Why Should I Become Catholic?

[Call_Me_V]

But I’m not even talking about all of the unlikely things that Catholic teaching entails. Right now I’m looking purely at miracles. So, to answer your original point, I do accept eyewitness testimony as evidence for most things. But when it comes to extraordinary claims, like miracles or UFO sightings, the burden of proof become much higher. Eyewitness testimony is still evidence, it is just not good enough evidence to meet the new, higher, burden of proof.

Finally, you say that spirituality does not lend itself to scientific observation. The first thing that I’ll say about this is that I think I know where you’re going with this. Many have suggested that I try prayer, and experiencing God in a personal way, rather than emprical verification. There are a few problems with this.

First of all, I’ve tried that. For the years that I was a believing Catholic, I prayed fairly often for someone my age. I never once felt the presence of God, or the feeling of the Holy Spirit washing over me. Not even a spark or a flicker of some kind of higher power. Most of the time I had to ignore the feeling that I was just talking to myself. So I’ve tried to meet God simply through prayer, and I got nowhere. The closest I came was when I got really choked up during a retreat. I am forced to turn to empirical methods of verification because experiencing God on a personal level pretty much failed.

Secondly, there’s no reason to believe that religious experiences (even vivid ones), are authentic. Muslims have had visions which have confirmed their faith in Islam, Catholics have visions of Mary, Protestants have had visions of Jesus in which Jesus confirms the truth of Protestantism, and my Buddhist friend can, through meditation, induce a state in which he has an out of body experience. He’s described himself as feeling like his soul is floating away from his own body, and joining in communion with some kind of higher power. This has, not surprisingly, only confirmed his faith in Buddhism. And this is only a small part of the crazy things he claims to have seen while deep in meditation. I might think he was lying, if not for the fact that I happen to know he has more integrity in his pinky then most people have in their entire body. In summary, religious experiences always seem to confirm the beliefs of the person having them. It seems unlikely that all of these contradictory messages are all actually from God. This seems to me to make it more likely that these are hallucinations or self-deception of some kind rather than actual visions from a higher power. Even if there are genuine religious experiences, how am I supposed to know the difference?

1. I realize this argument can be applied to ALL religions. But that is the point: the first question you need to ask is not “Why should I be Catholic?” but “How is faith different than reason?” You seem to have already decided that in order for something to exist it must first offer you reasonable evidence that it does, in fact, exist. Or to put it another way, you seem to subscribe to the secular, materialistic view that all things in existence must be knowable and prove-able by the human intellect. The irony is that there is no reasonable proof for such a view: it is a unprovable belief.

I’ve never claimed that all things in existence must be knowable and provable. Obviously, something can exist independently of our ability to observe it. Germs existed long before we discovered them. My claim is not that if someone can’t provide good evidence for something, than it isn’t true, my claim is that we should not believe something until it has been shown through evidence. So, I’m not saying that Jesus didn’t perform miracles because no one can prove he did, I’m saying that we shouldn’t believe Jesus performed miracles until someone provides good evidence that he did.

You say this is an unprovable claim. First of all, I don’t demand "proof’, as I said above. More importantly, I don’t think that someone can provide evidence for the fact that we should base our beliefs on evidence. I just think that, intuitively, it makes sense. Reason and evidence based research allowed us to replace the demon theory of disease with the germ theory of disease. It allowed us to replace the “God is angry” theory of lightning with the modern theory(which, now that I think about it, I don’t know what that is). I think that using reason and evidence has produced fantastic results, and reason and evidenced based theories have consistently replaced non evidence based theories. Many Christians reject this, from loonies like Pat Robertson, who blamed the Haiti earthquake on God’s judgment, to serious, respected Christian philosophers, like Alvin Plantinga, who thinks that we should go back to believing that demons cause disease and natural disasters. Most of the world, I think, agree that reason and science has trumped supernatural explanations pretty consistently. So, the reason I think that we should base our beliefs on reason and evidence is due to A) It seems intuitive to me that it will allow for the best results, and B) It has a pretty good track record. As you pointed out, however, I certainly can’t prove that it is the best way to go, but it’ll do for now. Do you have an alternative method that you’d prefer I try?

