Why choose the Catholic faith?

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Originally Posted by dshix View Post
You have clarified that you believe in a first mover; if this isn’t a god of some shape or form, what is it? Do you think that somehow nothing can come from nothing?
  • That is a great question. Cleverer people than me have attempted to answer that (e.g. Laurence Krauss). My own opinion is that we (mankind) has not solved these puzzles. But the option to ‘insert god here’, when we are stuck, does not get us closer to the solution
 
aprilfloyd said:
Originally Posted by dshix View Post
You have clarified that you believe in a first mover; if this isn’t a god of some shape or form, what is it? Do you think that somehow nothing can come from nothing?
  • That is a great question. Cleverer people than me have attempted to answer that (e.g. Laurence Krauss). My own opinion is that we (mankind) has not solved these puzzles. But the option to ‘insert god here’, when we are stuck, does not get us closer to the solution
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I can understand that the philisophical answer doesn’t work for all, but what about the witness discussed earlier? Is it so easy to explain the conversion of St. Paul away? Or the fact that hundreds of witnesses saw the Lord rise, and marched obediently to death proclaiming his resureciton?

St. Justin Martyr makes an argument which I think is compelling. Essentially, why would have the early church Fathers (and I am sure, many of us) march obediently to death? Indeed not only march obediently to death, but why would they honestly and without coorsion admit to being Christian knowing it was a death sentance, if it were not true.

The argument applied well enough when written ~155AD / 156AD or so. But it also applies in 33AD, and every year forward. Why would they do this, if the witness were not true. And consider, this was not the witness of just one person, no this was the witness of hundreds of people, like I said. And more over, as I said the witness includes that of people well outside of the original community of believers. Christ took St. Paul, a pharasies pharasy who persecuted Christians with great zeal believing he was doing Gods work in scrubbing the world clean of Christianity (this was his goal). This man went from mass murderer of Christians to one of the greatest of the Apostles. Why would he do that, especially knowing what was coming.
 
humble_catholic said:
This is baffling, April claims she isn’t an atheist, then makes the assertion that All Gods are mythical creatures.
Correct me if I’m wromg April but isn’t thi an atheist?
Or maybe I’m still asleep .

That’s like a catholic saying he is a catholic and professes faith in the hari Krishna God.
I’m baffled .
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Fair Point.

I will try and explain.

I have made the assertion that all Gods are mythical. Maybe I should give some ground and say that, in my opinion, they are all mythical. I have been taught about Norse gods, Egyptian gods, Christian gods, Indian gods, etc. etc,. There are thousands of them. So I can’t claim to know them all. I can’t see anything in the teaching that indicates or proves they are real. They seem to me to be just man made stories and myths.

If it transpires that one of them or more of them existed or exist, I don’t have an issue with that. It would be a fascinating discovery. In my opinion, human endeavour has not reached the point were we can prove one of these gods exists.

As for atheism, that word does not fit with me. If I understand correctly it means, the position held is that there are no deities. Well, you only have to speak to Catholics on this forum or other religions’ forums to see how they each ‘believe’ in their deity. The phenomenon know as deity are ‘real’ to the believer. In the same way that Santa or the Loch Ness Monster is ‘real’ - we can observe the affects of these phenomena.

We don’t have words, for people who don’t believe the earth is flat or in Santa, or that there are martians. The word atheism just seems clunky and unhelpful
 
crazzeto said:
I can understand that the philisophical answer doesn’t work for all, but what about the witness discussed earlier? Is it so easy to explain the conversion of St. Paul away? Or the fact that hundreds of witnesses saw the Lord rise, and marched obediently to death proclaiming his resureciton?

St. Justin Martyr makes an argument which I think is compelling. Essentially, why would have the early church Fathers (and I am sure, many of us) march obediently to death? Indeed not only march obediently to death, but why would they honestly and without coorsion admit to being Christian knowing it was a death sentance, if it were not true.

