My difficulties with the Catholic Faith

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Hello,

I am new to this message board. I am a 27-year-old former Catholic from the UK. After converting to the faith in my teens, I decided to stop practising a couple of years ago when I felt that I was behaving hypocritically by continuing to perform all the externals of the faith while interiorly I was full of doubt and confusion.

In recent years I have more or less given up mental pursuits of the philosophical and theological kind. But today, for some reason, I had a spare minute and decided to note down what has been going through my mind.

Below I have attempted to summarise the principal argument that has had me stumped for the past few years. I invite respectful answers from more erudite forum contributors:

**If God exists and wants me to be a believing Catholic, why doesn’t He make Catholicism believable? **

  1. *]Firstly, I don’t even know that God himself exists. Atheists, theists, pantheists, agnostics, nihilists can all argue their case. Most of them are far more intelligent than me. I can’t even understand half their arguments. So what hope is there of me reaching a satisfying conclusion on the matter? I can’t. So I’m forever confused.

    *]Secondly, how can I possibly believe in or indeed relate to and ‘love’ Jesus? He’s a man who apparently wandered around in the Middle East 2,000 years ago – in a culture, place and time completely alien to me. He didn’t write anything down and what is written about him modern scholars debate the factual accuracy of. I’m not a scholar or archaeologist and I don’t understand Greek or Aramaic, so how am I supposed to honestly believe anything the Catholic Church or mainstream Christians say about him? Furthermore, how am I supposed to relate to or ‘love’ him?

    *]Thirdly, how am I supposed to believe that God wants me to be a member of the Catholic Church? It hasn’t done anything special. Far from it, the publicity it has received in my lifetime has been invariably scandalous, the history I learned about it in school was invariably scandalous, the Catholics I have met online and in real life have been uninspiring hypocritical and scandalous, and my experience of the liturgy, sacraments, and general Catholic way of life has been uninspiring and scandalous. Surely God would put more effort into the Church’s PR if he wanted me to believe in and join it?

    *]Lastly, I’m a Catholic theology graduate. I went to Catholic university when I was eighteen because I wanted to make sense of life and understand my Catholicism more. I studied with some of the best Catholic minds in the world today. So, if I’m struggling as much as I am with these questions, what hope is there for the billions of simpler less educated people out there who are trying to think through these issues objectively? Isn’t God setting them an impossible task?

    To me, belief in the Catholic view of life seems impossibly difficult. It’s almost as if the Catholic God (assuming he exists) requires modern rational critical minds to run a sort of agility contest – like the kind you see dogs perform at dog shows – but one that almost none can complete. Why doesn’t he just make it simple? Why doesn’t he just demonstrate clearly that he exists and tell us straightforwardly what he requires of us? What is this woolly faith game all about?

    My own suspicion at this time is that God doesn’t exist, at least not the Catholic God. But I am open to the idea that I may be wrong.
 
organist said:
**If God exists and wants me to be a believing Catholic, why doesn’t He make Catholicism believable? **

  1. *]Firstly, I don’t even know that God himself exists. Atheists, theists, pantheists, agnostics, nihilists can all argue their case… So I’m forever confused.
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  1. Don’t start off with atheism. Start off with Jesus

    1. *]Secondly, how can I possibly believe in or indeed relate to and ‘love’ Jesus? … I’m not a scholar or archaeologist and I don’t understand Greek or Aramaic, so how am I supposed to honestly believe anything the Catholic Church or mainstream Christians say about him? Furthermore, how am I supposed to relate to or ‘love’ him?
    Click to expand...

    1. If you were living in the year 34 AD, and heard about Jesus, the only way you could learn about Him would be through the apostles, or one of their successors, or someone who learned from them. That is, the only way you could learn about Jesus was from a member of His Church. That is how Jesus wants us to learn about Him. The bible is only an aid to learning about Jesus. It is not the source of the Gospel. The apostles did not learn about Jesus from the bible. They learned directly from Him and handed this teaching down through the Church in their way of worship, example, and teaching of the articles of the creed, sacraments, commandments and prayer. From the bible we can learn how He acted, and the evidence for His Church’s teaching that He is God. But, to learn His teachings clearly, we must go only through those who have teaching authority in His Church, the Pope’s and the bishops the few times they are in agreement with him.

