With all due respect I am not really the type of atheist you are assuming I am.
Well, it’s irrelevant if one believes just parts or even the “eventuality” of the Gospel’s righteousness and allows doubts to other parts of the Bible. Partial doubts are doubts all the same and allege Jesus a liar. What that means……… I wouldn’t dare to carry this burden
I have been reading things now and I am realizing that there were fundamental flaws in the way I viewed the world. I am in the process of reconsidering the alternatives. I am not really a relativist. I know there must be absolute truth, but “belief” requires agreement with that truth. I could agree with another truth and be wrong, and that would be that. You are a Catholic and can claim to have the truth. I am a nonbeliever.
Not to believe (what so ever) doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But we must be aware, that things we don’t believe simply exceeds our perceptivity. Simply because it doesn’t get into our frame of thinking, it can’t be untrue. Our ancestors never believed the world is a ball. Not too long later, all know it’s so. Today a majority of the world doesn’t believe in God’s existence; not too long later, they all have seen God, and will slap their forehead for having been so stubborn in spite of all there is giving evidence of God (that’s what Ignatius of Loyola said: “We find God in all there is”).
You are right to note that a lot of philosophy is rubbish. I have very little appreciation for modernist philosophers; I think that modernist philosophy is largely made up of arguments that disguise logical fallacies with rhetoric and eloquence in order to prove a desired point. My intent is to read classicists and medievalists as well.
Well - to read something else before one has read the bible - not as a simple book, but as God’s revelation, then reading secular wisdoms is a waste of time.
At the beginning of Lent I made a confession and started going to mass. For about 2 weeks I was able to pray, I guess. The problem was that the way I thought about knowledge then basically required me to frame “belief” in God as an unfounded assumption, which made it very hard to maintain. I understand practice has to be a part of it, but I’ve built up a mental framework that resists belief and writes any benefit I get from prayer as “confirmation bias.” I am deeply, deeply Skeptical (capital S intended).
Sceptic is nothing else but disbelief. The thought
"well - it COULD be true - doesn’t help at all. It’s still saying; “Jesus is most likely a liar”. A mortal sin to even imagine such thing for a second.
Praying isn’t a thing one can do experimentally. On a trial - experimentally. It’s talking to God. The worse thing one can do is to “pray”: Dear God if you are there, if you hear me, then…
for this implies there probably is no God at all.
How would one expect the one and only alive God to listen to such babble of a person who even doubts His existence and makes God’s incredible charitable act of giving His begotten Son for our salvation?! Even when this Son of God, Jesus Christ, is even suspected to be a liar and fake?
No, it’s not “practice” that makes the prayer a real talk and request to God. It’s belief and love to God, and keeping God’s simple two commandments: Love to God and love to our next. These two laws embrace all divine laws - match Matthew 22,36-40
I am aware that my affinity for mathematics is just a result of my ability to work within a system. I am pretty logical.
Don’t be logically stubborn. As a student you know best, that there are many highly intelligent academics, who are logical only and otherwise ever so daft and no-one who thinks with his heart, would like to mix up with them. Literacy of the heart [possession of education] exceeds mere intellectual education by far.
The problem is that my reductionist worldview tore everything down and there was no “system” left to work with. So I am trying to pick up the pieces and start again.
It’s a great big step forward, when you see it’s reduced on logics. It would be great if all atheists would see that truth BEFORE they see God face to face, which all will.
It would be tragic if I died before resolving my (dis)belief, so hopefully God will not let that happen.
Good you know this. My son Björn died all of a sudden when he was 26 in Febr. 1997. I’m very happy I taught him the vital importance of belief. Though nobody can look inside anyone, I of course don’t know how deep he was in belief when he saw God, but a solemn fundament was laid. It’s up to anyone to erect a beautiful house of belief on this fundament, or a filthy hut. God gave us a free will to decide either way. We know the consequences and have to carry them in eternity.
Yours
Bruno
holzschnitzereien (at)
krippenfiguren.com
The sheer amount of time and energy devoted to discussions about God by non-believers is highly significant. If the answer to the question of God’s existence is so obvious it would be more logical to ignore it altogether!