 

[Call_Me_V]

What does a “good reason” look like? You say you liked your Catholic faith, and I’m not inclined to doubt you, but, if you have taken the moniker of “V” from “V for Vendetta,” I have no doubt that you also enjoy your role as intelligent, skeptical, doubter as well.

First off, I’d like to establish that I don’t think that the atheists are the “intelligent ones”, or anything stupid like that.
Secondly, my username has more to do with my dislike of the government than anything else.
Thirdly, you are correct that I am not ashamed of my beliefs, mainly because I think that they are true. I did enjoy the Catholic faith, and wish I could come back to it (for all of its benefits, atheism is sorely lacking in the afterlife category, among other things). If I learned that atheism were untrue, I would become very ashamed of having been an atheist, but that’s a key “if”.

The criteria of “good reason” is a subjective criteria. If I somehow showed a skeptic a home video of Christ walking on water, the skeptic would find reasons to doubt it. If I told him Christ appeared to me in a dream, we would find reasons to doubt it. Even if Christ turned water into wine right in front of his face, he would find reasons to doubt it.

Well, I would certainly be skeptical of the first two, for what I think are quite rational reasons. For videos, you have to understand that videos are easily faked. Check this out. Surely you don’t believe that Criss Angel actually has supernatural powers as a result of this video, do you? If you don’t you’re a big, bad, skeptic .
I don’t think that I would take my own dreams seriously. Do you really believe that dreams are an accurate method of communication between God and humans? Even if God did communicate with me in a dream, I don’t think that I could even distinguish it from all the other crazy stuff that pops into my dreams.
For the third one, however, I would be much more lenient, assuming the circumstances were correct. I would have to ensure, for myself, that it actually was water, and Christ would have to turn it into wine in front of my eyes, without pulling anything sneaky. If he asked me to stay back, and threw a sheet over the tub of water, and then turned it into wine, I would no more impressed than I would with a common stage magician. Under the right circumstances, however, if I was actually witnessing the event, I certainly would believe in a miracle. I would just have to ensure, for myself, that the person wasn’t pulling any funny tricks. But witnessing a miracle firsthand is certainly at the top of my “evidence wishlist”.

 

[Call_Me_V]

but just wanted to drop by before I head to bed…and tell you that you were particularly in my prayers at the Mass of the Lords Supper this evening …and will be particularly in my prayers tomorrow at the Good Friday Liturgy

Thank you

V
…probably the only “V” out there being prayed for at the moment

IMO, the Church has some pretty compelling evidence, starting with the witness of the early Christians. Obviously you question their motives, but I have to wonder what they had to gain by making everything up. Certainly not fame, money, or chicks.

Well, I actually don’t think that they were making everything up. I don’t find it hard to believe that that some of them really did believe in the Resurrection. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.
As to your second point, that they had nothing to gain, I would have to disagree. First off, the book of Acts claims that the Christian community turned all of their money over to the Apostles. I’m not accusing them of misusing those funds, but I’m just saying, they likely had the opportunity to, if they were so inclined.
And that’s beside all of the other benefits of being a cult leader. You get respect, fame, power, in many cases sex. Cult leaders wield enormous power over their followers, and that kind of power can be very tempting. There are plenty of advantages to running a cult. I don’t think that they were in it for the earthly benefits, but it is, at least, a possibility.

The second is this. In my moments of doubt (and I still have them), I’ll think that I’m only fooling myself and that I just became Catholic because it was convenient, and that how could I possibly know it’s the ONE true religion when I don’t a PhD in world religions and didn’t disprove all of the others first. Then this analogy came to me. I love my wife. I know that to be a fact in the very core of my being. Now, did I go out and date every other woman on the face of the planet before deciding that my wife was the ONE person I wanted to spend my life with? Well, thanks be to God, I did not. So, either I have to have faith that the love I feel for my wife is true, or that I’m just fooling myself and I could love another woman as much or more but thanks to the randomness of the universe I met my wife first. I’m sure that logic isn’t philosophically sound, but it works for me.

