joedad

Would it be too bold of me to ask, "To what end?"

Does your attachment to your church have some specific purpose, or do you give it one? And I mean beyond the pleasure and satisfaction of being able to loyally express that love, not that that in itself isn't okay.

IOW, if you were not a roman catholic, what would make you want to be one, and is that membership a means to some personal end?

Just curious.

joe

faustuz

I too am extremely interested in this subject. I neither want, nor don’t want, to believe. I just don’t. And yet others of seemingly equal, or in some cases (gasp!) superior intellect do believe. Why is this so? I look out at the world through the filter of my experience, my knowledge and, I suppose, my psychology and I see a world I can only interpret as godless. I have trouble comprehending how somebody of reasonable intelligence can look out at the world and see God. Yet I’m perfectly willing to acknowledge that many believers of reasonable intelligence have trouble comprehending how somebody of reasonable intelligence can look out at the world and see no God. This is indeed a strange mystery.

seebs

What's weird to me is that there's "skepticism" traits you can test for, and generally, religious people are "less skeptical". But you find the occasional skeptical theist (I probably qualify. And no, I didn't intend that as a joke, but I see now thhat it's funny), and the occasional very non-skeptical and dogmatic atheist.

So it's more complicated than that.

Maybe a fair bit of it is specific experiences. I've noticed a massive and recurring trend, which is that a fair number of atheists were "driven away".

My guess is there's no *one* reason for which people become believers, or non-believers, or whatever. There's lots of different reasons. So, you have people who believe what they've been told, people who reject what they've been told, philosophers who come to a conclusion mostly rationally, people whose positions are mostly emotional...

What I will say with some certainty, is this: The primary stereotypes are almost certainly not good explanations. In other words, I don't accept the common conservative Christian notice that atheists are "rejecting God out of pride" as a good explanation - in most cases, it's not even *plausible*. Similarly, I don't accept the common atheist claim that religious people are "just brainwashed" or "just believing for comfort".

There may be people about whom those claims are reasonable, but most of us aren't those people.

seebs

I know you weren't asking me, but: I'm not Catholic, I disagree with a lot of Catholic doctrine, and I am very offended by some of the outright bullshit people spew when attacking the Catholic Church.

I have talked to a number of people who have converted; my impression is that, if you think the claims about the Church's track record hold up, then that's a compelling argument.

Amos

The attacks on the RC don't bother me at all but they tell me much about the persons character. Notice the word "character" because Catholicism is a way of life and a tradition by which our entire being is molded. A relationship with God is not the direct aim but the possible benefit that cannot be sought. It is a mystery religion wherein we are the clay and he is the potter.

Read again the agony of Mr. Barker who claimed righteousness at his own expense. Of course he left religion but the fires of hell will always be in his mind. Inserted from a previous post wherein Barker is cited:

He was so pissed off at himself that he is spending the rest of his life preaching against religion as a whole. Is that not absurd?

Amos

You don't have to believe and this certainly is not what this board is about. There are no shallow evangelists here and if they come you people will soon run them off like beaten up dogs.

The reason that we can see God is because we have the potential to become the continuity of God and all we need is a change of heart to transform our mind, soul and body to do achieve this. This concept is universal around the world because it is native to man as an archetypal human experience. In other animals it is called metamorphosis.

The reason why soo many people are angry about their religion is because they have been misled and/or this natural process has been initiated from carnal desire to end up in a disaster because it affects the human mind. America is full of such tragedies and that how your mystery is answered.

joedad

Amos,

You're misrepresenting Barker imho.

Would you like to answer the same question I put to Gemma?

As a person raised catholic, I feel like I simply outgrew catholicism. The end product of the catholicism I was taught seems to have been my personal salvation. Agree? That's nothing in retrospect, and a bit selfish, even using the same catholic standards I was taught.

To my knowledge there are no two proper words in the English language to describe people who believe in magic and who don't believe in magic respectively, such as the words theist and atheist describe believers and non-believers when it comes to gods. I assume you don't believe in magic. Describe yourself in this regard. Catholicism and god-belief have that same quality for me. They are like magic once was.

joe

Perchance

Hello Amos,

Does that mean that you think anyone who criticizes the church (even for historical acts like the conquistadors' brutality in South America, and the priests who aided it) is wrong? That's kind of scary, if you think the Church is right merely because it's the Church.

In my opinion, of course.

-Perchance.

Amos

It is difficult for me to answer that because I was not there and I just do not trust your interpretation of it.

I never defend the clergy or the Catholics themselves but I tend to argue for the truth they represent and the message they try to convey. Yes, some might fail here but that would depend on the circumstances and the changes that might occur afterwards.

Amos

There are millions of Barkers around and if the truth was known they are all like that. Maybe Barker was more honest about his self deception than the rest.

If personal salvation was the end of Catholicism it was not expressed that way by the Church. In my opinion the word salvation should never be part of our vocabulary. You have outgrown it and this is a normal sequence of events. The faith you have received must find understanding outside the Church. Like it cannot be raining and not raining at once? In my opinion atheist recongnize that which we call God and call it not-God. They are impoverished believers because the fact remains that we, each one of us, has the potential to become God. So to deny God is to deny our own self. So now you can see why atheist is really an impossible position.