      1. *]Thirdly, how am I supposed to believe that God wants me to be a member of the Catholic Church? . The Catholics I have met online and in real life have been uninspiring hypocritical… Surely God would put more effort into the Church’s PR if he wanted me to believe in and join it?
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      1. Was Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II who lived the Catholic way of life been uninspiring or scandalous?
        Of course not. You don’t judge the Catholic faith by those who don’t follow it and who don’t believe all her teachngs. You judge the Catholic faith by those who believe EVERYTHING it teaches and who follow all those teachings.

        1. *]Lastly, I’m a Catholic theology graduate. I went to Catholic university when I was eighteen because I wanted to make sense of life and understand my Catholicism more. I studied with some of the best Catholic minds in the world today. So, if I’m struggling as much as I am with these questions, what hope is there for the billions of simpler less educated people out there who are trying to think through these issues objectively? Isn’t God setting them an impossible task?
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        1. I certainly agree with you here. In Eucharistic adoration Jesus gave me direction.
          Once a Catholic becomes an adult, then he must learn the basics of the faith from the head of the Church, the Popes. By definition all Catholics must follow their leadership, because they alone have been made head of the Church on earth. All heresies have come from Catholic scholars. None have been infallible. They can’t be trusted. Only the Popes have never taught heresy, and have never taught error. Catholicism seems complicated because Catholics have been taught to ignore the Pope when it comes to basics and instead to learn from scholars. But, Jesus did not chose scholars. He chose simply men, fishermen, etc. Catholic colleges have been notorius in their rejection of the fundamentals of the faith.
          Thus, we start with the intial proclamation of the Gospel. In Jesus, God loves everyone, as a father, and gives existence to everyone. Because of Adams sin, we have a fallen nature, which prevents us from doing good, and living in freedom. Instead we live in sin which causes misery. God so loves us that He sent His Son, Jesus to liberate us from the slavery of sin. Jesus merited this grace that frees us from the strong desire to sin, by suffering and dying out of love for the Father and for us. We can receive this grace that frees us from the tendency to sin, that frees us from the slavery of sin, through the sacraments, when received in a good disposition, of humility and repentance. The Eucharist is the primary means to receive this grace. Everything else connects to this liberation from sin, or salvation, as the Church calls it. Thus, prayer, the Rosary, mortifications, etc. are things that put us in a better disposition to receive this grace, or they make this grace more available. (mortifications).
          Then we learn the basics like the Trinity, salvation history, the articles of the Creed, the sacraments, commandments and prayer. This is what the apostles taught.
          This is all found in Pope Paul VI encyclical on evangelization and Pope John Paul II encyclical on “Mission of the Redeemer” and “The General Directory for Catechesis”, which he strongly promoted and authorized.
          They should clear up the confusion and junk handed down by scholars.

          If I have time I will try to explain more.
 
Hello and Welcome!

Just a couple of questions for you:


  1. *]When you go to a physician and he tells you what ails you, do you ask him how he knows the diagnosis is accurate? Do you ask him if he cheated on his medical exams in University so that he could become a doctor? Do you ask him for proof that the diplomas on the wall are real and not mere copies?
    *]Before you eat food do you have it analyzed at a laboratory to see if it contains pathogens or poisons? Do you keep some culture containers to check for bacteria present in all of your beverages?
    *]How do you know your parents are really your parents? Do you remember your birth? Even if you look like one or both of them, perhaps you could be a child of a relative?
    What do all of these have in common? You my friend have FAITH in your physician, those who grow and prepare your food and your parents. It is faith that you give to strangers everyday, believing that they are not about to murder you or drive their car into your own as you pass by. It is FAITH.