Let’s run with that analogy. When it comes to picking a spouse, we all have some kind of criteria, right? (Even if it’s mostly unconscious). You didn’t date every woman in the world first, but I would bet you also didn’t pick your wife at random either. You probably had quite a few criteria, I think we all do. So the question I have to look at is, what is good criteria for picking a religion? Well when someone offers me a criteria, I can have one of 3 responses.
Response A: That’s a terrible criteria, it doesn’t tell me what I need to know. In your analogy, I think that a terrible criteria would be using whether a woman’s belly button goes in or out to make your decision. I think that we would all simply reject this as a terrible criteria, because it has nothing to do with what you’re looking for in a spouse. In a religious context, an example of a terrible criteria would be the criteria that Muslims give, for example. They say we should believe the Quran because its words are so beautiful. I would reject this criteria because it just doesn’t tell me any information that would actually help narrow down my search; it’s a terrible criteria.
Response B: That’s a good criteria, but it doesn’t help much. Choosing a religion that has miracles attributed to it would be a good criteria, due to the fact that it might illustrate that the religion actually has the divine authority that it claims, but unfortunately it doesn’t help much because virtually every religion has miracles attributed to it. So miracles are a good criteria, but they don’t help much.
Response C: That’s a really good criteria. In your analogy, this would likely include things like, is she kind, is she supportive, would she be a good mother? In the context of choosing a religion, this would include… I don’t know. That’s part of my problem. I simply don’t know what a good criteria would be. All of the criteria that I’ve encountered so far have been in the first two categories. Finding a really good criteria that would help narrow down the possible religions is one of my key goals.

Good luck on your journey. I’ll keep you in my prayers as well.
Marcus

Thank you

 

[Call_Me_V]

I’m not quibbling entirely with your facts, only with your logic.

1. You cite the example of Peter as a proof for why Christians dying for what they believed is not evidence of the truth of what they believed. Even if this is true, you are guilty of the fallacy of composition. Peter was not the only martyr of those who would have witnessed the Acts of Christ and the Apostles. The circumstance you allege - he wasn’t given the chance to recant his faith to spare his life - may not have held true across all the other cases.

Oh, certainly. I was just giving one example.

1. Your insight into Nero’s logic is based off of two things: a) facts and b) your own thoughts.
   a) facts: Fire in Rome, angry Romans, anti-Christian sentiment in Rome, Christians blamed for fire, crucifixion of Peter.
   b) your own thoughts: “Nero didn’t care whether or not Peter truly believed or not,” “he would not have given Peter the option to reject Christ and live,” “the **only reason **he wanted to kill…,” “He didn’t care what Peter believed.”
   I quibble with the assertion that it made no sense that Nero cared. You have no idea what Nero thought or what he cared about. You are writing a narrative to suit your own disposition. You have no primary source from Nero and neither do I. I don’t need to prove anything to you or offer any evidence to say that he was formally offered the chance to recant his faith because you don’t have any proof that he wasn’t.
   Your argument is that it doesn’t make any sense. I say it makes all the sense in the world (but that doesn’t make either of us objectively correct). What better way to humiliate and destroy a new cult then to have its so called leader come forth and publicly proclaim that it was all a sham.
   Furthermore, you make the assumption that Peter - if he was lying - wouldn’t have begged desperately to recant if he thought it would save his life. If it was a scam, it only makes sense that he would have said anything to weasel his way out of a death sentence (regardless of whether it would have worked). I would think such a scene would have merited historical record, but again, it’s all speculation. None of it is fact.
   I will say, however, after the crucifixion of Peter and the slaughter of Christians in Rome, any remaining witness to the life of Christ and any alleged miracles would have been very reckless to continue preaching this message. The writing was on the wall: being a Christian is an offense punishable by death. That may not be an official statement of “recant or you will die” it is definitely implied. Peter himself was very aware of the politics of his affiliation. As I’m sure you know, he denied Christ three times for fear that association with Christ would lead to unpleasant results for him. It certainly seems like he knew preaching the Gospel might lead to death.

