What makes you certain that you've chosen the correct faith?

[wynn]

Epistemological agnostics these days generally are weak ontological atheists. They don't actually believe in any God, even if they don't totally deny the possibility. (I fit there, in some of my moods.)

I think this is an important point.

A person's stance on a particular topic varies, according to time, place, circumstance, mood whatever other factor there may be.

The OP question, however, presumes that a person's stance will be stable, static. And normally, we would tend to presume it is - and yet real life experience shows otherwise.

 

[universaldistress]

I think this is an important point.

A person's stance on a particular topic varies, according to time, place, circumstance, mood whatever other factor there may be.

The OP question, however, presumes that a person's stance will be stable, static. And normally, we would tend to presume it is - and yet real life experience shows otherwise.

Yes. theist stances tend to shift depending on the debate they are embroiled in?

I always aim to present my stance consistently as my fundamentals (attitudes to god etc.) are not shifting, more becoming more detailed.

I do recognise that this could change/evolve with new knowledge but moments of epiquany in this require a massive shift?

I feel my stance is quite overreaching. When did your stance last change towards god? (meaningfully significantly)

 

[Adstar]

But one can love their neighbor and not believe in the supernatural. Why should God care what you believe as long as you're doing the right thing?

No body does the right thing all the time.

If God is to be Just and seen to be Just by the Heavenly Host. He MUST do Justice.

God cannot allow anything imperfect to exist in eternity. So God has a Just way to Redeem His creation. A creation whose nature has been contaminated by imperfection. That Way is by the acceptance of the Atonement of the Messiah Jesus.

It is Justice to have Mercy on the repentant. Those who reject the Messiah Jesus, who refuse to repent, in effect, leave God without the option of having justified mercy upon them.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

[universaldistress]

No body does the right thing all the time.

If God is to be Just and seen to be Just by the Heavenly Host. He MUST do Justice.

God cannot allow anything imperfect to exist in eternity. So God has a Just way to Redeem His creation. A creation whose nature has been contaminated by imperfection. That Way is by the acceptance of the Atonement of the Messiah Jesus.

It is Justice to have Mercy on the repentant. Those who reject the Messiah Jesus, who refuse to repent, in effect, leave God without the option of having justified mercy upon them.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

Doing the right thing does not require one to be 'god fearing'.

All praise the 'Science'.

 

[Adstar]

Doing the right thing does not require one to be 'god fearing'.

All praise the 'Science'.

I never said it did.

What i said was, No one does the right thing all the time. Even when they are absolutely petrified of God, and some are.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days
PS i do not fear God. I love Him.

 

[universaldistress]

I never said it did.

So how do I digest this statement?

Those who reject the Messiah Jesus, who refuse to repent, in effect, leave God without the option of having justified mercy upon them.

If this isn't meant to instill fear then what is?

I don't want to repent to a god that there is no evidence to support the existence of. where does that leave me in god's eyes? I do not fear god so he won't have justified mercy on me? No mercy means something bad???

 

[Search & Destroy]

Why doesn't anyone gripe with the Buddhists here? I posted hankering for just that.

So to answer the OP - I adhere to this set of beliefs because it is the one religion that nobody has demerited.

edit:

Maybe it is just too non-religious. I read once something like this:

A man who tries to find God, is like a man shot by an arrow, questioning where the arrow came from and what material it is, before letting anyone pull it out.

 

[Mind Over Matter]

The relevant issue is the kind of consequence for choosing the "wrong religion" vs. the "right one".

Are the consequence infinite, irrepairable? Does one have to "get it right in this one lifetime or burn in hell forever"?
- If these are the feared consequences,

Here's a better and more accurate way to think about it.

All goodness is in God. God is Love and all that is holy, valuable and true is of Him and leads to Him. Therefore, whenever people choose what is loving, good and pure in this life, they are choosing to do God's will and are expressing reverence for Him. Whenever people choose what is unloving, though, they are choosing to live apart from God, for He is Love and rejecting the loving course is rejecting love, and so is also rejecting God, the source of all the good.

Truth is consistent and does not contradict itself. But people don't always know what is true and good. When they make a mistake while honestly trying to find the truth, God will not judge them for that. But when people deliberately blind themselves to the truth, because they are attached to harmful lifestyles or worldly things, and prefer bad lifestyles and short-term pleasures to love, then these unloving preferences and choices hurt their souls (and other people) badly.