The argument applied well enough when written ~155AD / 156AD or so. But it also applies in 33AD, and every year forward. Why would they do this, if the witness were not true. And consider, this was not the witness of just one person, no this was the witness of hundreds of people, like I said. And more over, as I said the witness includes that of people well outside of the original community of believers. Christ took St. Paul, a pharasies pharasy who persecuted Christians with great zeal believing he was doing Gods work in scrubbing the world clean of Christianity (this was his goal). This man went from mass murderer of Christians to one of the greatest of the Apostles. Why would he do that, especially knowing what was coming.
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With all due respect other religions can make similar claims about their faiths, That there is irrefutable evidence.
The three largest religions don’t agree on who Jesus was and what actually happened. The best I can say is that the ‘evidence’ is poor. To me there is a lot of speculation and wishful thinking that over the years has became known as ‘fact’ - we can only really test a fact with empirical evidence.
 
aprilfloyd said:
With all due respect other religions can make similar claims about their faiths, That there is irrefutable evidence.
The three largest religions don’t agree on who Jesus was and what actually happened. The best I can say is that the ‘evidence’ is poor. To me there is a lot of speculation and wishful thinking that over the years has became known as ‘fact’ - we can only really test a fact with empirical evidence.
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All due respect, not so much. Jewish faith, I’ll go along with that but that’s easy for me to do. Proving the Jeeish faith true helps prove true the Catholic faith.

The next you can bring up is Islam, but quickly you run into a problem. If you actually know anything about the faith you know that it isn’t terribly self consistent. So bad is the problem that island has an official mechanism for sorting out literally conflicting verses of the Koran, the later verse is correct. Compounding that problem is the fact that prior to its official assembly, the Koran was kept in a box, got jumbled up and parts went missing. This isn’t a very good witness. Oh and by the way Muslims weren’t the ones being put to death in the same way as christian martyrs.

Your not going to fair better in the Orient, or with ancient pagan religions.

Christianity however, has maintained fantastic self consistency even when comparing old Testament to new. And for over 300 years the faith was persecuted to the max, yet it only ever grew stronger.

All due respect, considering what you just said. You don’t actually know world religion as well as you think you do.
 
ejp123 said:
A challenging question I have been asked is, With so many gods and religions over the centuries, why be catholic? What makes it any more right or true than the others? In it’s simplist form, I try to chalk it up to Jesus as a real person in history and trusting his authority and word. Just wondering what others might think about these question. Thx
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My belief is just there. It chose me and I accepted it.
 
Eleve said:
april, is there something you intend to accomplish here besides insulting people?
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If insulting is disagreeing with people, then I must be insulting.

I guess, I am just looking for evidence of Gods. But I am always asked to prove he does not exist, which is an old argument that has not got us anywhere. I can’t prove Santa does not exist, by the same ‘logic’

Plus some of the linguistic histrionics, I get is remarkable. The amount of verbal gymnastics that people go to has to be seen to be believed.

🙂
 
crazzeto said:
All due respect, not so much. Jewish faith, I’ll go along with that but that’s easy for me to do. Proving the Jeeish faith true helps prove true the Catholic faith.

The next you can bring up is Islam, but quickly you run into a problem. If you actually know anything about the faith you know that it isn’t terribly self consistent. So bad is the problem that island has an official mechanism for sorting out literally conflicting verses of the Koran, the later verse is correct. Compounding that problem is the fact that prior to its official assembly, the Koran was kept in a box, got jumbled up and parts went missing. This isn’t a very good witness. Oh and by the way Muslims weren’t the ones being put to death in the same way as christian martyrs.

Your not going to fair better in the Orient, or with ancient pagan religions.

Christianity however, has maintained fantastic self consistency even when comparing old Testament to new. And for over 300 years the faith was persecuted to the max, yet it only ever grew stronger.

