r/CatholicPhilosophy

As expressed in the title, I can't believe in these things precisely because of the problem of evil. How can God, if all-powerful, loving, and merciful, answer prayers (as well as requests) and not answer the prayers of other people, such as children who plead for food/better conditions?
To me, it seems like mere luck, because if it's true, God has his favorites and is sadistic and cruel.

Furthermore, if creation is perfect and planned by him ,why do we pray to correct God's plans?

I know that Aquinas takes a lot from Aristotle, but he does disagree with him in some areas.

I was told that ethics is not one of these areas of disagreements though. In fact, I've heard some say that Thomistic ethics and Aristotlean ethics are pretty much synonymous.

I was wondering if that was true, hence, title.
Thank you for any responses in advance

If one concedes the factuality of the whole of Catholic theology, what obstacle exists towards deliberate sin and intentional striving for damnation?

When people usually speak about trinity, they wonder, how can one being be 3 other beings at the same time? how are there 2 Gods? Jesus and his father? and then how are they the same at the same time?

There is a simple debunk of this, so I invite YOU to prove me wrong.

In Christianity, God is omnipotent, which means having unlimited power, authority, or the ability to do anything.

If God is omnipotent, and has unlimited power, can do anything he wants, he can be 2 or more beings at the same time, IF God decided to, he can be 100 different humans, 1000 different animals, and hundred thousand trees or basically ANYTHING you can think of at the same time, so I ask you this, how can 3 NOT be one when we are speaking about an omnipotent being who has ability to do anything?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Even this cry rose from the cross. The Holy Bible

Beloved soul, you look upon the earth and see wounds everywhere: nations sharpening swords, the poor forgotten, hearts becoming cold, forests burned, seas poisoned, brother against brother. And you ask the ancient question that many prophets asked before you: “Lord, where are You?”

Listen carefully.

When God created the world, He looked upon it and said, “It is very good.” The rivers, the trees, the beasts of the field, and humanity itself were born from love, not from violence. But love without freedom is not love at all. So mankind was given freedom: the freedom to bless… and the freedom to wound.

A father may plant a vineyard with care, but if the workers become greedy, shall the father destroy the vineyard at once? No. He sends messengers. He calls them back. He waits. He warns. He weeps.

So too does God.

You ask why He allows evil. Yet every war begins first in a human heart. Every corruption begins when silver is loved more than truth. Every act of racism begins when a person forgets that the stranger also bears the image of God.

The poison spreading through the world is not proof that God is absent. It is proof that humanity keeps trying to live without Him.

But do not think Heaven is indifferent.

Christ entered this suffering world not as a distant king wrapped in comfort, but as a poor man, betrayed, mocked, tortured, and killed by political power, religious hypocrisy, and a violent crowd. He stood inside the very darkness you describe. And from the cross He said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

This is the mystery: God does not answer evil merely with force. He answers it first with mercy, truth, and a call to repentance.

Yet judgment also exists. The Gospel says that whatever is hidden will one day be revealed. The mighty who crush others and believe themselves untouchable are like houses built upon sand. Storms come. Kingdoms fall. Empires become dust.

And still, amidst the darkness, light shines.

For every corrupt ruler, there is a hidden saint feeding the hungry.
For every voice preaching hatred, there is someone risking their life to protect another.
For every forest destroyed, there is a hand planting seeds whose shade it may never enjoy.

Do not let the noise of evil convince you that goodness is weak. A single candle can be seen from far away in the night.

You ask God why He allows this suffering. But perhaps Heaven also asks humanity:

“Why do you wound what I entrusted to you? Why do you hate your brother? Why do you destroy the garden I placed in your care?”

The answer to the world’s darkness is not despair. Despair is another chain. The answer is to become light.

As it is written: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

So feed the hungry. Defend the weak. Speak truth without hatred. Care for the earth as a sacred gift. Refuse the temptation to become cynical. Even in a wounded world, love remains a rebellion against darkness.

And remember this: the resurrection came after the crucifixion.

Some thoughts I Shared with the Christian Community. Had some elements that may be helpful here. Shared values with the Spiral Dynamics community.

I removed ego. When I say ego, I mean just the pursuit of an individual narrative outside of God and disconnected from everything else. I recognize that the truth is that God created everything, but He didn't just create it. That's not a good way to see it, because there is nothing without God. God is everything. God generated. God transformed Himself into what we have here. But there is nothing separate, and nothing existed before Him. He is everything. And so, that being said, there's nothing that's been created that is not also Him.

