Starting to doubt Catholicism

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Platonist

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Hi all. I wanted to start this thread to discuss Catholicism and its relation to the Truth. I’m starting to doubt the Faith in a couple of key areas. I recognize the reality of the eternal Forms and of God of course, but it seems like Catholicism was just watered down classical philosophy fashioned onto Jewish folk religion. All the good parts of the faith came from the gentiles, why is this? And why was Greek culture so superior to Hebrew? Who is the Hebrew Plato, for example? Historically, they just seem like a backwards hill people, nothing makes them stand out as carriers of the Truth. Its easier to believe Socrates is in “heaven” than any Old Testament figure.

My biggest problem is that you just have to take things like the Incarnation as true with no evidence. This seems absurd and contrary to reason (which is God himself). How can the Word of God be contrary to God? And why does Reason itself require faith?

I know God and the realm of spirit are true, but how can I know all other baggage attached to Catholicism?

edit:I also have trouble with the concept that souls are created in time, that the soul is the form of the body, and that an intellect with full knowledge can assent to evil. All of these seem philosophically implausible at best.
 
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I don’t doubt the historicity of the Gospels; I just find them to be a fairly dumb way of bringing Truth into the world. If God used the gospels as evidence, why not provide something superior? And if no evidence is required for Faith, why have Gospels at all? I also don’t doubt the immortality of the soul, of course. I doubt that its created in time. If something is immortal, its neither created nor destroyed. So why would souls constantly be created? Wouldn’t the principle of simplicity mean that God would create all souls at once?
 
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The question to ask then given your parameters of Greek vs Hebrews is did God only want intelligent people with deep knowledge (gnosis) or is heaven supposed to (according to the church) available to everyone regardless of intelligence?
 
Platonist said:
If something is immortal, its neither created nor destroyed.
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Why is something immortal necessarily uncreated?
Platonist said:
don’t doubt the historicity of the Gospels; I just find them to be a fairly dumb way of bringing Truth into the world
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Using people to tell the Truth is consistent with the fact that the Incarnation is an ongoing event that includes our divinization/theosis. We don’t just learn about Christ. We also become Christ.
 
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The question to ask then given your parameters of Greek vs Hebrews is did God only want intelligent people with deep knowledge (gnosis) or is heaven supposed to (according to the church) available to everyone regardless of intelligence?
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Well if the intellect is the highest “part” of the soul, wouldn’t the raising of one’s intellect to God and the forms be the purpose of all souls? Wouldn’t superior intellect mean a higher or superior soul? Knowledge of God is just that, knowledge. Its required to elevate one’s soul.
 
Why is something immortal necessarily uncreated?
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Sorry, I recognize souls are created. But it seems more plausible that they are created in eternity, like the forms; not in time with each conception.
 
Platonist said:
I don’t doubt the historicity of the Gospels; I just find them to be a fairly dumb way of bringing Truth into the world.
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The Bible also says that the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

My guess is He chooses the little and the unimportant (in human ways of reckoning) so humans don’t get puffed up with pride and imagine they have all the answers.
Or they can think their way into Heaven.
Or act their way into Heaven.

Which is prolly a good thing because folks are never as smart or moral as they think they are.
 
And children, people with average IQ’s or downs people? No place for them?
 
I am not a philosopher or theologian but doesn’t knowledge and recognition of God come from the Holy Spirit? God moves first and we respond through grace. You seem to be implying that to know God is a purely intellectual pursuit and its so annoying that ordinary people who provided food for our survival were the means God chose to reveal Himself. . . .
 
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Also in the ancient world if you were privileged enough to lounge about thinking about philosophy there was very likely a huge class of slaves/laborers/peasants making that possible.
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Don’t paint men like Socrates as idle loungers; they earned their freedom through total devotion to their state, their nation. Greek citizenry was not a “privilege”, it was the fruits of generations of cultivated discipline and virtue. Aristotle said some men were natural-born slaves. There are examples of Spartans who killed themselves rather than become slaves.
 
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And children, people with average IQ’s or downs people? No place for them?
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I don’t know. If there’s anything higher than knowledge, it must be “Love”. But I don’t know how Love acts on the soul, and the term is vague to me.
 
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To quote Hamlet:

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
 
Platonist said:
And children, people with average IQ’s or downs people? No place for them?
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I would advise you to pray to God – to beg Him – to illuminate your soul with His love, and with understanding of this truth:

1 Corinthians 13

The Gift of Love​

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; 10 but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 13 So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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Agape is the command of love, sacrificial love, filia is basically friendship love and Eros is erotic love (not on the modern sense).

Jn 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Even children ( more often than adults) will give freely without regarding cost to themselves.
 
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I would advise you to pray to God – to beg Him – to illuminate your soul with His love, and with understanding of this truth 🙂
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Yea I know, it just seems like a bit of a cop-out. Knowledge of transcendence seems to be the main thing that matters. If Love is an emanation of God, why would it act on a soul any differently than any other Form? How can someone raise his soul to communion with Reason itself, if he lacks understanding? Also none of this really helps me to prove the Incarnation or the veracity of Salvation history.
 
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Platonist said:
Yea I know, it just seems like a bit of a cop-out. Knowledge of transcendence seems to be the main thing that matters.
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👀

Let’s stop there before continuing.

How did you arrive at this idea? Because it’s not Christian. (E.g. Satan “knows about” the eternal (if that’s near what you mean by “transcendence”, which is more of a Buddhist term ) – and that’s sure not what matters in Satan’s case). Do you have a history of Buddhist belief, for example? Or are there Buddhist or new age influences around you?
 
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How did you arrive at this idea? Do you have a history of Buddhist belief, for example? Or are there Buddhist or new age influences around you?
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Plato
 
Platonist said:
How did you arrive at this idea? Do you have a history of Buddhist belief, for example? Or are there Buddhist or new age influences around you?
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Okay. Have you only just come across Plato? Why are you prioritizing platonist thought above Christian thought? (PS please see my edit to the prior comment; you responded before I got that in there! 🙂)
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Okay. Have you only just come across Plato? Why are you prioritizing platonist thought above Christian thought? (PS please see my edit to the prior comment; you responded before I got that in there! 🙂)
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Sorry, by “transcendence” I meant the spiritual realm, the realm of forms, Being itself, etc. I don’t know if thats the proper term for it.

As for why I’m prioritizing philosophy and having doubts about Catholicism: because we can know philosophical ideas are true. There’s no faith required to assent to the reality of God or the immortality of the soul. How can I know the truth of the Catholic/Hebrew stuff that has nothing to do with reason (Salvation history, etc) ?
 
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