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Author Topic:   I need an answer
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


(1)
Message 4 of 58 (565583)
06-18-2010 8:32 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by RyanVanGo
06-16-2010 11:34 AM


Hi RyanVanGo, and welcome.
Am I right in understanding that you're 12?
If so, then speaking as someone who has taught secondary school for years, I admire the degree of thought you are putting into these issues, especially if you are being told one thing at home and another elsewhere. That must be very difficult.
So are your family creationists? This is a little unusual for Catholics. The Catholic church has never come out and said that evolution is wrong and it has never supported creationism, though different Popes have had different views. Is your school actually teaching you creationism as well? I wasn't aware of this occurring in Catholic schools.
I myself grew up as a strong Catholic (I wanted to be a nun when I was young) and I also loved science. I never saw a conflict between religion and science. As many Catholics do, my family saw the Genesis story and other stories in the Bible as allegories rather than as factual events. The story of Adam and Eve is interesting to study from a number of viewpoints; it can teach you about the culture from which it originated, it can tell you about human psychology, and many of its images are echoed in other religions and myths throughout the world. This doesn't mean that Jesus never existed, or that what he said was wrong.
You'll find a lot of people on this forum who believe in God and still pursue their love of science. I'm sure some of them will join this thread eventually.
And it's good to know that you are seeing through Kent Hovind's claims. He knows little about science despite what he says (his degree is from a diploma mill); in fact, it's because of what he says that it's obvious he usually doesn't know what he's talking about.
There is a great deal of evidence for evolution and an old earth. I'm not sure where it would be best to start with this because they're such enormous topics. Is there an area you are especially interested in, like geology, astronomy or human origins?
As for me, I stopped being Catholic when I was 18. My parents were dismayed and for a while my father forced me to keep going to church under the threat of kicking me out of the house. I just kept my ideas to myself and got on with my life really; it's just not something we talk about now. It was a frightening time because I'd been raised to never upset my parents, but I knew in my heart that I was right. (This had nothing to do with evolution by the way; it was about how I had come to define the kind of spirituality I wanted to pursue.)
I'm looking forward to further discussions with you, hope you find it interesting here I've learned more about science than I ever learned in school through talking on forums like this.
Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.
Edited by Kitsune, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by RyanVanGo, posted 06-16-2010 11:34 AM RyanVanGo has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-18-2010 11:06 PM Kitsune has replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 8 of 58 (565678)
06-19-2010 3:39 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by Dr Adequate
06-18-2010 11:06 PM


Kitsune writes:
Am I right in understanding that you're 12?
Dr. Adequate writes:
I don't think so. He says he's a "child of twelve years of catholic school", not "a child of twelve years, at a catholic school". I therefore take "child" in its metaphorical sense of "product of" and "twelve years" to say how long he went to a catholic school, not how old he is.
It isn't clear to me one way or the other.
But if the good doctor is right and the poster of the OP is an adult, I apologise for what must sound like a patronising tone. I think the content of my message would essentially be the same though.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Dr Adequate, posted 06-18-2010 11:06 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by RyanVanGo, posted 06-22-2010 1:25 PM Kitsune has not replied

  
Kitsune
Member (Idle past 4300 days)
Posts: 788
From: Leicester, UK
Joined: 09-16-2007


Message 18 of 58 (566060)
06-22-2010 5:39 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by RyanVanGo
06-22-2010 1:36 PM


Re: Why The Need for Proof?
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

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by RyanVanGo, posted 06-22-2010 1:36 PM RyanVanGo has not replied

  
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