Now, it seems like me and Him have done a lot of work to remove this pursuit of selfish ambition, because it doesn't seem like it's selfish. Everybody talks about the hero story, or who it is you are, and all this and that. None of it can be true. And I know that this is a lot of information for people who are not familiar with this type of thing, but just look at the end goal here. Jesus says, "I'm one with You and You are one with Us," John 17. "The Father and I are one." There's a reason that He's saying this. "I'm not here to do what I want, I'm here to do what the Father wants."

It's not just Him. This is how we're all supposed to be. I know this may seem like a lot, but understand that the goal was never to discover an independent identity. Jesus doesn't even talk about developing an identity, and that's because the more He focuses on making sure that you actively are just one with God, that's because this identity stuff is an illusion. It's a distortion. It's something that our brain creates. We're trapped in it by society and by our biology.

You start off without it when you're a kid, like a young kid, and then you grow through all these realizations. You have to really do a lot of work that Jesus was talking about, and then maybe you get to the other side where you're okay removing it. Mine's gone. You kind of come to the understanding that it's all an illusion.

I look at everybody else, and I'm not angry, but so many things just don't fit for me anymore. They don't fit. I'm not in my own story. If anything, I can be in the Jesus story or God's story, but there's this lack of creating any sort of narrative that is individualistic and separate from who it is we really are and being a vessel for the one person who truly exists.

I guess I feel like being in the Christian community isn't for me as much anymore. I love people who love the Lord, but I didn't realize until I really dedicated myself to this how much unintentional evil we are bringing into this space as a group. We're evil. I know it doesn't seem like it, but we're evil. Any identity that we currently hold, that we're really rooted in, is immediate competition for your priority, and is arguably the thing or whatever is connected to that identity that you would put over God. It's the idol in your life.

Every time you fight for yourself as number one, it means you're unintentionally fighting against other people. We're trapped in these identities that we create. We're trapped. I'm free from it now, but you really don't fit into the world without an identity structure that is super self-serving or serves a very specific community while being exclusionary to others.

We just have so much evil in our Christian community. People want to lift themselves up or create a hierarchy. They want to be better. They want to be your teacher. They want to be your leader. They want to be above. They want their story to be pushed. Quite frankly, I think that if they could just take God's place in that hierarchy, they would do it. They want to be God. We're evil, bro. We're evil.

Here are these different stages of ego that develop. The first one is the most selfish, harmful, I do what I can get away with, and I'm the main character. The second one is: I'm important, we have established rules, there's a hierarchy that I'm in, and we're all going to stick with these rules. The third is making the rules for yourself, being ambitious, competence driven, status driven, and competition driven. After that comes more of a caring, kindness, and compassion that develops when you realize it's more than about your ambition and status, and that other people are very much an integral part that need your energy and compassion. The one after that is understanding systems without needing to be involved in hierarchy as much. And then the last one is kind of dissolving the need to be anything other than yourself, everything that is, and operating with love as a steward.

You're pretty much trapped in that progression until you get to the end. But each of those levels requires other people to be beneath you. Each requires comparison and hierarchy. And in all of those levels, in order for you to win, somebody has to lose in a way that you find intolerable. Somebody has to be less. Somebody has to be smaller. Somebody has to be less authoritative. Somebody has to be less intelligent. Somebody has to be off track. And it's evil, because what it means is that other people have to essentially be suffering dysfunction and what comes with that is them hurting others, voluntarily and involuntarily, living in that, and you observing it in order to solidify what you call a win for yourself. That makes us evil.

It all comes from being committed to having and securing an identity that is individual, away and above everything else. That's why identity is such a fickle, shaky thing. We are always trying to prove and maintain it. It is a lie. But you can prove we are all connected. If many things are all connected, then maybe they aren't many things. It's one thing.

If I don't allow my identity to expand to cover you and your life, then I won't love you enough to act right. I have to "become" God. Similar to when you have a great career and you aren't "Dan from the town" anymore. You are the company's HR department while you are there. A similar switch.

This is a response to someone who asked a question of what to do next:

Start with this: "I am willing to give everything... and it is worth it. They are worth it."