Our own negative choices hurt us badly, in our souls. Our unloving choices cause us to become less loving, more distant from Love, from God. If we prefer something in this life above love, and above what is true and good, then that thing separates us from love both in this life and the next. If we prefer something to God, then that thing becomes our god.

In this life, we experience the ability to change, for we are surrounded by time. We can change from one state of being to another. When we die, we enter eternity, though. Whatever we have made of ourselves in this life is what we then are, permanently. If we died while preferring something above God, then that thing separated us from Him in this life and continues to permanently. So yes, we damn ourselves to eternal separation from God. And because all love and goodness and happiness are found in God (not in worldly things, negative choices or selfishness), we are eternally miserable when we are separated from Him forever by whatever it is that we valued more highly than Him.

When we value something above God, Who is Love, then we value something in life above loving actions as well and above goodness and what is right. Therefore that thing becomes a major obstacle to love and to God. It becomes something like a boulder in the middle of a stream that blocks the water from flowing. It stops us from being united with God, for as long as we prefer something else above what is good, true, loving and valuable, we are destroying ourselves. We are preferring what is bad for us and choosing what is bad for us, destroying our own futures.

And because when we die, we enter eternity, the damage we do to our souls here in time can last for eternity if we don't change things now.

It says in 1 Peter chapter 1 that Christ died to save us from our own "futile conduct." He died to save us from giving ourselves to what is worthless and what is apart from Him, to save us from choosing Hell, and to help us to love Him most, instead. And when we love Him most, then we become united with Him . . . we act in more loving ways, increasingly, in life, and do more and more good.

God won't judge you for making an honest mistake about what religion is true. If you prefer your current lifestyle above truth, though, and above what is right, and are unwilling to surrender what you have now and put Love before everything, then things are serious barriers between you and God. So pray that He will help you to clear those barriers out of your life. Trust Him with all yourself and be ready to change anything in your way of living that might be a barrier between yourself and Him, should you find out that it is not right.

Pray to know what is right and true. But don't be afraid. If you seek Him with a sincere heart, and with willingness to change your life if you find Him, then you already have Him. For He said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." He also said that He is the end of the journey. When someone is baptized and enters the Catholic Church, in a sense, that is an end to a journey, though it is the beginning of another. Yet He is also the Way to the Catholic Church, in which the fullness of truth and goodness resides, so when you seek what is good and true, you are seeking the Catholic Church, you are seeking God, and you already are walking along "The Way." For seeking Truth and valuing it most, while trying to discern it, shows a love for truth and for God. If you are seeking it, you are walking the Way. Those that aren't seeking it, or who seek it while being unwilling to conform to it if it contradicts their current mindset, ideology or lifestyle, are not loving Truth most and they risk eternal destruction. But those who are seeking it or have found it and are living it, these are united with "The Way, the Truth and the Life," and in Him they will find their safety.

Anyone who dies a Hindu or a Buddhist or Muslim, who has put truth first and sought it to the best of their ability, and has not preferred anything above truth and love and good, will have eternal life. But anyone who does not put truth and good first will be separate from God forever when they enter eternity, for they have separated themselves from God in this life, and all truth and goodness are in Him, so they separate themselves from these also, and so also from happiness. They did this by choosing to live for what is not good and loving, and putting that above Love, they separated themselves from loving life and choices, and from all that makes life worthwhile and really valuable.

 

[quinnsong]

The better I reason the better I solve problems and the better I choose the correct actions I should take for myself and w/ others. It works for me so ergo it is right for me.

It is nice to wonder about the spiritual (for me abstractly) but at most it is secondary to the material and does nothing but to edify me, being spiritual or a believer does nothing to change the world around me in a physical way.

 

[gmilam]

No body does the right thing all the time.

If God is to be Just and seen to be Just by the Heavenly Host. He MUST do Justice.

God cannot allow anything imperfect to exist in eternity. So God has a Just way to Redeem His creation. A creation whose nature has been contaminated by imperfection. That Way is by the acceptance of the Atonement of the Messiah Jesus.

It is Justice to have Mercy on the repentant. Those who reject the Messiah Jesus, who refuse to repent, in effect, leave God without the option of having justified mercy upon them.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

That's a non-sequitor. Just because I find tales of talking snakes and dead men rising from graves ludicrous does not mean I don't regret when I've done wrong and try to learn from my mistakes.

 

[Search & Destroy]

Mind Over Matter, good coherent post. Do you believe God is in one's mind?

 

[wynn]

Why doesn't anyone gripe with the Buddhists here? I posted hankering for just that.

