Why Christianity

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alchemist
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
SteakNPotatoes said:
It’s been my experience that people involved in religion, while certainly sincere in their beliefs, nevertheless often think their subjective reasons are really objective reasons. That’s because from within the bubble everything looks a certain way, but from the outside one can see all the other bubbles floating around with their own subjective realities.

You can choose to join the people in the bubbles, or stay outside and maintain your objectivity.
Click to expand...
Hmm, not to “burst your bubble”, but Atheism is also a bubble:) if you want to substitute worldviews for bubbles, you are looking through a bubble that you are not even admitting exists.
 
Carlos G

*By your own admission, you dont know much about your faith, so of course you’re not going to be able to see why its truthful.
*
This is very perceptive. I’ve often noticed that atheists and agnostics as a rule become such at an early age. They don’t even know what they are rejecting because they have yet to grow into true spirituality and wrestled with the many issues that all true believers have to experience throughout their lives.

But this loss never sits well with them. They might well spend the rest of their lives knocking religion and trying to justify their newfound faith in Nogod. I expect them to haunt Catholic web sites … especially near Halloween?http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon10.gif
 
gardenswithkids said:
Yes, desires often bring suffering. The whole Fall in Genesis results from Adam and Eve’s desire to sin. All the suffering in the world traces back to sinful desires–either our own or others’.

A central teaching of Christianity is redemptive suffering. Jesus desired to free us from sin and so He suffered for us. One beauty of Catholocism is that Jesus’ redemptive suffering gives meaning to our own suffering. When united with His suffering, our struggles also becomes redemptive. That’s what Catholics mean by “offer it up.” Our struggles and sufferings serve a purpose to help redeem humanity. Jesus redeemed humanity through His suffering and death, and we imitate Him.

This brings us to another central teaching of Christianity: the Resurrection! Good Friday is followed by Easter Sunday. Suffering is not the end, it is the begining of a new life in Christ. We sow in sadness, but we reap in joy.
Click to expand...
So is it a sinful desire to be with someone and have them be faithful to you? This is a desire of mine but I don’t feel that it is sinful, rather I feel it’s natural for a person to want to be with someone who will be faithful to them. I think that is why Jesus allows divorce in the case of sexual immorality.

Example: Adultery
Cause of suffering: The person who is cheated on feels pain because they desire faithfulness which was betrayed. Their attachment to the other person is what causes the suffering on their end.

If the person you’re involved with cheats on you, he or she has caused suffering for you because of their desires for something other than you (which would be sinful) but your own desires, which were not sinful, also played a role in causing your own suffering. Because I’m sure if I were to tell you that right now someone whom you don’t know is having sex with someone else you’ve never even heard of, you probably wouldn’t suffer as much. But if it was your wife or husband, then you would suffer.

Basically this is what it came down to for my faith. I was tired of the suffering. I’m spending my life suffering and helping the redeption of the world from a fate that I’m not even sure awaits it. Christianity has seemed real for me at times, but I’m dealing with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as well, one of my obsessive thoughts in middle school was that satan had taken over the universe and i had amnesia and that satan was messing with me by creating this illusion. I had eventually taken a leap of faith to stop believing in that but it had seemed real at the time as well.
 
deb1 said:
Bare with me, I will word this badly, let me assure you.😛

To be part of a religion at some point you simply have to accept on faith what is being taught, correct?

How is atheism any different? Atheist’s have no ultimate proof that there is no God, they simply believe on faith that there isn’t.

I have met atheists who were everybit as evangelical in their belief in God’s nonexistence as fundamentalist’s Christians and who would not fail to try and convert others to atheism.
Click to expand...
I don’t want to de-rail this thread. Since Alchemist has already indicated his willingness to believe in the existence of God, the topic of atheism would seem to be irrelevent in the course of this discussion.

That said, I will simply say that atheism for me is the absence of belief in God. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not true to say that I “believe” there is no God. It is more correct to say that I “have no belief” in God.

But this is fodder for another thread, so I will abstain from further discussion of atheism per se.
 
CarlosG said:
Hmm, not to “burst your bubble”, but Atheism is also a bubble:) if you want to substitute worldviews for bubbles, you are looking through a bubble that you are not even admitting exists.
Click to expand...
I admit it was a lame metaphor, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. 🙂
 
Gilbert_Keith said:
Carlos G

*By your own admission, you dont know much about your faith, so of course you’re not going to be able to see why its truthful.
*
This is very perceptive. I’ve often noticed that atheists and agnostics as a rule become such at an early age. They don’t even know what they are rejecting because they have yet to grow into true spirituality and wrestled with the many issues that all true believers have to experience throughout their lives.