First is leverage. You have to really do a deep dive and see what a corrupt brother or sister having an ego has done to hurt and damage all the intimate parts of the kingdom. See the moments ruined. See the pain that people never got through and didn't forgive. See Christian brothers and sisters burning in hell because of ego seeds planted at sensitive times in their life. See the fact that a bunch of us are letting other people suffer in our own communities because we feel like they're a different denomination. Our church could help out. I want you to see all the people who were good people but were ignored by our brothers and sisters because they felt like they were too good to serve. I want you to see all the people who could have had answered prayers had we lined up together to serve those who didn't have the eyes to see the Lord. I want you to see the people who didn't make it because we didn't come in small groups to join with them in prayer during their important moments. That's our fault. We thought that we weren't them. I want you to see all the collective pain and just decide you're never going to be contributing to that again. You have to decide that it's enough, and that time is over. I will never bring that distortion to my Christian brothers in moments where God needs me to be a vessel, empty, ready to serve. Ego energy corrupts. It just makes sure that we don't make it. We won't be doing that anymore. Please decide that you're not going to do that anymore. And that's where the first thing I said matters. I'm going to give everything and do everything to make sure that my life force and energy is separate from that issue. When I come to my brothers, my heart needs to be right. God, do everything. I give you access to everything, irrefutably, to change me and make sure that I'm never this problem again. Do everything in my life to separate me from that issue, to make sure that I'm always a clear vessel for you.

Okay, so the goal here is to fuse who you are with God Himself. So essentially, when somebody asks you who you are, you really just say Him. Now, the way to functionally do that is to develop a good relationship with Him, with the Holy Spirit, and learn from Jesus' teachings but really intimately get to know Him and understand the ideas that He's bringing to you, like really core character traits that He is bringing to you, and choose to be the expression of those traits. So that's one. That's going to replace your identity. You're going to use the notion of us all actually being God's physically manifested body, in a very colorful assortment, to allow us to have an aggregate identity that fuses us to everything around us. What am I? I am everything, and everything is one thing. Who am I? I am the one sentience that created this journey, period. I am God, period.

So then, what you also do is take everything that can be removed from you or anybody else, changed, like a name, like a story, a narrative, or any part of identity that is fickle, can be changed, can be destroyed, can be modified, and actively remove it from any identity label that you have and that other people have, while recognizing that we are all this one thing, this entity called God. Then you're going to recognize that when your mind is just silent, it's just you and God, the only thing that can't be changed is that active awareness of what's going on, this kind of pre thought perspective. And remember, that's you without any of the story, any of the narratives, still fully present. But also look at how closely it goes: God, and then directly creating that in you, which is also Him. So the most that you can possibly be is that immediate awareness, which is also Him. What we are is everything. Who we are is the one person who is.

Okay, now, what's going to happen from there are a few different blessings, but one thing that needs to happen is you have to decide that your story and narrative are worth less than the alternative. First, you're going to completely remove those, and ask God to allow His divine intelligence to flow through your life and to just be expressed as often as He sees fit. From this place, you live with love because you understand that everybody and everything is who you are, and we are always only God. And you want to love people and love animals and love all of creation and forgive them and live in grace, because we are here to steward ourselves. We are not different from our neighbors. We are all only God's expression.

Remember, remove the lies that people tell themselves from their story so that you can see them clearly. They are that silent part of the mind, and they are God's essence. Everything else is delusion and an aggressive illusion. So once we're living from love, you're going to want to keep an eye out for every time that God worked in silence, and really be comforted by the extraordinary activity that the Holy Spirit has privately and publicly carried out for everyone we now have a heart for. And to see that He is so much more capable of stewarding this planet, this world, and all of creation than we can ever witness, which is great, because it always means that there's somebody who absolutely loves us, who is giving everything and is adequately showing up for every component of this system that matters. It's all in good hands. And you are a part of that process.

So then you just live without this illusion, total clarity, walking hand in hand intimately. You seek that intimacy with God, knowing the higher part of yourself. Oneness comes through intimacy, spending time with Him. And you allow all that love that you feel, that gratefulness you have for being here and for being with your best friend, the Holy Spirit. You get to live in a world where you're one with God and you love everyone, and you know that no matter what it feels like, everyone is taken care of in ways they can't understand. All you want to do is show up and give figurative kisses, service, and love to everybody else. And it doesn't matter if you take a job or a position that nobody knows about, because you're stewarding a plant that is a person, that is a system, that is a thing, that's going to become something else. I, as a gardener, don't need my plants to thank me, and I love them just the same. Most of our contributions will be without reward. But the reward is being a part of a capable system where the Holy Spirit is stewarding everything and everyone we love.