    Let’s say this “Jesus” guy was a good guy and had some great messages that apply to your life today. Let’s say for now that even if He was not divine, He was an outstanding example for all of us. And if you were to ‘pray’ to Him, even if you don’t believe He really exists, what would it hurt to give it a try? Nothing to lose, right? In private, bow your head, put your hands together and close your eyes. Talk to Him outloud or quietly in your head. You have nothing to lose, but if you open your heart, you have everything to gain.

    Peace be with you!

    Kelly
 
organist said:
*]Thirdly, how am I supposed to believe that God wants me to be a member of the Catholic Church? It hasn’t done anything special. Far from it, the publicity it has received in my lifetime has been invariably scandalous, the history I learned about it in school was invariably scandalous, the Catholics I have met online and in real life have been uninspiring hypocritical and scandalous, and my experience of the liturgy, sacraments, and general Catholic way of life has been uninspiring and scandalous. Surely God would put more effort into the Church’s PR if he wanted me to believe in and join it?
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Hasn’t done anything special, huh? It’s not all hypocracy… that is an unfortunate by-product.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church single-handedly revived and rebuilt Western civilization. The Benedictine monks, for example, transformed wasteland and swamps into fertile fields, harnessed water power, and bred healthier strains of livestock. The Jesuits became pre-eminent in astronomy and developed a scientific approach to archaeology. The Church fostered village schools and the great universities of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge; operated hospitals and orphanages; sheltered and fed the poor; and formulated the idea of basic human rights… shall I go on? Charity, morality, economics, international law, the idea that all men are created equal, and many other things you take for granted all have foundations in Catholic thought.

.
 
organist said:
Why doesn’t he just make it simple? Why doesn’t he just demonstrate clearly that he exists and tell us straightforwardly what he requires of us? What is this woolly faith game all about?

My own suspicion at this time is that God doesn’t exist, at least not the Catholic God. But I am open to the idea that I may be wrong.
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First off I would like to commend your honesty as I’m not so sure that I could have been so open. Realize that the many questions that you pose have been kicked around at one time or another by many Catholics. But before tackling Catholic teachings you must reflect on the existence of God. I could list a number of reasons why it is totally reasonable to believe in God, most of which you have already discerned being a theology student.

Two thousand years ago a man named Jesus walked the earth. This historic event is recognized by all three monotheistic faiths as well as secular scholars. The question that divides people is the question that Jesus asked His followers, " Who do you say I am?". Many martyrs went to their deaths adament about witnessing the resurrection of this Man. You ask" Why doesn’t God just demonstrate clearly that He exists?". Well He did and many refused to believe two thousand years ago and many fail to see it today.

Wooly faith exists in every aspect of our lives. Think about it for a minute. You know that George Washington was our first president only because you have faith in all of the previous historians that handed on that information. Think of a country that you personally have never visited. You only “know” that is exists because you have faith in all of those around you who say that it does. Your probably not calling your towing service right now because you have faith that your car will start when you get going again. The list goes on and on. Why do we live our lives counting on the faith that we take for granted? Because it is hardwired in us to seek God. This innate behavior manifests itself in our secular world only because we were created with it.

Everyone has a god. For some it’s themselves and the selfish pleasures of life. For others it’s money; for some it’s idols and for believers it’s the Almighty God.

In closing, I would suggest that before you run through the forest of Catholicism you need to center yourself and reflect on God. Look at His creation and the order that it posseses. Look at beauty in which is not necessary for mere survival. I will definitely keep you in my prayers not that God reveals Himself to you but that you see Him everytime He does. May God Bless you…🙂
 
Hello organist,

My heart goes out to you. I wasn’t quite in your spot, - in that I never doubted the existence of God. For me, it was Jesus being God. I’ve experienced using my reasoning, reaching a conclusion that seemed correct, but instead of bringing peace and joy, everything got bleak and empty.