But this loss never sits well with them. They might well spend the rest of their lives knocking religion and trying to justify their newfound faith in Nogod. I expect them to haunt Catholic web sites … especially near Halloween?http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon10.gif
Click to expand...
Hey! :mad:

That was a low blow.

But you are correct about atheists becoming so at an early age, as I become an atheist at the tender age of 42.
 
But you are correct about atheists becoming so at an early age, as I become an atheist at the tender age of 42.

What precipitated your late leap of faith to Nogod?

And what was your religion before the leap?

And why are you here at Catholic Answers?
 
Alchemist said:
So is it a sinful desire to be with someone and have them be faithful to you? This is a desire of mine but I don’t feel that it is sinful, rather I feel it’s natural for a person to want to be with someone who will be faithful to them. I think that is why Jesus allows divorce in the case of sexual immorality.

Example: Adultery
Cause of suffering: The person who is cheated on feels pain because they desire faithfulness which was betrayed. Their attachment to the other person is what causes the suffering on their end.

If the person you’re involved with cheats on you, he or she has caused suffering for you because of their desires for something other than you (which would be sinful) but your own desires, which were not sinful, also played a role in causing your own suffering. Because I’m sure if I were to tell you that right now someone whom you don’t know is having sex with someone else you’ve never even heard of, you probably wouldn’t suffer as much. But if it was your wife or husband, then you would suffer.

Basically this is what it came down to for my faith. I was tired of the suffering. I’m spending my life suffering and helping the redeption of the world from a fate that I’m not even sure awaits it. Christianity has seemed real for me at times, but I’m dealing with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as well, one of my obsessive thoughts in middle school was that satan had taken over the universe and i had amnesia and that satan was messing with me by creating this illusion. I had eventually taken a leap of faith to stop believing in that but it had seemed real at the time as well.
Click to expand...
I don’t know enough about the situation you describe to say if such desire is sinful or not. But the love between a husband and wife can be a source of their sanctification, and faithfulness is expected. If one spouse commits adultery, the other suffers greatly for it. Love leaves us vunerable to suffering, if not from adultery than from other things such as illness and death. We can’t avoid suffering without avoiding love.

I’m sorry to read of your pain and struggles. But are they any less painful by believing you suffer for no reason? Atheist sometimes call religion the “opiate of the masses”. Yet if you ever saw someone in extreme physical pain on a morphine, you’d know that opiates ease suffering. If you suffer, why reject God who is a source comfort?

Or have you instead begun to think that God is the source of your suffering? Redemptive suffering is not easy. I fear it, and I don’t suffer well. Even Jesus in the Garden asked God to take it away if possible. I’ve read saints who suffered greatly remark that one is never closer to Jesus than when they are suffering on the cross with Him. Once again, I strongly recommend you read writings from St. John of the Cross.
 
SteakNPotatoes said:
I don’t want to de-rail this thread. Since Alchemist has already indicated his willingness to believe in the existence of God, the topic of atheism would seem to be irrelevent in the course of this discussion.

That said, I will simply say that atheism for me is the absence of belief in God. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not true to say that I “believe” there is no God. It is more correct to say that I “have no belief” in God.

But this is fodder for another thread, so I will abstain from further discussion of atheism per se.
Click to expand...
Well it is an interesting subject but as you rightly point out, we don’t won’t to derail the thread.
 
Gilbert_Keith said:
But you are correct about atheists becoming so at an early age, as I become an atheist at the tender age of 42.

What precipitated your late leap of faith to Nogod?

And what was your religion before the leap?

And why are you here at Catholic Answers?
Click to expand...
I don’t want to be seen as evasive regarding your questions, but I also don’t want to hijack this thread, which is about Alchemist, not me.
 
If you are asking “Is Catholicism more true than any other religion” then you need to tell us what you would accept, if anything, in the way of convincing.
 
*But you are correct about atheists becoming so at an early age, as I become an atheist at the tender age of 42.

*Well then, I’ll chalk you up as the exception that proves the rule.

That said, I will simply say that atheism for me is the absence of belief in God. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not true to say that I “believe” there is no God. It is more correct to say that I “have no belief” in God.