Operate because it's an expression of God. Love will replace the drive to do. Intention needs to replace attachment. There's more to do here.

But you need the Holy Spirit, to hear from Him, to drive against being the kind of person who hurts your brothers. You need willingness to get through it. You have to give this old life up, because your family needs you to. There are so many consequences, including not all of us making it to Heaven, if you don't turn this corner. If you are going to show up, you need to be ready. Being ready looks like this.

Here is my link. The journey Ive had may help you. There are other writings on my page.

You've got to love the Lord. You've got to just decide that you're doing this the right way. It will cost you everything, and I promise. I give it up for God, and for other Christians, and for everyone else who is supportive to the Kingdom. Even if I have to give my life, it's worth it. I don't own anything. Everything is shared, using wisdom from the Holy Spirit, and I will steward everything with discretion.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Vegetable_Candy5329/comments/1qzj5u0/yellow_turquoise/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

That’s what Dostoevsky maintained, and only a Christian could conceive such a precious statement. Read instead the cruelties Nietzsche was capable of writing, and draw conclusions about what truly drives human virtue.

i believe in God and all that, i'm just terrified of dying, i'm afraid of the possibility of no afterlife, i mean i "HOPE" in the afterlife but it's something really hard for me to believe in, cause obviously there's no empirical evidence for an afterlife (NDEs seem like dying brain activity), obviously you don't base everything off of 100% proof that'd be a stupid way to live, but i just get stressed out over the idea that "hey maybe there is no afterlife, and this is just it.", obviously if there's no afterlife you wouldn't know it nor be disappointed that you were wrong, but i want to believe heaven is real cause i want to see Jesus and Blessed Mother and all the Saints and my family members that have passed before me, part of me thinks the idea of an afterlife is wishful thinking, i get stressed out to the point of having to take anxiety medication because what if after death it's just like before you're born? just *nothing*. i love being Catholic but this really bothers me and i'm supposed to have full faith in what Christ says, and he said there's an afterlife so when i doubt that and become scared of dying because of it i feel like i'm distrusting and disobeying him 🙁

Render unto Caesar what is Caesars!

Wait a minute doesn't that means Caesar is the legitimate ruler?

How did he come to power? Murder, craploads of murder.

Julius, the homey of Augustus was like , hi everybody im gonna steal the government.

Then the Liberatores (brutus, crassus etc) jerk out dem knives and be like "IMMA MAKE YOU LEAK, IMMA MAKE YOU LEAK" the Augustus kill them and Roman women were shrieking "NO AGUSTUS DONT KILL MY BABY" and he be all like "NAW HO LIL HOMBRE GONNA DIE".

After like a jillion deaths jesus was like you owe that guy money

therefore if Christianity is there is a hypothetical number of people that i can unscrupulously murder such that the families of my victims are obligated to pay me money.

If our goal is to prove Christianity is the one true religion, then why use natural theology to prove some creator exists, then prove Christianity? Why not just prove Christianity?

How de we know the following claim is not true/fallacious?