I don’t have any convincing arguments for you; I can only tell you what I did. The bleakness got so bad that I just started begging God for the truth, even if it meant admitting that my reasoning was all wrong. Just please, God, give me the truth.

Your prayer might have to add a couple words - “Please God, if you are there…”.

I will keep you in my prayers,
Nita
(I like your name - organist. I played church organ for 9 years.)
 
May I recommend Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity”? God bless.

rusty
 
Trad_Catholic said:
Hasn’t done anything special, huh? It’s not all hypocracy… that is an unfortunate by-product.

In the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church single-handedly revived and rebuilt Western civilization. The Benedictine monks, for example, transformed wasteland and swamps into fertile fields, harnessed water power, and bred healthier strains of livestock. The Jesuits became pre-eminent in astronomy and developed a scientific approach to archaeology. The Church fostered village schools and the great universities of Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge; operated hospitals and orphanages; sheltered and fed the poor; and formulated the idea of basic human rights… shall I go on? Charity, morality, economics, international law, the idea that all men are created equal, and many other things you take for granted all have foundations in Catholic thought.

.
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And the Catholic Church in the modern world today is the 2nd largest charitable organization: 2nd only to the state.
 
So, if I’m struggling as much as I am with these questions, what hope is there for the billions of simpler less educated people out there who are trying to think through these issues objectively? Isn’t God setting them an impossible task?
To me, belief in the Catholic view of life seems impossibly difficult. It’s almost as if the Catholic God (assuming he exists) requires modern rational critical minds to run a sort of agility contest – like the kind you see dogs perform at dog shows – but one that almost none can complete.
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You are taking a “glass half empty” approach. There are 1.1 billion Catholics in the world. It wasn’t impossible for them.
 
tizzidale said:
May I recommend Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Introduction to Christianity”? God bless.

rusty
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In addition, “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. It’s worth another look if you’ve already read it before.
 
organist said:
I am new to this message board. I am a 27-year-old former Catholic from the UK. After converting to the faith in my teens, I decided to stop practising a couple of years ago when I felt that I was behaving hypocritically by continuing to perform all the externals of the faith while interiorly I was full of doubt and confusion.

[snip]

In recent years I have more or less given up mental pursuits of the philosophical and theological kind. But today, for some reason, I had a spare minute and decided to note down what has been going through my mind.

[snip]

My own suspicion at this time is that God doesn’t exist, at least not the Catholic God. But I am open to the idea that I may be wrong.
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I should start off by saying that I don’t have any answers for you. I’m in a pretty similar position as you are.

I’m 26 and was a pretty devout, orthodox Catholic. I used to go to Mass every day, I’ve read all sorts of theology and philosophy over the years… Augustine, Aquinas, etc. I’ve read most of the spiritual classics: Story of a Soul, Imitation of Christ, Introduction to a Devout Life, etc.

Over the past two years or so, I really began to question why I believed, why I was Catholic, what difference it made. It started with the question, “why is God hiding?” I can’t see God and have trouble seeing any evidence of God’s existence. When I prayed, I never felt anything. God never “spoke” to me. I wondered if God was just my imaginary friend.

Like you, I’ve given up any interest in philosophy or theology. To me, it’s just a bunch of verbose debates about things nobody can ever definitively prove or disprove.

I’m not sure there is a God of any sort. I’m less sure there is a personal God similar to the Jewish and Christian conception. Even though I’m familiar with most of the philosophical or logical arguments for God’s existence (esp. Aquinas’ Quinquae viae), I never found them convincing.

I have other doubts too, primarily dealing with the origins of man and the relative certainty that we are not descended from one and only one man and woman.

I often wonder how I ended up where I am now. A few years ago, there was no doubt in my mind that there was a God and that I had picked the right religion. I still go to Mass on Sundays. I don’t eat meat on Fridays. I even pray a bit daily.

I don’t know where I’ll end up. I sort of liked being Catholic. The Catholic Church was the New York Yankees of religions. I wonder if I’ll become one of those “cultural” or “secular” Catholics that I used to detest so much who really doesn’t believe but likes having that Catholic background.