All right, allow me to restate my case, albeit in a slightly weaker form.
There is no strong evidence to suggest that any first generation Christians were given the choice between recanting their faith or dying. The general story, that all of the apostles besides John were martyred, is unevidenced. Picking a random apostle, say, Thomas, there is no good reason to believe that he was killed for his beliefs. He could have been, but we shouldn’t believe that he was, and we certainly shouldn’t use it in an argument, unless we have good evidence. I think that the story commonly portrayed, that the Christians were beset by enemies from pretty much the moment of Pentecost, that the Romans and the Jews were working together to destroy them, that many of them were given the choice, recant or die, is pretty much unevidenced, and I think that there is some evidence against parts of it.

I think that this point was made well by Dr. Bart Ehrman, in a debate against Dr. William Craig, when he said,

“And an earlier point that Bill made was that the disciples were all willing to die for their faith. I didn’t hear one piece of evidence for that. I hear that claim a lot, but having read every Christian source from the first five hundred years of Christianity, I’d like him to tell us what the piece of evidence is that the disciples died for their belief in the resurrection.”

I’d actually love to start a whole new thread on this, but i’m going to wait until this one winds down first. That, was the point I was trying to make. People can’t use the martyrdom of the Apostles in an argument unless they provide evidence that they were, in fact, martyred, that is what I was trying to say. I apologize for allowing my speculation to enter in to my portrayal of the events.

 

[Call_Me_V]

The case is before you, as I pointed out much earlier. The problem is not that reasons do not exist but that they are insufficient for your satisfaction. I stated that a person can be invincibly unconvinced, that reason is subject to the will, and that evidence is subject to a level of proof.

As a contemporary example of the way in which the will can manipulate reason and construct an invincible reality of its own, consider that the holocaust is denied by some, an event of less than 75 years ago. Man’s achievement of the moon is denied by some. The Lord is well aware such invincibility is possible for the human mind and that is precisely why he responds as he does - for those disposed to demand proof, no proof is enough.

I could go into why the evidence for the holocaust is 1000 times stronger than the evidence for Christianity, but I don’t think that you really care. You claim that the case is there, and I’m simply not accepting it. Certainly, many have made their case, but I believe that I have made a rebuttal to each and every one, showing why I think that each case is flawed, and a mountain of flawed arguments is no better than no arguments at all. Clearly, you think that the case is still solid despite my rebuttals. So, don’t be shy. Tell me which of my rebuttals you disagree with. Tell me specifically where my logic is flawed so that you can show how ignorant I am. Don’t be vague, make your case.
If backing up your case with logic does not appeal to you, you could call me ignorant again. It’s just that I can’t help but feel that that would fall into the unproductive category . But to each his own.

 

[Call_Me_V]

Dangit, I think some of them might have gotten posted out of order. Try to follow it as best you can.

 

[Call_Me_V]

When it comes to Aquinas’ five proofs, I’d wonder, therefore, what problems you find with the first two; that of motion (and by motion, St. Thomas Aquinas does not mean local motion; he means the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality) and of causation. The last three I care little for in comparison to these.

There’s a ban on discussing the existence of God, which is why I said at the beginning of the thread that I didn’t want to discuss it, and I think I might actually get banned for answering this. And before you remind me, I know that I’m the one who brought it up, I was talking more about Thomas Aquinas than the proofs, specifically. If the ban is lifted, I have every intention of starting an “existence of God” thread. At that time, I could PM you if you’d like?

 

[Call_Me_V]

Sorry, I think that I missed your post during my last batch of responses.

I’m just going by what the scientific community has gathered thus far. The universe has a singular beginning. I’m not saying there are not several “very powerful beings” floating around. For instance, as a Christian I believe Satan is real and powerful. I discount polytheism on the grounds that there is only one God who created the universe and I can use science to demonstrate that this is a reasonable proposition.

