The fact is no religion is supported by facts other than the fact that it was written by men.
but isnt that how you as a catholic (assuming that are one) view other religions? that they are brainwashed? my only difference is that I think you belong in there too.
I was a cradle catholic and became disillusioned in college. I read, researched, questioned, and searched for the next 20 years. This all lead me back home to the Catholic Church.
i heard the same testimony coming from muslims. been an atheist, did a lot of ‘research’… which led them back to Islam. The only thing that proves is the strength of your ‘conditioning’. You believe you had a choice, but the fact is the choice had already been made for you.
So do you have a choice/free will? You told me that you are agnostic because of disillusionment and research. Was your choice already made for you based on your conditioning?
In most things we do, in some things we dont.
A choice that contradicts your childhood upbringing cannot be anything but a genuine and unmanipulated choice. With that said, my rejection of religion is completely my own choice. But I still believe in the divine, so that may well be a fraction of my earlier conditioning. Whatever makes us happy.
Maybe you realize this already, but your comments come off as highly arrogant. Basically, it seems you are accusing all cradle Catholics (and cradle Muslims, etc.) of being “brainwashed” or “conditioned” and essentially, not making a choice for the religion they uphold.A choice that contradicts your childhood upbringing cannot be anything but a genuine and unmanipulated choice. With that said, my rejection of religion is completely my own choice. But I still believe in the divine, so that may well be a fraction of my earlier conditioning. Whatever makes us happy.
i’m sorry if it sounds arrogant but its not an accusation. its a fact that billions of people are raised from infanthood to favor or strictly hold specific biases. cultural, spiritual, whatever.
i dont think it necessarily takes intelligence to escape the biases of your upbringing.You, on the other hand, are much too intelligent to fall for something like that! How good for you!
Agnos, odd isn’t it, that everyone else is wrong and you, O Master of all cognition :bowdown: , are alone in your correctness? Don’t assume that we were raised in cookie-cutter homes, all believing as we were programmed to think. I was raised with absolutely no religion in my life. No church. No faith. No God. No giving of thanks. I was surrounded by cynical agnostics, self-centered hedonists and atheists. But, God revealed that there was more than cynicism, more than making a god of myself to run my life as I saw fit. It was He alone who revealed that I am nothing and that He is everything.
hey thats why i said “mainly”. because i was reserving a fraction for the few people who actually made an unconditioned choice. like you.
hey what if this is my purpose…to challenge traditional outlooks?
religious affiliation may be an accident of birth, but religious truth is revealed by God, and religion is most definitely a matter of fact and truth. It is God who sets the terms of how he reveals himself to his people, how he will be worshipped and glorified, and how this truth is to be transmitted and lived. You and I may hold differing opinions, that does not make either of us right. For any sincere Christian, whatever the circumstances of their birth and early upbringing as adults the commit to the faith and practice and it is no longer a matter of opinion but of conviction and acceptance of revealed truth.
that is something that even the religious non-christian would say. but its easy to interpret your words as meaning that those conditioned outside of christian faith had been willed by God as a separate path towards him. One God, many ways. “It is God who sets the terms of how he reveals himself to his people”. Be it christianity, islam, hinduism, whatever.