I feel a bit hypocritical. I can’t honestly say that I believe anymore. I’m a practicing Catholic but not a believing one. I’m a borderline agnostic. Strangely, admitting that to myself brought me a bit of peace.

Even though I’m at peace with being essentially agnostic, I sometimes find myself hoping that God is real and that God will restore my faith one day.
 
I often wonder how I ended up where I am now. A few years ago, there was no doubt in my mind that there was a God and that I had picked the right religion. I still go to Mass on Sundays. I don’t eat meat on Fridays. I even pray a bit daily.
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Oh my, what a distressing post! I don’t want to derail the OP topic, but I would love to hear more about how this happened to you. Was it gradual? Did you read or hear something that drew you away from your faith? Was there some type of “higher education” involved?😉
 
blessedtoo said:
Oh my, what a distressing post! I don’t want to derail the OP topic, but I would love to hear more about how this happened to you. Was it gradual? Did you read or hear something that drew you away from your faith? Was there some type of “higher education” involved?😉
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No, it wasn’t any one particular thing. College and grad school didn’t do it to me. I was a math and computer science major, neither of which had any effect on my beliefs.

It was fairly gradual. Perhaps being Catholic was a bit of a hobby for me that I outgrew. At any rate, I simply began to lack a reason to believe.

I bear no ill will towards the Church. I even think that JP II and Benedict XVI were/are good guys, good Popes. I just don’t think I believe anymore. I don’t see much, if any, evidence for the existence of a Christian God. I couldn’t make myself believe anymore.

I have a friend in a seminary. He’s a deacon now and will be a priest in a few months. I was talking to him a few years ago when he described a few of his fellow seminarians. He thought that some of them were there just looking for answers to questions (like I’ve been asking myself). Most of them would end up quitting at some point, and he suspected they’d be atheists in a few years. I wondered how someone could go from being a seminarian to an atheists. Now I think I understand.

I don’t think most atheists or agnostics “choose” to not believe. For them, they “choose” not to believe in God in the same way most people choose not to believe in Santa Claus.

I didn’t mean the previous post to be distressing. Like I said, when I admitted it to myself, I found a bit of peace.
 
Dear organist,

I’m not going to answer your objections fully, though I hope that you don’t give up your mental pursuits; I’ll just share my thoughts and experiences.

I’m from the UK too and a couple of years younger than you. Being Catholic here isn’t easy; we live in one of the most secular countries in the world, and meeting an orthodox Christian of any denomination is rare, especially at our age. People believing in some irrational mix of New Age and modern philosophy are quite common, though. I have met but one orthodox priest here, and he wasn’t even English. Maybe I was just unlucky. Or lucky. Whatever the case, I admire you for being a practising Catholic in the past and it seems likely you were practising for reasons other than it being pleasant, meaningful or any other subjective criteria.

You’re a Catholic theology graduate; are you sure the theology you were taught was Catholic? I’d even go so far as to say that it’s unlikely you were.

Point #1 - You write well enough and you’ve studied theology, so you are definitely bright enough to comprehend those arguments to a degree.

Point #2 - We’re not talking gooey, touchy-feely hippy love here, man. Seriously, don’t even go there - I heard some crazy nuns talk about that stuff and I thought I was gonna… Anyway, if you find yourself convinced of the existence of a theist God and of Christianity, the love with which you are expected to ‘love’ Jesus with is a commited, sacrificial and obedient sort of love. Any other forms of love flow from that one.

Point #3 - The Church is pretty special. I’ve heard it’s got the longest unbroken succession in the history of mankind. It’s contributed greatly to science (shock!) and our civilisation. Keep your mind open and check it out.

Point #4 - God demands humility. He demands we follow our conscience if we don’t know His law. He reveals Himself to various people in different ways. For some, it is intellectually.