All due respect, considering what you just said. You don’t actually know world religion as well as you think you do.
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I don’t claim to know world religions. But the other religions do have followers who ‘believe’ with the same fervour as people on this site.
 
aprilfloyd said:
I don’t claim to know world religions. But the other religions do have followers who ‘believe’ with the same fervour as people on this site.
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Ok, I’m not sure what fervor has to do with witness. You are completely glossing over the claim to try and bunch world religions into one big melting pot, it just doesn’t work that way aprilfloyd. In order to try and make the claim you make, you actually have to know and study the claims the faiths make. Not only that, you have to know something about their teachings the more the better, but you at the very least have to have a rudimentary understanding of what they teach. It also helps to have some humility and at least accept their claims for what they are to start with until you can processes and evaluate them at the very least.

In this context, what you said doesn’t even begin to fly and you really do your self a huge disservice. You haven’t bothered to consider how faithful the witness to your own faith is.
 
aprilfloyd said:
Fair Enough. They believe their own religions are true,
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Again, you are utterly missing the point. But the witnesses to the faith on trial, that’s the point. You have to actually evaluate what they are saying, you should even consider what you can from their psychology based on their writings and known sayings, people can fervently believe due to insanity, ignorance, ulterior motive etc. You haven’t bothered putting these people on trail, rather you just put them in a melting pot with ‘world religions’ and called it all about the same.

Would you treat anything else in life that way?
 
aprilfloyd said:
  • That is a great question. Cleverer people than me have attempted to answer that (e.g. Laurence Krauss). My own opinion is that we (mankind) has not solved these puzzles. But the option to ‘insert god here’, when we are stuck, does not get us closer to the solution
Click to expand...
The funny thing here is that you don’t understand the nature of what I’m saying. The definition of a god, in a loose sense, is something that created the universe.

Therefore, whatever you discover to be God, when you are “technologically advanced” enough to do so, I’ll name it God because that’s what it is.

So, let’s say you figure out a way to discover a spriritual being with natural means. You find the cause of the beginning of the universe, which, by reason, we can prove to be a sentient, intelligent being. You call it a Globadinabad.

I would call it God. The name is irrelevant; there are any number of names for a god. However, the important thing here, which is why I asked you that question, is the CONCEPT of a God. You believe in a first mover; well, I call that first mover God.
 
dshix said:
The funny thing here is that you don’t understand the nature of what I’m saying. The definition of a god, in a loose sense, is something that created the universe.

Therefore, whatever you discover to be God, when you are “technologically advanced” enough to do so, I’ll name it God because that’s what it is.

So, let’s say you figure out a way to discover a spriritual being with natural means. You find the cause of the beginning of the universe, which, by reason, we can prove to be a sentient, intelligent being. You call it a Globadinabad.

I would call it God. The name is irrelevant; there are any number of names for a god. However, the important thing here, which is why I asked you that question, is the CONCEPT of a God. You believe in a first mover; well, I call that first mover God.
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That’s an interesting way of looking at it but calling the phenomena that ‘created’ the universe ‘God’, causes confusion with other Gods and what people generally mean by God, as in some type of super natural entity.

The part I don’t get is that you seem to be saying that because you don’t know what ‘kick started’ the universe, if it was ‘kick started’, you just call it ‘God’. I don’t think that is a rigorous examination of what started the universe and is not a very scientific approach.
 
Eleve said:
april, is there something you intend to accomplish here besides insulting people?
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Let’s go easy on april, folks.

He sounds young. And not very well schooled in logic and reason.

But we are here to plant a seed.

No doubt it will come to fruition much later in his life, but as for now, it’s just fun to mess with him. 😃
 
snarflemike said:
I can’t let this one pass. Krauss’ “something from nothing” is a philosophical joke (what is it these days with atheist scientists doing embarrassing philosophy?).

nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=0

firstthings.com/article/2012/05/not-understanding-nothing
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I think you will find that with all science and the desire to further knowledge - people make attempts, and theorise and proffer explanations to help move us closer to answers. Philosophy does not do that. It does not help explain how things work.

As someone once said - Philosophy can be the birth place of ideas, but they have to leave home to grow up and become part of the real sciences.
 
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