I don’t know why I’m still defending polytheism, but I still don’t think that there’s anything inconsistent between polytheism and a singular beginning to the universe, for a few reasons. I’ll just give one reason here, which is that many polytheistic religions have a (singular) creator God, but also include other Gods. In Egyptian mythology, I believe (I’m working from memory) Ra was considered the creator God, but that didn’t stop there from being other Gods in the pantheon. So even if you’re correct that there could only be one creator God, that wouldn’t discount polytheistic religions, because many of them don’t claim otherwise. I don’t think that there’s any reason to automatically discount polytheistic religions (except, of course, for the reasons that I reject all forms of theism, but I don’t think that you accept those reasons )

I believe that others have done things that appear to be miracles, but that alone is not enough to convince me.

Then we’re in perfect agreement. The reason I brought up Sai Baba was not because I believe in him, but it was simply to show that there are miracles that most Catholics don’t believe in, despite mountains of eyewitness testimony, so they can’t expect me to believe in the miracles of Jesus on far less evidence.

 

[robdaddyf]

Thousands? Even the New Testament puts it at a little over 500 if I remember correctly. I could be wrong though.

What makes you think that they all went to their deaths? I’ve done a bit of research into the martyrdom accounts of Jesus’ earliest followers, and they seem to be exaggerated. I don’t think that the evidence for their martyrdom is as impressive as most Christians make it sound. I recall reading from a Protestant researcher, (who can hardly be called biased against Christianity) that there were no less than 13 different, contradictory accounts of the Apostle Matthew’s martyrdom. Even if we give the stories the benefit of the doubt, and assume that one of them was true, that still means that the early church managed to invent 12 completely false martyrdom stories.

I would suggest caution when reading Protestant accounts, first of all, regarding Martyrs…some information could be good…some not so good as many Protestants are more concerned with arguing against the Catholic Church than recognizing our “common ancestry of faith” (so to speak) I know because I was one of them! ;o)

I think the fact remains that there is a great deal of evidence supporting the martyrdoms of many of the Apostles…not to mention thousands of other “non-apostles.” Either they were all nuts or there is something to this Christianity business!

God bless you for your earnest pursuit of truth and your thoughtful responses. It is a joy to read your posts as they lack the very common angst, anger, frustration and guile I’m used to! Refreshing and appreciated! I pray your way leads to joy!

 

[Call_Me_V]

I would suggest caution when reading Protestant accounts, first of all, regarding Martyrs…some information could be good…some not so good as many Protestants are more concerned with arguing against the Catholic Church than recognizing our “common ancestry of faith” (so to speak) I know because I was one of them! ;o)

Well, yes, that’s why I also included the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia as a source as well when I said, "Even the Catholic New Advent Encyclopedia acknowledges, “There is a disagreement as to the place of St. Matthew’s martyrdom and the kind of torture inflicted on him, therefore it is not known whether he was burned, stoned, or beheaded.”. I would also like to point out that many Protestants would warn me about trusting Catholics!

I think the fact remains that there is a great deal of evidence supporting the martyrdoms of many of the Apostles…not to mention thousands of other “non-apostles.” Either they were all nuts or there is something to this Christianity business!

I would have to respectfully disagree. I think that most of the serious persecution that most people think of didn’t occur until the second century, after what I would call the “first-generation” Christians were already gone. I think that if we look at actual historical evidence from the period, there is very little persecution of the first century church, and what persecution did occur was usually quite temporary and localized. My position is actually quite a bit more nuanced than this, but going into full detail would turn this into a 2500 word essay , which is why I plan to start a new thread on the martyrdoms once this thread has wrapped up.

God bless you for your earnest pursuit of truth and your thoughtful responses. It is a joy to read your posts as they lack the very common angst, anger, frustration and guile I’m used to! Refreshing and appreciated! I pray your way leads to joy!

Awww, stop it, you’re making me blush
I came to this website because it seemed to have such a serious and respectful environment, and I have no intention of ruining that.

Happy Easter to you and your loved ones, and everyone else who’s reading this thread

V

 

[CatholicFireman]

Happy Easter to you too, V. I pray and patiently wait for your reversion which I am confident will happen. It may take a while…maybe even years, but it will happen. Pax†

 

[Ignatius]

What reasons are there that an earnest seeker of truth should convert to Catholicism?

