What's preventing YOU from being a Catholic?

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One thing I notice with all the people who take issue with how ‘unfair’ God is over ‘little things’. . .

I wonder, “How do they know what is fair or unfair?”

It isn’t as if ‘fair/unfair’ things often benefited the individual person; same with ‘right and wrong’.

So logically speaking, shouldn’t a rational person be concerned with what benefits them?

And if we’re supposed to be concerned with others, why? I could understand things like everybody fighting off a danger together, if it affected everybody. . .a flood is coming our way, for example, then we all pitch in to put out the sandbags whether we’re rich, poor, black, white, etc. But why is it a moral wrong for somebody who is not in personal danger to just 'walk away"?

It seems as if our ‘moral code’ isn’t something that is just about ‘what is best for me’, which isn’t really logical if we think the universe just ‘happened’. If we’re all about ‘pure reason’, then how come we ignore reason (A man is drowning. I’m nearby and there’s a rope; I could throw the rope and maybe help the man, but the rope isn’t quite long enough, I’d have to get into the water and put myself in danger of drowning. Reason tells me, logically, to have a sense of caution not to put myself in danger of death. Why do I ignore reason and why is the moral ideal for humanity to try to help others? It isn’t logical. . .fact is, both the man and I are more likely to die in this case.)
I find there are more holes in the case for 'this world has no creator and it’s just random and so are we, except we’re random supposedly logical beings even though we came from chaos" than “we were created in the image of God by God”
 
MichaelP3 said:
Also the most used and irrelevant question asked on here “how do you know”. It seems unfathomable for Catholics that this can also be asked from 'the other side". It can go on to infinity from either side and just becomes a huge circle and so much more frustration because “that poster just does not listen”… well then should it be that big a revelation for that poster that the other poster thinks the exact same thing??
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Hi Michael, I’d LOVE to answer this in detail; IF space would only permit it:grinning:

Send Me {I’m the OP of this STRING} if you’d like to discuss any issue in particular?

God Bless you,
Patrcik
 
If you are going to cite one of the Ten Commandments you must take it at its meaning, Saturday. And one can certainly worship God in many ways primarily by living the most important command Jesus gave us, 'Love".
 
If it has to begin somewhere, than God has to begin somewhere. You’re telling me infinite chain of causality is imposible so you put the start on God, but if God is the start, there was a start to God. Or else you’re attributing to God something you claim is impossible.
 
That would be ridiculous in my opinion. Settling for a world where you allow evil to achieve a greater good rather than create a perfect world with perfect humans to inhabit and enjoy it is itself evil, and proves God is weak or evil. What possible greater good can come of having children born blind or dying of cancer every single second of existence?
 
Curious11 said:
Once again, there is no “first fish”, its species evolves by natural selection in a transition that started from a non-fish existence.
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There’s no first fish?

What?

Everything has had a first.

Where did that first cell - for anything, for the very first life form that existed on this planet - where did that first smidgeon of life come from? Did it evolve out of thin air? Serious question. I’m no theologian (not like some folks here, for certain). I legitimately want to know where you believe it came from. Not a trap. I promise.
 
It’s not like the theology behind it has been explained thousands of times, oh no. Really original argument.
 
Science hasn’t figured it out completely yet. But at some point eukaryotic cells emerged from matter in the ocean or on dry land. We don’t know how it happened and it may also be a transition where you don’t know at what clear cut point you go from matter to live cell.

There is no first fish. Natural selection is a slow transition. There is no first point in time where you can say “the first fish has been born” just like there is no single first day of your life where you’re old and stop being young.
 
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You’ve asked this before and I answered the role of the papacy and the nature of baptism. Those things haven’t changed. But being a Calvinist of some sort recently, which I couldn’t have imagined a few years ago, is one significant barrier.
The strong responses here to ‘God opens the eyes of some and not others’ is an indication of that. It’s repugnant in the eyes of Rome but I’m not as convinced by the Catholic or Armininian view anymore. The theology behind the Calvinistic phrase is more persuasive to me. All I have to do is look at the world I live in and it’s not hard to be convinced Calvin et al. were onto something.
 
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Curious11 said:
There is no first fish. Natural selection is a slow transition. There is no first point in time where you can say “the first fish has been born” just like there is no single first day of your life where you’re old and stop being young.
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So at no point in time there was never the first event of a true fish finally being born in its current form.

Sure.
 
Curious11 said:
Science hasn’t figured it out completely yet. But at some point eukaryotic cells emerged from matter in the ocean or on dry land. We don’t know how it happened and it may also be a transition where you don’t know at what clear cut point you go from matter to live cell.
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Of course not because it is an absurd premise: life coming from non-life. A property cannot emerge or evolve unless it at least latently pre-exists.
 
Pup7 said:
So at no point in time there was never the first event of a true fish finally being born in its current form.

Sure.
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Curious is actually citing biological understanding of evolution correctly. Technically, there is no determined point of time in development that a “first cat” or “first bird” appeared. The process of speciation being so gradual that there is no hard delineation.
 
QContinuum said:
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Pup7:
So at no point in time there was never the first event of a true fish finally being born in its current form.

Sure.
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Curious is actually citing biological understanding of evolution correctly. Technically, there is no determined point of time in development that a “first cat” or “first bird” appeared. The process of speciation being so gradual that there is no hard delineation.
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I get that - I’m pretty well educated. I’ve just never bought it. At some point the first fish existed whether science wants to admit it or not. At some point every single thing was in alignment and the first whatever came into being.
 
There’s always mutations in genes due to replication mistakes that happen to every single living being. I don’t have the exact same genes my parents do, they’ve mutated a little. We say humans have the same genes, but what we really mean is that they’re similar enough to be classified as the same species, no other human has the exact same genes as me.

Same as fish, there’s a period of time where you start getting animals that very closely resemble fish and little by little every passing generation becomes more fish-like but it happens across many generations, not a single sudden break into fish-hood. You can probably take like 5 generations and see the animals becoming more closely related to fish, but that’s it.

Once again, the analogy which you seem to ignore, for some reason, is the example of when you stop being young and start being old. Is there a clear cut point? No. Does that mean there’s no change? The answer is so obvious I think it would even be patronizing of me to point it out
 
No aspersions meant against your education, Pup. I have years of college including biology classes, and a degree. And I freely admit I was still pretty foggy on the process until doing my own research.

I used to think too that there has to be a “first fish.” At some point. Then an evolutionary biologist friend took pity on me, and dashed all my simpleton ideas by giving me a crash course on the concept of emerging populations.

My head is still reeling. I kind of get it, but yeah, I still sometimes think in terms of “first” individuals in species.
 
Right. Says you?

How did God create humans than? It must have been from nothing right?
 
Than I’m sure you can tell me the first day of your life where you went from child to teen and from teen to adult. There must be a day in history where you could say “I went to sleep a child, I woke up a teen”, according to that logic
 
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No use arguing, it’ll go in circles. Believe me I’ve been there and I’m sure you have too
 
Agatha, I’m not a Catholic. But I still come here to talk about the hard questions of life. I don’t agree with the CC on some things, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in talking to people who do. I come here to test out ideas and to be challenged.

If you’re saying CA is supposed to be a mere echo chamber of agreement, why does it permit us non-Catholics to even join? Or bother to give us a non-Catholic board?
 
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