I understand the reason why God chooses not to make His existence obvious for us is the degree of culpability we’d face in disobeying Him - we’d be damned, almost all of us. It is for our own good. In addition, unless God chose to make Himself known in a universally and damningly obvious way, we’d probably be able to rationalise Him away anyway. There’s the parable of Lazarus and the rich man:

I can’t make this post any longer, so click here

Examine arguments for the existence of God. The philosophical arguments, the scientific reasons etc. Don’t start from the biased assumption that He doesn’t exist. It appears that you are honest and you are not attempting to rationalise God away based on some irrational emotion based reason. You’re having a hard time finding Him. If you do find Him again, to the extent that you are convinced, make a commitment to obey Him even when your subjective faith is gone.

My own faith is quite basic even though I have a moderate understanding of Catholic doctrine. I am almost an atheist sometimes. You probably know just how pointless it seems to attempt to fulfil your Sunday obligation during those times. I often end up turning up to Mass 20 minutes late and being the first to leave. However, my commitment prevents me from drifting too far - God is still my top priority on Sunday morning because I know that I had understood before that He is an objective reality, even when subjectively, my faith is dead; I have a burning reason to attempt to justify my beliefs. When I do have faith, Jesus Christ is at the centre of it; I have faith in Him before and above everything else - all else flows from Him. My moral beliefs are closely aligned to Catholic Christian morality. Should you return to the Faith, then if you haven’t done so already, I’d recommend you try and seek secular reasons why Christian morality makes sense to get you through the times when you are almost faithless and to make regaining faith easier. I find that it helps.

Faith is a grace from God. I have to ask God for faith all the time because I find myself losing it through cultural influence and through my own fault. Even if you don’t believe in God, humbly ask Him for that grace. If He doesn’t exist, what harm does it do to ask? If He does (which He does), He may give it to you in His own time. Should you have faith in the future, be prepared to be alone in doing so. That’s the cross some Christians have to bear. It is meritorious, however, to do so in face of adversity. We don’t have to face physical persecution here, but mentally, we’re challenged daily by an overwhelming secularism and a sense of solitude.

Keep thinking, though. Don’t try and put these questions in the back of your head. Don’t run away from your conscience. Even if it means you become atheist. Your reason is a gift from God, or, from an atheistic perspective, Nature. Use it. Always.

My best wishes to you.
 
organist said:
Hello,

I am new to this message board. I am a 27-year-old former Catholic from the UK. After converting to the faith in my teens, I decided to stop practising a couple of years ago when I felt that I was behaving hypocritically by continuing to perform all the externals of the faith while interiorly I was full of doubt and confusion.

In recent years I have more or less given up mental pursuits of the philosophical and theological kind. But today, for some reason, I had a spare minute and decided to note down what has been going through my mind.

Below I have attempted to summarise the principal argument that has had me stumped for the past few years. I invite respectful answers from more erudite forum contributors:

*If God exists and wants me to be a believing Catholic, why doesn’t He make Catholicism believable? **

  1. ]Firstly, I don’t even know that God himself exists. Atheists, theists, pantheists, agnostics, nihilists can all argue their case. Most of them are far more intelligent than me. I can’t even understand half their arguments. So what hope is there of me reaching a satisfying conclusion on the matter? I can’t. So I’m forever confused.
    ** More intelligent ? I don’t know about that my friend. Their arguments sound learned and the evidence seems damning ask me I was one . First a secular humanist , then and agnostic and finally an atheist . Always believing that my argument was right and I knew the answers. Then one night in the early hours of the morning despair overcame me and I cried out for help and the Mother of God answered ,.🙂 don’t think your questions are unique , these questions have been asked since the concept of God became known to the mind of man

    ]Secondly, how can I possibly believe in or indeed relate to and ‘love’ Jesus? He’s a man who apparently wandered around in the Middle East 2,000 years ago – in a culture, place and time completely alien to me. He didn’t write anything down and what is written about him modern scholars debate the factual accuracy of. I’m not a scholar or archaeologist and I don’t understand Greek or Aramaic, so how am I supposed to honestly believe anything the Catholic Church or mainstream Christians say about him? Furthermore, how am I supposed to relate to or ‘love’ him?
  1. * The lessons he taught are for all times and for all places. and your are born with the need to know and love God . Look inside yourself that hunger is there that is why you are asking these questions **

