Losing my faith: help!

[RoseScented]

I’ve always found it helpful for me to think of this when I consider the beginning of creation.

• It is said that the universe was “created from nothing”.
• What is “nothing” but (generically) the absence of “existence”?
• How can you negate something that doesn’t yet exist if there was only “nothingness” at the beginning?
• So for me, if there was “nothing” in the beginning, then “existence” even for a small amount of time had to “exist” before the nothingness.
• In order for “existence” to exist it needs “existence”.
• So for me, whatever was before the nothingness had to be existence itself, which was self sustaining (for lack of better words).

That existence was the basic building block for me working forward for my understanding of God.

Sorry if this is convoluted. I’ve only had this explanation of my line of thinking be helpful to a person once, but I do still try. Maybe one day I’ll find better words for it all.

 

[catholic4ever]

1. I disagree with your premise: “If evolution in true, there is no need for God.” Evolution still does not answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing; in other words, evolution does not answer the question of why there is a universe at all. You can still be a faithful Catholic and believe in evolution. The Church doesn’t prohibit Catholics from believing in evolution. The accounts of God’s creation of the world in 7 days in Genesis needn’t be taken literally. For more information on this, see Pope Benedict’s book “In the Beginning.” He does not take Genesis literally.
2. As we know from evolution, we descend from other primates. At some point in the history of evolution, God endowed humans with a soul, which is what made us human. I am unsure which species of humans were given souls. The important point is that, at some point, God gave souls to our first parents, Adam and Eve. (Remember that Genesis is written an allegorical literary style. The Catholic Church does believe that Adam and Eve existed, meaning that we all descend from the first two soul-endowed humans, but the details needn’t be taken literally.)
3. Superb question. Different books of the Bible are written in different time periods in different genres. The Old Testament is pretty diverse, and there are a lot of symbolic works in it. The New Testament is mostly historical, although it of course does include many theological truths about the faith at the same time. I don’t expect you take my word for it, but let me just say, the evidence for the historical accuracy of the Resurrection is really solid. I would recommend reading Trent Horn’s book “Why We’re Catholic,” which has a whole section dedicated to why we can believe the historicity of the Bible and why we should believe in the Resurrection. If you want an even more in depth look at the reasons to believe in the Bible and the Resurrection, I’d recommend The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, the entirety of which is dedicated to fact-checking the Bible.
4. Well, if Christ is capable of resurrecting Himself from the dead, then He’d be capable of other miracles, right? This will seem hard to believe unless you’re convinced the Resurrection happened and that Jesus is God. Again, I’d very much recommend Why We’re Catholic by Trent Horn and the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel for this.
5. The books of the Bible that were intended as historical works are historically accurate, which includes most of the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament. Again, you’ll like those 2 books I’ve been recommending to help with this.
6. The following argument is fallacious:

• There have been examples of what were thought to be miracles that turned out to be explainable by science or some other logical explanation.
• Therefore, all miracles can be explained by science or some other logical explanation.

I hope that, presented in that way, you see why that argument doesn’t work. In short, “some” does not imply “all.”

If you can become convinced of the Resurrection, miracles will start to seem a whole lot more plausible. (Read those two books I recommended!)

Response continued in part 2

 

[catholic4ever]

Part 2:

1. You’d have to tell me a bit more about “what doesn’t really work” for you about the argument. Trent Horn’s “Why We’re Catholic” also has a section on arguments for the existence of God, including the one from first causes. Read that and see if it still doesn’t work for you.

I think that these are all wonderful questions, and by persevering in searching for answers, your faith will only strengthen. Here are the two books I referenced so much:

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Were-Catholic-Reasons-Faith-ebook/dp/B0714JKZ8H

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Journalists-Personal-Investigation/dp/0310339308

Hope that helps! God bless!

 

[RandomAlias]

None of your 7 points looks like a deal-breaker. I am a scientist and Catholic, and in my life there is a great deal of harmony between those two aspects.

I am praying for you. May the Holy Spirit strengthen your faith, assist you in your difficulties, help you to find peace, and guide you always toward greater faith, hope, and love.

 

[Lucas3]

Humani Generis (August 12, 1950) | PIUS XII

What I really like about this is that the Church has quite clearly thought through what the doubters are saying.

 

[Lucas3]

And one more thing… Is there anything else that could be related to your problems with faith?

I agree that sin can lead to a collapse of faith. My initial reaction to this is that my sins are no different to what they’ve always been. But on reflection, I think a new sin has emerged, in that I’ve allowed my faith to cool. It’s time for me to fan the flames again.