Semantics!

But you do “believe” there is no God, because you cannot prove it’s so. This is why we talk of “belief” in God, because we cannot prove God with an absolute certainty.

What is good for the goose should be good for the gander.http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon7.gif
 
SteakNPotatoes said:
I don’t want to be seen as evasive regarding your questions, but I also don’t want to hijack this thread, which is about Alchemist, not me.
Click to expand...
I’d be interested in seeing what prompted you to leave religion.

Everybody feel free to post life stories on how you converted, either to or from religion. Those stores are sure to have an influence on me and help me in pondering why or why not to choose Christianity.
 
I left Catholicism partly for the following reasons:

First off, the priest sex-scandal from several years ago served as a spark causing me to ask some hard questions of Catholicism, the answers to which were unsatisfactory. Without going into specifics (that would take time I don’t really have) I came to believe that:
Jesus did not really found the Catholic Church
  • The Church was of mere human invention
  • Some Church teachings used twisted logic to justify doctrine
Once I left Catholicism, I began to question Christianity and found many problems that could not be resolved to my satisfaction, including:
  • The Scriptures were not a reliable source for the life of Jesus
  • It’s a good question as to whether the Jesus of the Gospels ever existed (note: I accept the possibility of a man, Jesus, existing, but the stories in the Bible are simply legends, IMHO)
  • There is evidence of Christological development from rabbi to prophet to messiah to God, which seems more human-contrived than authentically divine; in other words, Jesus wasn’t God. If Jesus wasn’t God, then
  • He is due respect as a teacher and philosopher, but he isn’t worthy of worship, and also,
  • The Trinity is therefore another made-up doctrine
Once I left Catholicism, and then Christianity, I began to question the existence of God and concluded to my satisfaction that God-belief is not supportable by the evidence for the following reasons (among others):
  • Evolutionary theory can not only explain why we are here, but also to a large extent, why we believe in God, without assuming God exists
  • My interest in astronomy indicates to me our relative unimportance in the universe, which counters (to my mind) arguments of theists who say that God cares about us
  • The wonders of science and nature are so amazing to me precisely because they don’t need God to exist
  • I am a moral person despite not believing in God
  • I am happier and more fulfilled as a man knowing that my future is entirely in my own hands
  • The thought that this life is all there is makes it exceedingly precious, and I am all the more committed to live this life fully without wasting time trying to please some sky-creature who hides from me.
Of course I expect to catch all kinds of flack for these reasons. But the fact remains that they are my reasons, and I don’t expect them to matter to anyone else.

So, why am I here on Catholic Answers Forum?
Simply, I am intrigued by religion, and always have been. I spent years studying my faith (when I had it), the Church, and Scriptures, partly because I believed at the time, but also because the topic is of great fascination to me. I enjoy these types of discussions, and I generally like Catholics (well, most of you, anyway) because I used to be one. Just because I no longer believe is no excuse to leave behind my interests.
 
Alchemist,

I think you’re at that stage in life where you move from a child’s faith–believe this because other people have told you to–to an adult’s faith–believe this because you have checked it out and found it to be true, or at least probable.

Christianity differs from ALL other religions of the world in that we teach that our God came to earth in a particular place at a particular time, did particular things while He was here, died at a particular place and time, and rose from the dead. Many religions claim that their god walked the earth, but nobody else puts it at a particular few years within the larger history of the earth.

That by itself is sufficient reason to choose Christianity over all other religions.
  • Liberian
 
SteakNPotatoes said:
*]I am a moral person despite not believing in God
Click to expand...
I doubt YOU will catch flak, but most certainly your ideas will. I wont try to refute your points as im sure you have done plenty of research into it (I have too but I came to different conclusions), and furthermore its gonna derail the thread…

But I cant help to ask just one question, because it always intrigues me when atheists say “im still living a moral life” or something to that effect. So my question is, why? Why not adopt Schopenhauer’s nihilistic attitude and say screw everything? im sure youve had to answer this before, and i dont mean to be monotonous, but it really does intrigue me. If someone doesnt agree with you about morality, what is the appeal to? If morals are really only some sort of evolutionary social construct, then how can one claim something is wrong or right? If we are just animals, then why care if we act as animals, how could we even condemn Hitler’s actions?