Generally, Buddhists are not suitable for fights.
They're too nice.

 

[wynn]

Here's a better and more accurate way to think about it.
...

On the authority of what are you saying this?
How can we know we can trust you?

 

[Wisdom_Seeker]

Why doesn't anyone gripe with the Buddhists here? I posted hankering for just that.

Ok I'll gripe:

If you follow the teachings of Gautam Buddha, you cannot be a Buddhist; for Buddha was teaching his disciples the ways on how can they realize Buddhahood themselves.

When Buddha died, his disciples were divided into 32 different schools that differed from another on their interpretation of the original teachings.
Also, Buddha did say different things to different disciples; and in the end, you cannot make an organized set of dogmatized beliefs over these teachings.

The last words of the Buddha where "Appo Deepa Bhava" which roughly translates into: 'Be a light unto yourself.' This is better understood in the context of Buddha's death:
It is said that Buddha announced his own death, and died willingly (in the lotus posture) in front of his disciples probably because he thought this would be a good teaching for them. In this scenario his bhikkhus were crying because he was leaving them, specially Anand, and then Buddha uttered this meaningful profound words before going into Samaddhi and leaving the body.

 

[Mind Over Matter]

Mind Over Matter, good coherent post. Do you believe God is in one's mind?

It depends what you mean by that. He is not just an idea, ideology or feeling. He is a Person. He can be known and chosen through the mind, though, and He can live in people's souls. He is absolute and consistent, unlike moral relativism, in which there is massive moral and doctrinal inconsistency. He is unchanging, absolute, infinite and eternal Truth, Life and Love.

The Church teaches that virtue is union with Him and sin is separation from Him. Sin is unloving conduct. Virtue is loving conduct. Therefore sin separates us from Love, while virtue unites us with Him. Living a life of virtue is like walking hand in hand with Love. But the Lord often asks more of us than we are willing to ask of ourselves, because we are so attached to material things and sin, and we are willing to excuse our imperfections and justify our bad habits and poor life choices. We even excuse big faults in our characters, rather than confronting them, and we are often completely oblivious to all the smaller faults in our characters (which are actually important and diminish our happiness and goodness, though we have trouble stomaching this).

The Lord asks much of us because He wants much for us. He allowed the animals to be satisfied with temporal things, but for us, He wants much more. He wants us to be completely satisfied and fulfilled in an everlasting relationship of love with God. He has designed us as humans to be completely satisfied only in Him, the source of all love and happiness, and to always have the desire for love, peace, happiness and acceptance in our hearts, because this is the desire for God and it inspires people to look for Him. He created us with more exalted desires than the animals have, and with a more magnificent end. He has designed us to find material things and human relationships insufficient to satisfy our hearts' deepest longings, because He has created our hearts to rest in Him, Who is ultimate and perfect satisfaction and joy. He wants us to have everything good and worthwhile, and all that is good and worthwhile for us is found in Him.

God wants us to become perfect, completely detached from the worldly things that distract us from the longings He has placed in our hearts, and He wants to win us over completely from sin, to conquer us with all that can satisfy and delight us: Union with Himself.

Therefore He has given us the Eucharist, which is His fullness, His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, so that we can give Him all of ourselves in It and receive all of Himself. He is the Eucharist. The Eucharist is Divine Love, the fullness and completeness of Jesus Christ.

Here is what St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote about the Eucharist, on his way to martyrdom:

"I no longer take pleasure in perishable food or in the delights of this world. I want only God's bread, which is the Flesh of Jesus Christ, formed of the seed of David, and for drink I crave His Blood which is love that cannot perish."

On his way to martyrdom in the Colosseum, Ignatius wrote that all his desires were fulfilled in the Eucharist. He begged his Christian brothers not to petition his release, because he wanted to die and be fully one with his Eucharistic Love. The Eucharist was everything to him, so he surrendered his body to be mauled by lions and his spirit to be immolated of self-will and consumed with the fire of God, all for pure love of the Eucharist.

In the Divine Eucharist, there is power to transform us completely and unite us fully with Love, which is God.

The Eucharist is like sex between two married lovers. We "marry" God at the moment of Baptism (and non-Catholics are not allowed to partake of Him in the Eucharist) and in the Eucharist we become totally one with Him, in total self-giving and total receiving. Unmarried sexual partners only give themselves to one another in part, because there is the possibility that one might leave, and they do not have the totally self-giving covenantal union that exists in a marriage. Marriage's permanence, the total self-giving of two people to one another for life, vowed, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, no matter what the circumstances or troubles, is a reflection of our total and permanent union with God, both in the Eucharist and throughout all our lives, no matter what forces or circumstances might try to break that everlasting union.