 

[Lucas3]

Five Proofs of God’s Existence

Thank you: added to my reading list!

 

[Lucas3]

To all of you who have taken the time to post, I offer my heartfelt thanks.

I think I’ve slipped into two errors:

1. I have neglected to feed my faith. Yes, I’ve been to church, actively involved in music and youth ministry, but I have not really engaged with God for an extended period, and I know I need to put this right, and can do so.
2. I have tried to understand the world’s view about God. The arguments are sophisticated and compelling, but this does not mean that there is no answer to them.

By your posts, you have been instrumental in helping me to identify where the errors in my approach lie. Well done, faithful servants!

 

[mkoopman]

Lucas3 your response is good news. Please recall what forum you chose. Prayer is the answer for troubled spirituality. Not only is your prayer critical to reigniting your faith and love of Our Lord but how many on this forum and elsewhere are praying for you. The posts you read may be a help to your rational understanding and response to God. Be even more wise and thankful to understand the role the entire Communion of Saints, church militant, penitent and triumphant have in making our heart docile by petitions in prayer.
May the flames of His love grow ever brighter in your life. Merry Christmas, I believe you have received the greatest gift of all.

 

[Lucas3]

Bless you, MKoopman!

 

[pocaracas]

[disclaimer, I haven’t been on this forum in a while and, with this new layout, I have no idea if I’m stepping over some barrier]

Hi there,

I’m struggling to maintain my faith, for the first time for decades. Lots of varied assaults on it, which are summarised below. Very happy for you to point me to previous threads, or to comment directly. I’m miserable about this situation, rather than happy!

Faith is faith. Belief without certainty. It’s not a well supported position, but it does tend to be a comfortable one.
If you are miserable about losing your faith, then may I suggest a conversation with someone who has no faith? Not a conversation about beliefs and mythologies and science and whatnot… just a conversation about life… so you realize that it’s not the end of the world.

1. Evolution. If evolution is true, there is no need for God. Progress occurs through random mutation. Beneficial mutations survive. This doesn’t have to contradict Newton’s 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Why would Evolution ever contradict the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics??
(Not Newton’s 2nd Law of movement)

Looming at one focus point of the Earth’s orbit, you will find an object, usually called “Sun”. I think the raise in Entropy caused by it far outweighs any local decrease in Entropy on the surface of the Earth, don’t you?

Anyway… why would Evolution have any weight upon your faith?
Doesn’t the standard tale consider that the divinity created everything so that Evolution would happen just as it did to produce us?

2. When did the soul appear? If evolution occurred, then when was the soul created? There aren’t any proto-souls, so it must have been created and inserted by God. Were all ‘homo’ species provided with a soul, or only Homo sapiens? Does Adam and Eve work in the context of evolution?

Isn’t the Adam&Eve story considered allegorical?
Like, at some point in time, evolution had done its job and humans were ready to be in Eden.
Then, they misbehaved.

3. Bible. I’ve become rather despondent when listening to homilies, as time and again, I’m told the Bible stories I’ve believed as fact are actually theologically rather than historically accurate. if so, how can I still believe in the biggies like the resurrection?

Faith, sir… that’s how you believe.

I thought it was widely known that most stories of the Bible are not entirely accurate… Why do you consider that a flaw?

 

[pocaracas]

4. Resurrection. If this is both historically and theologically correct, then Jesus’ post-resurrection did things that are impossible for a normal human. So there’s more to it than a literal physical resurrection. (I’m aware of St Paul’s comments).

Well… he was deemed a god, so that would be expected.

Maybe you’d like to look into the chronology of the writing of the gospels and figure out where St. Paul fits into everything.
Oh, while you’re at it, include the non-canonical gospels in your list, just to play the game of spot the differences!

5. Other religions. If we begin to argue that the Bible is theologically rather than historically correct, then standing against other religions becomes much more difficult. I wonder if this is why Pope Francis is much keener on dialogue?

Don’t forget that other religions have the exact same problem.
We have an old saying, where I come from, which roughly translates to “we get along by talking”… Dialogue is talking.
When you talk with a fellow human, you will often find common points and find it difficult to harm them. The old “us vs them” tribal intuition fades away and the awareness of the global village comes into focus. Frank knows what he’s talking about, even if he has to do so in a particular way, in a particular order, so that the masses of humanity that listen to him can be slowly moved towards the common goal.

6. Miracles. Medicine is littered with stories of the power of the mind, and the placebo effect.

Hey, hey, hey!
Carving a dry path through a whole sea is unheard of.
Turning water to wine and feeding thousands from 2 or 3 loaves of bread is also out of science’s scope
Not to mention the whole coming back from the dead… unless you believe humans can make a T-virus (or something like it)… but that only results in Zombies.