    ]Thirdly, how am I supposed to believe that God wants me to be a member of the Catholic Church? It hasn’t done anything special. Far from it, the publicity it has received in my lifetime has been invariably scandalous, the history I learned about it in school was invariably scandalous, the Catholics I have met online and in real life have been uninspiring hypocritical and scandalous, and my experience of the liturgy, sacraments, and general Catholic way of life has been uninspiring and scandalous. Surely God would put more effort into the Church’s PR if he wanted me to believe in and join it?
    ** Uninspiring ? No my friend clearly you have had but the faintest of contact with the church of God if any. Your problem is Faith not the church    *

    *]Lastly, I’m a Catholic theology graduate. I went to Catholic university when I was eighteen because I wanted to make sense of life and understand my Catholicism more. I studied with some of the best Catholic minds in the world today. So, if I’m struggling as much as I am with these questions, what hope is there for the billions of simpler less educated people out there who are trying to think through these issues objectively? Isn’t God setting them an impossible task?

    ** That is the point billions are not philsophically debating everypoint they feel God in their lives and react thereto**

    To me, belief in the Catholic view of life seems impossibly difficult. It’s almost as if the Catholic God (assuming he exists) requires modern rational critical minds to run a sort of agility contest – like the kind you see dogs perform at dog shows – but one that almost none can complete. Why doesn’t he just make it simple? Why doesn’t he just demonstrate clearly that he exists and tell us straightforwardly what he requires of us? What is this woolly faith game all about?

    My own suspicion at this time is that God doesn’t exist, at least not the Catholic God. But I am open to the idea that I may be wrong.
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  1. ** Come you know better than that 😃 **
 
God says “just deny yourself, forget about it, it’s not about you.” Because we keep coming back, “Why am I doing this?” It’s not about you. It’s got nothing to do with you. God says, “I haven’t changed, you’re human, you’re frail.” It’s not about you. That’s the hardest bit in Christianity to learn. It’s not about personal success as some people go on about and hands in the air and all that business. Nothing to do with yourself. And that’s the hardest thing.
 
Well… I’m 18, and I’ve been in the same boat you and benedictus are in. I’ve been raised catholic since birth. At 14 I did all my confermation business and had gone to a very good catholic augustinian high school from then till graduation. Hontestly I guess I just went along with it because I didn’t feel like going against my parents’ wishes just then, but in truth ever since fifth or sixth grade I could tell that I didn’t really believe. Sophomore year I had really begun to question it much more than any other average 15 year old ‘catholic’ boy. None of it made any sense nor makes any sense to me. At 16 I absolutely refused to continue going to church. I didn’t get anything out of it, not in terms of a good time, but there was really no serious discussion of anything, no real question that I’ve had has gotten close to being answered or even attempted at answering. Since then I had continued to rigorously think about it, debate it, and study it. Throughout my catholic education and my religion/philosophy classes I had grown surer and surer that this could not be truth. Unlike you or benedict though I have developed a negative view toward the church and really many organized religions, most likely because my parents and godfather continue to this day to bug me about it and because I had always been surrounded by it.

Like Benedict I have also gained a great sense of peace by knowing that I am agnostic, knowing that we cannot know. But lately I have grown tired of all the non-sensical debating. I really should make it a goal to pick up some studying again, formulate my arguments and points better, and show why I think the way I do. I used to spend a great deal of time on these forums, sometimes several hours a day. It’s fun, but they’re not real conversations as replies sometimes take hours to come and people start giving up.

Comments for you and comments on comments.
So, if I’m struggling as much as I am with these questions, what hope is there for the billions of simpler less educated people out there who are trying to think through these issues objectively? Isn’t God setting them an impossible task?
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-organist

It seems to me that most simpler people don’t even seriously think about or ask these questions objectively, religious and non.

