped me reconcile what i believe god has taught me, what the bible teaches, what a few protestant and a few catholic christians have taught me, what academia has taught me, and what i sometimes may just need to believe in order to make sense out of difficult questions which no christian expert has ever answered for me satisfactorily. first, catholicism seems to me to offer the most solemnity, seriousness, expertise, rigor, and holiness of certain traditions (see below). second, and assuredly most important, i believe god has directed me towards catholicism as a tradition through which i can understand him and christ and learn rules and wisdom by which to live my life as a christian and as a religion i can worship in comfortably given that it allows for any and all academic thought to be examined honestly.

part four below…
 
along these lines, all catholics are allowed to believe in things like evolution and the big bang and any other sort of scientific and secular thoughts, so long as they surrender to the vatican’s doctrines and laws as the final word of the church and so long as they do not become heretics by leading good catholics away from the holy teachings and beliefs of the church. this fact not only appeals to my educated mind, but it also, to be sure, appeals to millions of others who may be interested in learning more about the christian faith in this day and age of increasingly widespread knowledge. however, i believe there are several holy protestant churches which are just as open as catholics to all thought, including scientific thought, and they, like the catholic church, embrace so-called scientific facts cautiously, with views to the fact that scientific paradigms change and that their churchs’ faithful flocks cannot be expected to know everything on earth or to incorporate all known facts and ideas into any ultimate “supertheology”! all of god’s churches must change and evolve slowly!

one basic rite of catholicism, the sacramental rite of confession to a priest, appeals to me enormously too, both on scriptural grounds and in terms of what i have learned about the human psychological need to be honest and open and unafraid of the truth and unafraid of oneself and others. from several inspired writings in the new testament, we christians learn that we must confess christ with our mouths and that we must acknowledge his life and his divinity here on earth, and that, according to the inspired first epistle of john, we must confess our sins to god in order to receive forgiveness and to be cleansed from wickedness. furthermore, psychologists today have discovered that human beings all need to release themselves from certain fears about things they may have done in the past in order to be free from constant threat and fear of shame and social approbation and rejection. when we humans commit sin or, to put it in secular terms, when we do something we know or believe to be wrong or evil, we often hide the facts from others subconsciously, with much consciously and/or unconsciously exerted mental energy being spent towards deceiving and/or evading others; yet when we come clean, so to speak, and confess, whether it be to a parent, a spouse, a friend, a priest, etc, we can examine our wrongful or evil actions and decisions, engage in some dialogue with another human who can (hopefully!) help us understand that we are not hated because of what we did and who can help us come to understand why we may have acted wrongly or evilly in order that we might learn how to change our behaviors in the future, and escape the mental and spiritual prison we create for ourselves when we deny the truth, lie, evade others, evade questions and insinuations (including subtle ones) which might trip up our masks and our lies, create false personae for ourselves, and come to believe we belong to certain identity groups who do wrongful things (which many young people do) rather than to learn and to change and to seek membership in identity groups who mature and who forgive and who talk about sins and mistakes and wrongs openly (for everyone’s benefits). in sum, confession is, i believe, an integral part of the christian life, and the catholic rite of confession to a priest allows catholic christians to come clean and to learn about and to accept forgiveness (from god primarily of course, but also thereby, by extension, from others whom the confessing souls love and respect) and to pay penance for their sins which words and/or actions may help them repent permanently and which may provide them with referents in their memories of the spiritual costs and spiritual lessons associated with sin, confession, repentance, and personal growth and change.

part five below…
 
whitecrayon said:
along these lines, all catholics are allowed to believe in things like evolution and the big bang and any other sort of scientific and secular thoughts, so long as they surrender to the vatican’s doctrines and laws as the final word of the church and so long as they do not become heretics by leading good catholics away from the holy teachings and beliefs of the church. this fact not only appeals to my educated mind, but it also, to be sure, appeals to millions of others who may be interested in learning more about the christian faith in this day and age of increasingly widespread knowledge. however, i believe there are several holy protestant churches which are just as open as catholics to all thought, including scientific thought, and they, like the catholic church, embrace so-called scientific facts cautiously, with views to the fact that scientific paradigms change and that their churchs’ faithful flocks cannot be expected to know everything on earth or to incorporate all known facts and ideas into any ultimate “supertheology”! all of god’s churches must change and evolve slowly!