 

[pocaracas]

7. First cause. I struggle with the philosophical argument that everything that was created has a first cause. This doesn’t really work for me, because we’re still faced with God being eternal. (I know He’s not created, but that doesn’t really work for me).

First cause is based on our intuitive understanding of the Universe around us.
We don’t know what it takes to generate a Universe… we don’t know how replicable that is…
To push back the creation by the divine to a point further than the creation of the Universe just renders the Jesus tale a bit unwieldy - why would the god that created the space beyond space, that could then generate Universes and eventually come to produce humans on this planet, in this Solar System, In this Galaxy in this Universe… and give them a messiah figure, at a time when record keeping is anything but trustworthy… a messiah that turns out to be immortal, but vanishes a few years after first showing up?

Why did he vanish?!
Being all-knowing, would he know about all the conflicts that multiple religions and multiple sects would produce? All of them could be avoided by him simply not vanishing. Sticking around. Guiding humanity with a wise but stern hand.
Instead… this…

I know I’ve been influenced by the highly atheistic Western culture. I know this culture is dying out, and will probably be gone within 2 generations. so maybe I’m being influenced by dying thinking. But I’m struggling.

Help!

Western culture is anything but atheistic.
Science is out there looking for whatever it can find. Thus far, it has found nothing that matches the common description of a god. But if one is out there, some branch of science is bound to find it. That no hint of it has been glimpsed is, however, disheartening.

Enjoy your days in the sun, get wet with the rain and cold in snow. Fly away with the wind. And remember the old wise words [attributed to, but seemingly not by] Marcus Aurelius:
"
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but…will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
"

 

[pocaracas]

1. Evolution
(a) Even if evolution were true (which is not), it still doesn’t explain how life originated.

The theory of Evolution does not concern itself with the origin of life.
From chemistry to biochemistry to biology something must have happened… what was that?.. we don’t know. I’ll wait until someone demonstrates a mechanism for it, instead of flat out claiming that it’s impossible.

The simplest single-cell organism is so complex that it’s unreasonable to think it appeared by chance, even if given the supposed age of the universe. Recent scientific discoveries (how the cell works, the enormous quantity of information encoded in the DNA) only made the gap larger: what appeared possible in Darwin’s time, it now appears extremely unlikely.

That’s because you don’t see the original simplest organisms. You’re looking at today’s simplest organisms.
Considering all the competition involved, wouldn’t you expect those original simple organisms to be overtaken by more efficient ones?

(b) The information in the DNA points to intelligence. Wherever we find encoded information (a book, a website, a video) it was ALWAYS created by an intelligent agent. In the case of DNA, God created that information. It would be almost funny to say that a book could arise by chance (even aided by a mechanism like natural selection). Yet, the DNA contains information what would require hundreds of books to store.
As a computer programmer, I can tell you it takes a lot of effort to create programs (which is what DNA is). We make a lot of mistakes. And no computer program we ever wrote is even close to the complexity of DNA.
Read some books from the Intelligent Design movement.

Really?! You’re here advocation the Intelligent Design “movement”? Years ago, ID was discredited in court! Why do people still fall for it?

1. No one suggests that the first organisms contained DNA.
2. DNA is a highly complex self-replicating molecule… simpler forms of self-replicating molecules exist.
3. Crystals are self-replicating molecules.
4. Carbon based crystals, such as those found in clay, could have been some of the first simple self-replicating biochemical molecules.

 

[cvmocanu]

Since this thread is not about evolution, the following will be my last reply about it.

But I will add this.

1. I have studied a lot (I still have a lot to learn), but in my opinion, evolution is a speculation that doesn’t deserve the status of scientific theory. I have both theological reasons (it would make the Bible contradict itself) and scientific reasons. I will not list them here, since I don’t want to hijack the thread. People interested can PM me, if they want.
2. Regarding Intelligent Design being discredited in court: What difference does it make what an uninformed judge and biased expert witnesses think? What matters what anybody thinks? Truth is true no matter how many people think otherwise. I don’t care much for opinions, but for arguments. And I find the arguments quite convincing.

 

[cvmocanu]

@Lucas3: you are in my prayers

 

[DeepDeepTrouble3]

Read about the life and miracles of St. Padre Pio.

 

[pocaracas]

Since you’re not replying about it, all I can say is LOL.
Really… LOL at everything you said… really everything!