Again, im sure youve come across people who ask you these things or even asked yourself these things so i dont mean to just throw banal theistic arguements at you but i’ve never gotten a good answer to this, even from top notch debaters like Austin Dacey, Corey Washington or Mikey Tooley. I know this is anecdotal but i remember a video i saw once hosted by Dr. Armand Nicoli called “Does God Exist?” where Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine answers the question to the effect of “We should be moral just because…just because”:eek:
 
  • SteakNPotatoes
  • Evolutionary theory can not only explain why we are here, but also to a large extent, why we believe in God, without assuming God exists
  • False. It does no such thing. It explains **how **we got here, not why. And why on earth would it explain why we believe in God?
  • My interest in astronomy indicates to me our relative unimportance in the universe, which counters (to my mind) arguments of theists who say that God cares about us
  • We are more important than you say. The universe does not think. We do.
  • *The wonders of science and nature are so amazing to me precisely because they don’t need God to exist *
  • How do you know this for a fact? You only believe it because you want to believe it.
  • *I am a moral person despite not believing in God *
  • How do you know you are not a moral person because you are still living off your Catholic moral training?
  • *I am happier and more fulfilled as a man knowing that my future is entirely in my own hands *
  • Oops, I’m sorry. I thought most atheists were against free will.
  • The thought that this life is all there is makes it exceedingly precious, and I am all the more committed to live this life fully without wasting time trying to please some sky-creature who hides from me.
  • Well, since you think God is hiding from you, maybe you ought to start looking for Him? Believe me, it’s a lifetime job! And the more you get into it, the less convinced you’ll be that you are wasting your time … since every moment of it is truly precious.
 
CarlosG said:
So my question is, why? Why not adopt Schopenhauer’s nihilistic attitude and say screw everything? im sure youve had to answer this before, and i dont mean to be monotonous, but it really does intrigue me. If someone doesnt agree with you about morality, what is the appeal to? If morals are really only some sort of evolutionary social construct, then how can one claim something is wrong or right? If we are just animals, then why care if we act as animals, how could we even condemn Hitler’s actions?
Click to expand...
Well, it’s probably a good idea to establish where I think morality and religion come from, so we can have a basis for discussion…

I don’t believe morals have a divine source.

Morality is a means of maintaining social order and holding people accountable to a larger good. Michael Shermer, in his book “How We Believe” offers an explanation for the development of morals and morality that I find very compelling. He asserts (with sources) that morality developed over time as humanity progressed from small, hunter-gatherer, family-based groups, to ever larger and more complicated organizations. The reason for this is that in small family groups, order is maintained via the authority of the leader in face-to-face encounters. But as families joined into clans, a new way of keeping order and fostering the greater good evolved. One means by which this may have happened was by means of stories. Shermer cites the myth of Beowulf as a sample of the reinforcement of Old Germanic values (courage, loyalty, pride and duty, among others). From stories like these, values that made the group cohesive and safe in a dangerous world were passed on to new generations.

Additionally, the concept of reciprocal altruism developed as a means to strengthen the bonds within larger groups. Groups that were cooperative and helpful towards their members prospered, while those that were selfish and vindictive faded away. Morality developed as a means to test the trustworthiness of members within a group (“Hmmm, it seems Morthgar has not been attending the cleansing ritual lately, I wonder if he can be trusted with my children?”). This is the basis of morality; and the codification of morality into general rules, and assignation of authority to a deity (by which the rules became linked to eternity, rather than any specific generation) evolved into religion. To quote Shermer, “Religion is a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to create and promote myths, to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among the members of the community.”

So, why be moral?

Simply, because I am a part of a larger society, and it is in my interest (and the larger interest of society as a whole) that I should be seen as cooperative and trustworthy; also, I know that I will occasionally need help and would want someone to offer aid at that time; and experience tells me that there are others out there right now how could use my help, which I should freely offer when I can.

Christians call this the Golden Rule, but it was around long before Jesus:
  • Confucius, The Doctrine of the Mean, 13 (c. 500 B.C.), “What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others.”
  • Isocrates (c. 375 B.C.), “Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others.”
  • Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers (c. 150 B.C), “The question was once put to Aristotle how we ought to behave to our friends, and his answer was, ‘As we should wish them to behave to us.’”
  • The Mahabharata (c. 150 B.C.), “This is the sum of all true righteousness: deal with others as thou wouldst thyself be dealt by. Do nothing to thy neighbor which thou wouldst not have him to to thee hereafter.”
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top