Partaking of the Eucharist is the mightiest mystical experience possible on this Earth. The more people give themselves to Him, over time, the more they receive His grace in that encounter. Then they are ever more transformed and made holy, one with God's love. The Eucharist is the Power and Love of God. As you draw closer to Him in your spiritual life, you find that eating Him is not at all like eating ordinary bread. The experience is much more. And as one draws closer and closer to God, the encounter with Him in the Eucharist likewise deepens and unfolds into ever intensifying love and power.

St. Gemma Galgani could only stay in the Eucharist's presence for about fifteen minutes at a time, because she felt such physical burning heat raging from it that the searing intensity forced her out of the room. Often, the Eucharist has sped from the priest's hands through midair into the mouth of a saint, rushing to Its lover. Sometimes saints' eyes have been opened and they have seen Jesus descend from Heaven into the priest's hands, at the moment of consecration.

The Lord has also provided Eucharistic Miracles that all the world can see, and which even medical science can verify, to show us His Love (dozens are recorded in this document): http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/engl_mir.htm

 

[Mind Over Matter]

If I'm understanding you correctly, then according to Catholic teachings, a follower of Islam or Judaism (for example) can achieve salvation as long as they have a genuine faith and a desire to do God's will to the best of their ability? But once exposed to the more comprehensively "correct" teachings of the Catholic Church, one can only achieve salvation by embracing them (which I am sure you would argue would be a natural thing for someone who had genuine faith in the first place)?

I would argue that the natural thing for a Muslim or a Jew to do when presented with Christianity would be to deny it; and that implies no bad faith in them. A Muslim who knows about Christianity and yet rejects it can, theoretically, be a spiritual member of the Catholic Church and thus be saved, if what's keeping him from the Faith are psychological and cultural impediments to see the truth of Christ's teaching, and also the ineptitude of those whose calling it is to give witness of the Catholic Faith to him.

This is all very interesting, but not quite the point of the thread. Followers of Islam and Judaism (for example) would typically reject the authority of the Catholic church on such matters and continue to embrace their own beliefs instead. What makes you certain that you're doing the right thing, and they are not?

I have. I don't see how you have answered the OP.

I think reason is on my side (and how can we settle this? Well, by the only way we can settle everything else: by dialog, argument, exchange of ideas, etc.), and the more I consider the Catholic position on many issues and compare it with Muslim or Jewish positions (especially when it comes to their relationship with morality and divine law in general), it seems very clear to me that they have committed some serious blunders.

I cannot give you a proof that I am right and they are wrong, but I see many convincing reasons to reject Islam and Judaism in favor of Christianity, and I don't see good reasons to do otherwise.

 

[wynn]

MoM -

My point is that you seem to be taking yourself out of the equation.
It's as if you presume yourself to be objective and neutral, unaffected by any greed, anger and delusion that you might have.

You speak as if reasoning were something that happens automatically, without the person's will and whatever conditioning they may have; as if reasoning were much the same as mixing chemicals - add premise 1, add premise 2, and there is conclusion C - no personal input or consideration necessary.

It's as if you don't own your statements, don't take responsibility for them.

You don't really make I-statements. While you will say "I think ..." or "In my estimation ...", these seem to be mere formalities, not actually expressions of you considering yourself an epistemological and ontological instance.

 

[Dywyddyr]

You speak as if reasoning were something that happens automatically, without the person's will and whatever conditioning they may have; as if reasoning were much the same as mixing chemicals - add premis 1, add premis 2, and there is conclusion C - no personal input or consideration necessary.

And all the while doing little but...

 

[Mind Over Matter]

MoM -

My point is that you seem to be taking yourself out of the equation.
It's as if you presume yourself to be objective and neutral, unaffected by any greed, anger and delusion that you might have.

Not at all. I certainly am affected by all of these. That is one other reason why input from others is so important; to check these biases. Still, I think that a person's intellectual maturing consists also of being able to check these and be able to achieve an ever greater objectivity.

It is always possible to move a level above our prejudices, or else any knowledge, and any rational discussion, would be completely worthless, because they would all be determined by each person's personal biases.

 

[wynn]

Oh well. Perhaps some of us are asking you questions or presenting a perspective to which there isn't a regular answer.