 

[PJM]

Hi there,

I’m struggling to maintain my faith, for the first time for decades. Lots of varied assaults on it, which are summarised below. Very happy for you to point me to previous threads, or to comment directly. I’m miserable about this situation, rather than happy!

1. Evolution. If evolution is true, there is no need for God. Progress occurs through random mutation. Beneficial mutations survive. This doesn’t have to contradict Newton’s 2nd law of thermodynamics.

Evolution Is true BUT ONLY because it was [is] GOD controlled.

There HAS to have been a first [cause] for everything to exist and to evolve. THAT 1st “thing” is always GOD; who alone “always was; always is; always will be. Amen

2. When did the soul appear? If evolution occurred, then when was the soul created? There aren’t any proto-souls, so it must have been created and inserted by God. Were all ‘homo’ species provided with a soul, or only Homo sapiens? Does Adam and Eve work in the context of evolution?

SOUL. The spiritual immortal part in human beings that animates their body. Though a substance in itself, the soul is naturally ordained toward a body; separated, it is an “incomplete” substance. The soul has no parts, it is therefore simple, but it is not without accidents. The faculties are its proper accidents. Every experience adds to its accidental form. It is individually created for each person by God and infused into the body at the time of human insemination. It is moreover created in respect to the body it will inform, so that the substance of bodily features and of mental characteristics insofar as they depend on organic functions is safeguarded. As a simple and spiritual substance, the soul cannot die. Yet it is not the total human nature, since a human person is composed of body animated by the soul.

In philosophy, animals and plants are also said to have souls, which operate as sensitive and vegetative principles of life. Unlike the human spirit, these souls are perishable. The rational soul contains all the powers of the two other souls and is the origin of the sensitive and vegetative functions in the human being End Quotes Father Hardon’s Catholic Dictionary

As for Adam & Eve they are the Origin of the human species; created with human-Ratioanl-Souls and in the image of God Himself. Gen 1:26-27. They were in a real sense Perfect in every way UNTIL they freely choose to deny God His Sovereignty. Humanity could NOT have evolved from apes; as
the human Soul is RATIONAL [like God]; and that is NOT possible through evolution.

CONTINUED ON NEXT POST

 

[PJM]

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE
2.

Bible. I’ve become rather despondent when listening to homilies, as time and again, I’m told the Bible stories I’ve believed as fact are actually theologically rather than historically accurate. if so, how can I still believe in the biggies like the resurrection?

Friend I can’t tell you what to believe or NOT to believe. FAITH is a GIFT of, by and through GOD that in an absolute sense requires OUR cooperation. PRAY daily for this grace; this GIFT from God.

If as you suggest there is NO resurrection than there is no possible explanation for humanity to even exist; NONE! In ALL of the Universe and its BILLIONS of things; only One thing; only humanity is rational, and can does emulate our Creator GOD. That friend can’t possibly or logically be an accident. We exist because our GOD desires that we exist.

Isaiah 43: 7& 2
[7] And every one that calleth upon my name, I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, and made him. [21] This people have I formed for myself, they shall shew forth my praise”

LIFE is by God’s intent “THEE God Test”; may I humbly suggest that you seek the teacher’s help in getting a passing grade.

The bible is NOT a history book it was authored up to 3,000 years ago. And IF you believe the “facts are theologically correct” than accept them.

“Faith” is a GIFT from God that can be both Lost & Found; but both cases require our cooperation. It up to YOU not God what happens so take responsibility for your actions. POSTING this on CAF is a good thing, IF you listen prayerfully to the advice given?

1. Resurrection. If this is both historically and theologically correct, then Jesus’ post-resurrection did things that are impossible for a normal human. So there’s more to it than a literal physical resurrection. (I’m aware of St Paul’s comments)

OK; so what is your point here. I think I addressed this in #3

5. Other religions. If we begin to argue that the Bible is theologically rather than historically correct, then standing against other religions becomes much more difficult. I wonder if this is why Pope Francis is much keener on dialogue?

Pope Francis is one of the most unique Popes in the history of the Church. One MUST discern carefully & prayerfully what he teaches; as some of it simply does not fully align with the Ordinary Magisterium.

Once the Church got past the 16th Century Protestant revolution [which admittedly did take some time]; it has for a very long time been in discussion with these folks who lacking GRACE simply are literally unable to comprehend God’s Truths. Here’s WHY:

Father John A. Hardon S.J., one of the 20th Centuries most esteemed Theologians, explains it clearly and precisely:

Truth is [1] the condition for grace [2] it is the source of grace [3] it is the channel of grace [4] it is the Divinely Ordained requirement of grace.” End Quotes

CONTINUED ON NEXT POST