This is pretty much to the point: catholic.com/new/why_be_catholic.asp

 

[Call_Me_V]

Happy Easter to you too, V. I pray and patiently wait for your reversion which I am confident will happen. It may take a while…maybe even years, but it will happen. Pax†

Thank you

This is pretty much to the point: catholic.com/new/why_be_catholic.asp

Hmm, from the “tour de force”, as they call it, it doesn’t look like there’s anything in there I haven’t read before. Is there a particular argument in there that you find convincing?

 

[jmcrae]

If my uncle said to someone, “I was educated at (fill-in-the-blank) seminary in the United States”, most people would take his word for it. It’s not an unusual claim. If necessary, my uncle could produce his degree certificate, or show pictures of himself at the college, but why would he need to? Even without knowing anything about him or his trustworthiness, most people would simply take him at his word.

Imagine, however, if he were to say, “I was educated at (fill-in-the-blank) seminary on Mars” Now how many people would believe him? Virtually no one. Even though in both cases the evidence is the same (his word), most would agree that it is rational to believe his original claim, but this new claim about being educated on Mars should be rejected. In fact, even if he produced more evidence for his claim that he was educated on Mars, we would still not believe him. If he showed us his degree certificate, we would assume it was faked. If he showed us picture of himself with his Martian classmates, we would assume they were photoshopped, or that some of his friends had dressed up in costume. Pretty much the only way we would believe him was if he actually took us to Mars and we saw the seminary with our own eyes.

So we have two scenarios here.
Scenario 1: My uncle claims that he was educated in the United States. We have only his word.
Scenario 2: My uncle claims to have been educated on Mars. We have his word, his degree certificate, and pictures of him with Martians.
I think that most would agree that we should believe him in scenario 1, but we should be skeptical in scenario 2, even though in scenario 2 we have more evidence than we did in scenario 1. Why? Because most people accept that the more unlikely the claim, the more evidence we would require. Does anyone disagree? Does anyone think that we should treat all claims with equal skepticism, or lack thereof, regardless of the nature of the claim? If not, then I think you agree with the “rallying cry” of the new atheism, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

There’s a children’s book you need to read, called The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The reason I mention it is that there are two considerations you are missing here, which are actually the subject of that book. (It’s also a very entertaining story, no matter how old you happen to be.)

1. Is your Uncle generally known to be a truthful person?
2. Does your Uncle gain any appreciable benefit, by lying about where he went to school?

If “Yes” to the first, and “No” to the second, you actually don’t have any reason to doubt his word, regardless of whether his claims seem “possible,” to you.

It is, in fact, incorrect that there are situations where “we should be skeptical,” unless we have a serious reason to believe that the person is likely to be lying to us - even if what they are telling us seems to us to be extremely unlikely.

 

[Call_Me_V]

There’s a children’s book you need to read, called The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The reason I mention it is that there are two considerations you are missing here, which are actually the subject of that book. (It’s also a very entertaining story, no matter how old you happen to be.)

1. Is your Uncle generally known to be a truthful person?
2. Does your Uncle gain any appreciable benefit, by lying about where he went to school?

If “Yes” to the first, and “No” to the second, you actually don’t have any reason to doubt his word, regardless of whether his claims seem “possible,” to you.

It is, in fact, incorrect that there are situations where “we should be skeptical,” unless we have a serious reason to believe that the person is likely to be lying to us - even if what they are telling us seems to us to be extremely unlikely.

I’ve read it.
Are you saying that, all else being equal (the trustworthiness of the person, their potential to gain from the lie, etc.), all else being equal, the claim, “I raise live horses” should be treated with the exact same level of skepticism as the claim “I raise live unicorns”? You would respond exactly the same in both cases, all else being equal?

 

[Marlowann]

There’s a ban on discussing the existence of God, which is why I said at the beginning of the thread that I didn’t want to discuss it, and I think I might actually get banned for answering this. And before you remind me, I know that I’m the one who brought it up, I was talking more about Thomas Aquinas than the proofs, specifically. If the ban is lifted, I have every intention of starting an “existence of God” thread. At that time, I could PM you if you’d like?

Mmmmmm, I was unaware of such a ban. It’s up to you if you’d like to PM me.