Why Do You Believe?
If someone asked why you accept the claims of the Catholic faith, what would your answer be? Atheists and agnostics can present formidable arguments, and it is good to engage such claims so as to deepen our own. I was attracted to the union of faith and reason, which has powerful explanatory power. This provides a framework for the subjective experiences of mystery, a framework that exists because so many others over such long periods of time also partake of mystery and experience. A moral order in the Personhood of Christ is necessary to complete a fractured humanity, whose grace completes nature and whose presence fulfills myth. Variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the unpredictability and messiness of humanity – we are these and we need these, far more than the cold harmony of utility.
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Why God
1) If life is an accident, and there is nothing after death, then at the point of death, nothing matters. Since nothing matters at the point of death, nothing matters now, because the end result of now and the result of now + (years til death) is exactly the same. Awful thought.
2) It does seem silly that all things go from a more organized state to a less organized state with the exception of life. Life takes unorganized matter and organizes it. Odd.
3) Man is undeniably a spiritual creature, we seek spiritual knowledge as naturally as breathing.
Why Catholic
1) Personal experience has led me to believe that spirituality is best expressed in groups as part of a larger organization.
2) Adhering to Catholic doctrine is a constant quest for understanding, a constant challenge to do better.
3) The depth and history of catholic spirituality dwarfs any new-ageiness I dabbled with before.
3) I love statues and candles.
Many of the pop-atheists today are just glorified nihilists. Derbyshire and MacDonald I recognize as two such folks.
Now this is an interesting post. I look forward to reading the answers.
My three favorite non-believing current writers, Derbyshire and MacDonald and Hitchens (who indicate that an innate morality and decency should be followed, and for J.D. with tradition and custom as the guide) never struck me as nihilist. What writings are nihilist and why?
I grew up fundamentalist, but over the course of a wrenching 9 year journey, I came to accept that the claims of the Catholic Church are true. Catholicism was the only thing that reconciled Scripture and common sense with my own unique experience of the world. I describe the process as being akin to tumblers in a lock falling into place. In every other place I looked, one or more stubborn tumblers remained fixed. But in her magisterial teaching, her creeds, her sacramental and communal life, the lives of her saints, her historical and geographic breadth and depth, even in the sinfulness of her children, everything about the Church seemed ineluctably TRUE. And I am someone who grew up believing that Catholics were, ipso facto, hell bound.
Derbyshire does have a bit of a nihilist streak to him. I can’t speak to MacDonald.
M.Z.,
Are there any atheists, and I would be particularly interested in atheists writing today, that are not easily dismissed in your opinion or the general opinion of believers?
Has anyone read Michael Novak’s No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers? I have it, but I haven’t read it yet. I am quite sure it is the only book I own with blurbs from Peggy Noonan, Newt Gingrich, Dinesh D’Souza, and Fr. Neuhaus.
Why the Christian God?
I perceived Love in my experiences of love. I have realized the disappointment of our finite and imperfect love were not indictments against Love, but were evidence of the existence, perfection, and transcendence of Love.
Why Catholic?
I’m a cradle Catholic, but as I grew older and began to think more critically, Catholicism was the only Christian “denomination” that was able to synch my experience of life in Christ with the my slowly growing understanding of the Scriptures.
Also the following in random order:
Pope, Sacraments, Saints, Tradition, Purgatory, Priesthood, etc.
Why do you believe?
It’s kind of a job requirement, but I also find the saints, particularly the early Christian martyrs, to be reliable witnesses.
David Nickol,
I’m not much into apologetics. I believe some authors are mentioned here: http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2008/12/secular_conservatism.html Not having much interest in the topic, I am not well read in the area, either pro or con.
I’m quite confident I’ve read a number of non-believing authors. The communitarian space is predominantly occupied by the left at this time. While that space enjoys a certain respect for believers, or at least not an outright disdain, it is occupied heavily by non-believers.
The Catholic faith is the encounter with a Person in people who corresponds to the needs of my heart.
This is potentially a very interesting thread. I wonder if there have been so few responses because people are concerned that anything they say can and will be used against them in other threads. Or maybe it’s just that “Why do you believe?” is a very difficult question to answer.
Ultimately I’m Catholic because the Catholic Faith is true.
To believe and to live in another manner is to be decieved. To be an atheist is to believe the greatest deception.
I think that it is no accident that a certain variety of atheist, one more informed by existntialism, places such a premium on authenticity. There is some portion of the atheist’s soul that knows it is being decieved and wants so much to walk in truth.
Ultimately, what Jason said above is true. Without God, the world has no meaning. Without God, we are not capable of being ourselves because there is nothing to be. Whithout God there is no Logos, only chaos.
David Nickol,
Why is it hard to answer the question “Why do you believe?” Aren’t we instructed by St. Peter to “always be prepared to give an account for the hope that is in you?”
Why is it hard to answer the question “Why do you believe?”
Mark,
Well, I wonder why there have been so few answers. If the topic had been to explain why one should be against abortion or homosexuality, there would be more than 15 responses.
Maybe people don’t know why they believe. Maybe some people feel it is too personal a question. Maybe, as I said, some people feel what they said would be used against them in one of the more contentious threads.
You have a pretty unique perspective. On the other hand, I was born and raised Catholic, and had a Catholic education (grades 1-12), and I have found since graduating from high school, a lot of what I have experienced is disillusionment.
David,
I suspect it was to do with feeling that writing a full answer would take a great deal of time and thought — and also that it’s not something people are really likely to argue back and forth about. It seems to me that the generally what drives long comment threads is controversy.
That said, I’ll give it a shot, with short answers.
I am a Theist because:
I think that qualities such as Goodness, Justice and Love exist in a real sense, that they have an absolute ideal to which all instantiations approach to one degree or another, and that they are at root all one.
Also because I think that an eternal, creative, rational, all powerful, and all good God is by far the best of the several logically self-consistent answers to the question: Why is there anything?
I am a Christian because:
The Christian revelation is one of the few religious traditions which describes God in a way which answers my philosphical commitments above.
The coming of Christ was a historical event rooted in a particular time and place and I trust the accounts of it which we find in the New Testament.
Looking at the swath of human history, it seems to me that the progression of Judaism and the completion of that revelation in Christianity fills a real gap and need which Humanity seems to some extent to have already been looking for.
I am a Catholic because:
I think the apostolic churches represent the successful preservation and development of Christ’s revelation from the time of the apostles to this day.
Of the apostolic churches, I think that the Orthodox churches look more like a living branch living in separation from the trunk of the tree than like the tree itself.
And I find the argument that Christ intended His Church to be guided by the successors of Peter in primacy over their brother bishops persuasive.