Nice to be here 
I'm a former Catholic (been a little over two years since I left the faith), I wasn't brought up as a Catholic tho, my mother is more of the liberal Catholic kind and didn't enforce a religious view on me as I grew up. I was very much indifferent towards religion and didn't really have a very positive attitude towards it on my early years. I moved into atheism when I was about 18. A little further down the line I dabbed into LaVeyan Satanism. But after a while I became a theist and embraced Gnostic Christianity but then further study lead me to realise that the Catholic faith as opposed to Gnosticism was true.
I spent nearly a decade as a Catholic, was quite into it, actually, and even contemplated becoming a priest once. I came to identify with the whole traditional catholic "movement" that emerged after the Vatican II debacle as well. Over the years, my bookshelf became full of Catholic tomes I devoured with religious fervour (everything from Church documents, catechisms, theology manuals to works from Aquinas and Augustine and other miscellaneous books).
But over time and nearing the moment of my abandonment of the faith, I came to realise that as impressive and intellectually stimulating as Catholic theology (and Thomism in particular, which is what I came to embrace) was to me, deep down, I didn't really believe in it. It was something of a crutch. I certainly hadn't experienced anything supernatural or had any sort of evidence for these things which would make any of these ideas something more than just words.
As far as the Catholic landscape goes, everywhere I looked there was confusion and disagreement, something which could be attributed to decades of poor catechesis yet I also saw the same within traditional Catholic circles and the confusion goes up to the very hierarchy of the Church. I came to conclude that an institution like this would make sense as a human and fallible institution but not as one divinely founded, guided and protected by God.
To make things short so as to not write an essay, I've come full circle as it were and am now an atheist. While a Catholic, I always held to the idea that methodological naturalism is the right position to take while doing science (something Aquinas didn't quite object to) and I also accepted evolution, so I rejected creationism, ID and any sort of god-of-the-gaps argument when it came to the way nature works. Considering this, embracing metaphysical naturalism seems like the logical and natural (pun intended) thing to do.
Hope to see you all in the other threads
I'm a former Catholic (been a little over two years since I left the faith), I wasn't brought up as a Catholic tho, my mother is more of the liberal Catholic kind and didn't enforce a religious view on me as I grew up. I was very much indifferent towards religion and didn't really have a very positive attitude towards it on my early years. I moved into atheism when I was about 18. A little further down the line I dabbed into LaVeyan Satanism. But after a while I became a theist and embraced Gnostic Christianity but then further study lead me to realise that the Catholic faith as opposed to Gnosticism was true.
I spent nearly a decade as a Catholic, was quite into it, actually, and even contemplated becoming a priest once. I came to identify with the whole traditional catholic "movement" that emerged after the Vatican II debacle as well. Over the years, my bookshelf became full of Catholic tomes I devoured with religious fervour (everything from Church documents, catechisms, theology manuals to works from Aquinas and Augustine and other miscellaneous books).
But over time and nearing the moment of my abandonment of the faith, I came to realise that as impressive and intellectually stimulating as Catholic theology (and Thomism in particular, which is what I came to embrace) was to me, deep down, I didn't really believe in it. It was something of a crutch. I certainly hadn't experienced anything supernatural or had any sort of evidence for these things which would make any of these ideas something more than just words.
As far as the Catholic landscape goes, everywhere I looked there was confusion and disagreement, something which could be attributed to decades of poor catechesis yet I also saw the same within traditional Catholic circles and the confusion goes up to the very hierarchy of the Church. I came to conclude that an institution like this would make sense as a human and fallible institution but not as one divinely founded, guided and protected by God.
To make things short so as to not write an essay, I've come full circle as it were and am now an atheist. While a Catholic, I always held to the idea that methodological naturalism is the right position to take while doing science (something Aquinas didn't quite object to) and I also accepted evolution, so I rejected creationism, ID and any sort of god-of-the-gaps argument when it came to the way nature works. Considering this, embracing metaphysical naturalism seems like the logical and natural (pun intended) thing to do.
Hope to see you all in the other threads
![[Image: graphics-rain-426733.gif]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.picgifs.com%2Fgraphics%2Fr%2Frain%2Fgraphics-rain-426733.gif)
