Hi RyanVanGo,
Sorry about mistaking your age; I wasn't trying to insult you. This is one of the most interesting threads I've seen on here in a while, because it is written by someone who is asking questions rather than defending something they already know (or believe) is true.
my stance is as follows (for now):
I believe that Jesus died for my sins, that he is the son of God. God created everything and has a divine plan. The Earth WAS NOT created 10,000 years ago. the vast majority of the bible is to give us a way to live and be good to others.
Sounds good to me. I was under the impression that this was what the vast majority of Catholics believed anyway.
By the way, I hope they taught you some science as well as religion at your schools. Basic geology is all you need to be able to see that creationism is exactly what you say it is: a misrepresentation of the facts. I have never seen a cogent creationist argument for the supposed fallibility of radiometric dating.
There's a poster on this forum called Catholic Scientist; maybe he'll share his views here at some point.
It's a vicious cycle really. I have already questioned and eventually denied almost everything in that book because of rational thought, which soon I'm afraid will cause me to deny the entire book, then deny the existence of God or a god. to the atheist this doesn't matter, but when you go further it means there is no reason, short of self preservation, to obey any sort of morals. It's kind of depressing really.
Like Purpledawn said, it sounds like you're having a crisis of faith. I had mine when I was 18, as I stated earlier. Having been a deeply believing Catholic before that, I can identify with the frightening feeling that you've learned something that cannot be ignored but which puts a huge part of your faith into doubt. It can feel like your whole world is crashing down.
For me, it was reading Joseph Campbell. He was a professor of comparative mythology. I'd never been taught about any religion other than my own up to that point, so I didn't know about the similarities of Bible stories to other religions, myths and folklores (for example, the striking parallels between Noah's flood and the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh on which it was doubtlessly based). I hadn't recognised the rich metaphorical language for what it was. In the past, people knew that myths weren't literally true, but that they operated on that poetical kind of level of wisdom beyond knowledge. I'm fond of metaphors so this was one of the biggest eureka moments in my life; but like you, I had no idea where that left my faith.
I even went to see a priest about it, LOL. But only because my parents made me. I didn't want to go and I don't remember what he said.
For a while I was simply an agnostic, leaning towards atheism. Atheism made me feel hollow though. A strong intuition has told me all my life that spirit exists in some way, and that there is more to life than what we perceive. I'm not happy unless I'm searching for that. My views are still not fixed, but I've adopted a little Eastern and New Age thinking, along with some
pantheistic inclinations. The joy is in the searching really; I keep waiting for another eureka moment to tell me that I've found IT, the spirituality I'm after, but that may never happen. It is frustrating at times but it doesn't bother me too much.
I don't know if this helps at all but I thought I'd share what happened to me. I'm glad that I didn't end up simply believing the way I was programmed by my upbringing. It's good to question things.
Good luck with your appointment with the priest. You're welcome to tell us how it went