To some of your other points. You would think that if there was a god and that he cared about our lives here on this earth and wants us to act certain ways because they will have definite effects on our afterlives, that he would make this clearer and more certain to us wouldn’t you?
Don’t start from the biased assumption that He doesn’t exist.
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-jonk
Point #4 - God demands humility. He demands we follow our conscience if we don’t know His law. He reveals Himself to various people in different ways. For some, it is intellectually.
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-jonk
I understand the reason why God chooses not to make His existence obvious for us is the degree of culpability we’d face in disobeying Him - we’d be damned, almost all of us. It is for our own good. In addition, unless God chose to make Himself known in a universally and damningly obvious way, we’d probably be able to rationalise Him away anyway. There’s the parable of Lazarus and the rich man:
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-jonk
Don’t start off with atheism. Start off with Jesus
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-dcdurel

It seems to me that overwhelmingly most arguments for God’s existence and nature start off with the assumption that he does exist or so that you can fit in “What if God exists?” to the beginning of the argument. It really irks me when people say or imply that it is my job to disprove God and not theirs to prove or at least show some good reason for his existence in the first place and that the Church somehow absolutely knows truth about god none-the-less.

Some quotes that just come to mind.
“Those who know do not tell. Those who tell do not know.”-Lao Tzu
“Why is it that when we make mistakes, it’s evil, but when God makes mistakes, it’s called ‘nature’?”-Jack Nicholson (from some witch movie, don’t remember)

I’ve recently taken world religions in college, and I like the philosophy that had come out of India and east Asia more than what came out of the middle east, especially Buddhism, like Zen.
 
More intelligent ? I don’t know about that my friend. Their arguments sound learned and the evidence seems damning ask me I was one . First a secular humanist , then and agnostic and finally an atheist . Always believing that my argument was right and I knew the answers. Then one night in the early hours of the morning despair overcame me and I cried out for help and the Mother of God answered ,. don’t think your questions are unique , these questions have been asked since the concept of God became known to the mind of man
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-Peter Families

You know he said theists in there too, he was talking about everyone, including catholics. And yes, these questions I am sure have been asked before, that’s what they all say, but I’ve yet to receive a good answer for any of them.
Uninspiring ? No my friend clearly you have had but the faintest of contact with the church of God if any. Your problem is Faith not the church
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-Peter Families
Oh of course it’s not the church, why would anyone have any reason to doubt the church? If anyone does, they surely must be insane. /sarcasm off.
God says “just deny yourself, forget about it, it’s not about you.” Because we keep coming back, “Why am I doing this?” It’s not about you. It’s got nothing to do with you. God says, “I haven’t changed, you’re human, you’re frail.” It’s not about you. That’s the hardest bit in Christianity to learn. It’s not about personal success as some people go on about and hands in the air and all that business. Nothing to do with yourself. And that’s the hardest thing.
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-Trad Catholic

Okay, so now we know what it’s not about. Now we gotta figure out what it is about. But seriously, that’s like defining a… newspaper as: Something that is not made out of aluminum foil, cannot be used to build a sturdy house, and does not sound like steamroller.
 
It seems to me that overwhelmingly most arguments for God’s existence and nature start off with the assumption that he does exist or so that you can fit in “What if God exists?” to the beginning of the argument. It really irks me when people say or imply that it is my job to disprove God and not theirs to prove or at least show some good reason for his existence in the first place and that the Church somehow absolutely knows truth about god none-the-less.
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What I meant was not equivalent to starting with the assumption that He does exist - “Don’t start with atheism. Start with Jesus.” What I mean is that you shouldn’t begin with the reverse proposition either, since, for example, time seems to have had a beginning, and it is not entirely unreasonable to keep in mind that God could be a possible proposition. You try and be unbiased and weigh the arguments for or against. “Start as a reasonable, unbiased judge with a sober mind” and come to a conclusion from that start point.
 
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