one basic rite of catholicism, the sacramental rite of confession to a priest, appeals to me enormously too, both on scriptural grounds and in terms of what i have learned about the human psychological need to be honest and open and unafraid of the truth and unafraid of oneself and others. from several inspired writings in the new testament, we christians learn that we must confess christ with our mouths and that we must acknowledge his life and his divinity here on earth, and that, according to the inspired first epistle of john, we must confess our sins to god in order to receive forgiveness and to be cleansed from wickedness. furthermore, psychologists today have discovered that human beings all need to release themselves from certain fears about things they may have done in the past in order to be free from constant threat and fear of shame and social approbation and rejection. when we humans commit sin or, to put it in secular terms, when we do something we know or believe to be wrong or evil, we often hide the facts from others subconsciously, with much consciously and/or unconsciously exerted mental energy being spent towards deceiving and/or evading others; yet when we come clean, so to speak, and confess, whether it be to a parent, a spouse, a friend, a priest, etc, we can examine our wrongful or evil actions and decisions, engage in some dialogue with another human who can (hopefully!) help us understand that we are not hated because of what we did and who can help us come to understand why we may have acted wrongly or evilly in order that we might learn how to change our behaviors in the future, and escape the mental and spiritual prison we create for ourselves when we deny the truth, lie, evade others, evade questions and insinuations (including subtle ones) which might trip up our masks and our lies, create false personae for ourselves, and come to believe we belong to certain identity groups who do wrongful things (which many young people do) rather than to learn and to change and to seek membership in identity groups who mature and who forgive and who talk about sins and mistakes and wrongs openly (for everyone’s benefits). in sum, confession is, i believe, an integral part of the christian life, and the catholic rite of confession to a priest allows catholic christians to come clean and to learn about and to accept forgiveness (from god primarily of course, but also thereby, by extension, from others whom the confessing souls love and respect) and to pay penance for their sins which words and/or actions may help them repent permanently and which may provide them with referents in their memories of the spiritual costs and spiritual lessons associated with sin, confession, repentance, and personal growth and change.

part five below…
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Welcome Whiterayon:

I was thinking about asking you to write a book, after your initial posts! 🙂 This is incredible stuff, and I mean that in the positive way. As a one-time atheist myself, it has been, unfortunately, a tad too long since my conversion back to Christianity and Catholicism. Besides, I don’t have your memory of gifts. As I read your excellent prose, I am reminded of the journey I went through. Thank you for your persistence in continuing to write from your brain and your heart. May God continue to shower you with his Graces.

God bless,
jd
 
Even when I left the Church and the practice of my faith just as soon as I could at 18, I never quit believing in God (including Jesus Christ).

Seems to me atheism is the wishful thinking being sold nowadays. 😃

The people I really like and admire are people of faith (including scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who have faith).

I’ve never really cared for what kind of people atheists are, among those I’ve known.

By their fruits…you know the drill. 👍
 
kentucky

I’ve never really cared for what kind of people atheists are, among those I’ve known.

Well, without wanting to violate charity, there is something to this that has been noted by many I have talked to as well. That is, atheists (not all) are often perceived as an angry breed. Angry people turn away people who are not angry. This strikes me as yet another proof that atheism is not only not true, but also not healthy. Just today the man who killed those people and shot the Arizona congresswoman is reported to have noted several weeks ago on the Internet that he did not trust in God (as printed on our currency), and his favorite writings were the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf. Lots of anger there.
 
thank you everybody for your kind words and for encouraging me to reveal facts about my conversion (and for allowing me to confess to a few of my old atheist habits!).

i wish to state here again that i do not believe that my beliefs and my thoughts and my hypotheses about anything, whether it be old testament criticisms or academic ideas i have learned in school or in books, are necessarily truths! the posts i have made above honestly represent just a straightforward effort to explain some of the truths about my personal, present beliefs and about my experiences of conversion. hopefully all catholics who read my posts will forgive me if i am not exactly right about anything at all. i have never been through the rite of christian initiation of adults, never been baptized by a catholic priest, never confessed to a catholic priest, never taken holy communion (except three times, which i did first without knowledge that it was inappropriate for a noncatholic to do, second in a highly emotional and spiritual state during which i needed to engage in the ritual for personal reasons connected with my desire to embrace catholicism, and the third time with the real blessing of god, who wanted me to go ahead and experience real catholic communion for the first time as a servant of his. in sum, i am not a true catholic. however, i most sincerely hope to become one, god willing, and will assuredly begin the rcia as soon as i am able. also, i look forward very much to learning more about catholicism and embracing all of catholicism’s holy teachings, rites, traditions, beliefs, etc. i am firmly ready now to accept that what all catholics know to be true about the christian faith is the “gospel truth”, so to speak, and i hope all of you readers will try to help me and others who may read this thread by clearing up any confusions i may have in my mind or may have introduced in my earlier posts! it takes fellowship and education for a soul like me to ever truly learn what she or he needs to know in order to become a true catholic, a fact i have come to know well after a few years of learning and changing my beliefs with god’s help and the help of others.
 
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