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Current time: March 29, 2024, 11:47 am

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Greetings!
#1
Greetings!
Nice to be here Cool

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 Big Grin
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#2
RE: Greetings!
Welcome

Get a glass of milk ready.
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#3
RE: Greetings!
That was quite a ride!
Welcome to the smooth road of peace and quiet.
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#4
RE: Greetings!
Hello welcome!
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you

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#5
RE: Greetings!
Welcome aboard.
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
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#6
RE: Greetings!
Hello. All ex-catholics are good catholics.
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#7
RE: Greetings!
Hello Dolorian.

Atheists +1
Catholics -1

Welcome Hi
[Image: graphics-rain-426733.gif]
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#8
RE: Greetings!
Hell
Hello there Smile
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
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#9
RE: Greetings!
Welcome

Hope you stick around!
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great

PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
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#10
RE: Greetings!
Thanks everyone Smile
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