(September 21, 2016 at 11:21 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Going back and reading through all these responses, I think IF there is to be any motivation for continuing to believe, I do think Thena got it right that it would be hope. It definitely is not and should NOT be any sort of sole reason for anyone to believe anything... there should still be real points to back up and support any belief. But I can see hope as being a complimentary force that keeps a person believing.
I have a few reasons why I believe what I do and I think I have touched on them a couple of times here before.
For starters, I really do think it is logical to believe there is some sort of supernatural force out there that started all this. Things in the natural world all have a beginning... they all came from/formed from somewhere/something. Nothing in the natural world just magically forms itself from nothing at all, neither can we say it has always existed. Both of those are contrary to the laws of nature as we know them. This supports my idea that whatever it was that has always existed and caused other thing to exist, is of a supernatural force, aka - above nature as we know it. This isn't something I choose to believe. It really does make more sense to me that way.
Of course, none of this is to say that such supernatural force was the Christian God. That specific belief of mine comes from other points. History be one of them. Like the crazy fast spread of early Christianity before we had good transportation, telephones, etc. The lives of the saints serve as witness to me as well, and all the extraordinary things surrounding them and what they did and what happened to them. The many accounts of miracles, particularly the one in Fatima which I find pretty convincing. The fact that we all seem to have some sort of basic, objective, universal moral code about what is good and what is bad.
And to seal the deal (and I have talked about this before), the miracle I experienced with my own senses 10 years ago. Definitely a supernatural occurrence, and one that very much and specifically pointed towards Christianity.
Of course, none of this is any sort of concrete evidence that can be proven in a lab or mathematically, etc. That's where the hope comes in. I can't prove to you concretely or to myself that any of this is true. I can only add up reasons which to me, make it a good possibility that it is all true, and believe and hope that it really is. In the same way, I can't show concrete proof and evidence to anyone that my husband loves me, and there are plenty of people out there who don't believe in that type of life long marital love between 2 people. But I have many things that point to him loving me as being a real possibility, and so I believe and I hope that he does.
Likewise, at the end of the day, us religious folks are people of hope.
I hope that helps shed some light.
I prayed that my epilepsy would go away, and God didn't answer. I prayed for the cluster headaches to go away, guess what, God didn't answer. So, for me, there is NO higher power, whatever people might think. Churches, especially Catholic churches found a way of teaching bollocks to lemmings and fleece them out of their money. So, if an con man goes to your door, would you want to see his credentials or not to see if he is real? I would certainly hope so, and so should you when you go to see a priest who tries to con little old ladies out of their last pound note, keeping their believers poor and making the pope rich in the process.