“Religion is a human product, not a divine revelation
The geographical concentration of religions may indicate that they are human and temporal constructions
One thing that draws my attention is how most of the major religions in the world arose in relatively close and connected regions of the ancient world.
From Egypt and Mesopotamia, through the Levant, Persia and India, religions and spiritual systems emerged such as ancient Egyptian religion, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and several others all within civilizations that constantly exchanged culture, myths, trade, wars and philosophy.
In addition, there is also the widely discussed idea that religions and religious books were influenced by other beliefs, cultures and political contexts of the time in which they emerged.
And this raises a difficult question:
If divine truth is universal and absolute, why does religion seem so dependent on geography?
A person born in 7th-century Arabia would probably be Muslim, simply for having no contact with other religions. Likewise, someone born in medieval Europe would probably be Christian, while someone in ancient India would probably follow Hindu traditions.
Even Hinduism one of the oldest continuously practiced religious traditions still in existence is not automatically considered “true” by most of the world simply for being ancient. Antiquity alone does not validate a belief. But this same logic can be applied to later religions: if being ancient does not prove Hinduism, why would more recent religions be automatically legitimized?
Christianity, for example, only became globally dominant because of extremely specific historical factors:
institutionalization within the Roman Empire;
European expansion;
colonization of the Americas;
wars, conversions and political influence;
centuries of cultural dominance of the West.
The same applies to Islam:
military expansion after the 7th century;
growth of the caliphates;
commercial dominance;
territorial influence in the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia.
(I mentioned both because they are the largest current religions.)
In other words: religious demography often follows power, territory and historical context not necessarily metaphysical evidence.
And yes, I know that “what if history were different” is a hypothetical argument. But still: if India had colonized Europe, or if Persia had become the main global power, perhaps the current dominant religion would be completely different.
The world we live in seems to suggest that organized religions behave like human phenomena shaped by time, geography, wars, economy and cultural transmission.
Religions seem to spread in the same way as languages, empires and ideologies:
through human influence, tradition, power and historical continuity.
So the question remains:
what makes your religion valid and not just “one more” among several?
Has humanity truly discovered a universal divine truth?
Or has it merely inherited regional narratives that survived long enough to become dominant?”

Well, as you can see, what you've read covers all religions. How can we know that Christianity is different? How can we know, beyond faith, that Christianity is the true religion?And can we find God with reason?

If God granted St. Paul a vision on the road to Damascus that turned a violent persecutor of Christians into the greatest apostle, and granted St. Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jewish man openly hostile to Catholicism, a vision of the Blessed Virgin in the Church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte that instantly converted him, why does God not grant every person a vision of this same kind upon reaching the age of reason?

Such a vision would not override free will, the freedom of Paul and Ratisbonne to respond was preserved, and both still had to live out their faith through suffering, doubt, and decades of ordinary struggle. Nor would it reduce faith to mere knowledge, since the demons believe and tremble, and countless witnesses of Christ's own miracles still rejected him. It would simply remove the one obstacle that condemns so many sincere souls: the inability, through no fault of their own, to know that the Catholic faith is true.

Why are Paul and Ratisbonne worthy of such a grace, but the child in a Hindu village, the atheist philosopher genuinely searching for truth, the Muslim convinced from birth of Islam's truth, and the ordinary baptized Catholic who quietly loses faith in university, are not? If God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4), and if he possesses the means to grant that knowledge directly, as he has demonstrably done before, why does he withhold it from almost everyone?

The prevailing biology of the modern era describes life as a system. A system is defined as a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network. The NASA definition of life is this: “Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”

However, this way of explaining is to put the cart before the horse.

A living thing is understood as a being whose parts work together for one goal, which is the sustainment of the whole organism. In this sense, the parts comprise truly one being, as this principle that unites the parts is intrinsic to the organism.

However, a machine is not one unified being as much as a heap of sand is not one unified being, as its goal, function is imparted from the outside. Its principle of unity is extrinsic. Its unity is in the perceiver's mind, not in-itself.

Therefore, we can say that a machine or a system is only a metaphor, something that resembles life but not quite. Machine or a system is built to mimic life. The meaning of life is primordial.

So, I'm the resident Catholic apologist in my household and something that keeps my brother from the faith is that he sees the Old Testament as a politically biased history written by the Israelites/Jews to legitimize their conquest of Canaan.

His argument is regarding the Table of Nations found in Genesis. His argument consists of saying that the Bible got the historical fact wrong as the Canaanites as Sons of Ham aren't culturally separate from the Israelites who are Sons of Shem, even though the Midianites/Ishmaelites/Arabs also are Semites.

How would you respond to this?

I made a meme to explain the logic of the SSPX

https://preview.redd.it/04af2psyqg1h1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d798466173a3fd34cca5a3927ee4161999274e1

I'm a Catholic and have been studying the bible for some time. I am also a part of a bible talk group affiliated with a non-denominational church because I admire their passion of scripture and am curious about the basis of their beliefs.

However, this group has become to claim that I am not saved as I was baptised as an infant*. In response I would say their baptisms aren't valid as they were performed not by a Holy priest but by Sue from down the street.

To any non-catholics, what is your perspective on who has the right to perform baptism and what are your thoughts on infant baptism?

*they are trying to convert me from Catholicism to ICC by cherrypicking verses that once I read in full rebuke their claims...

so I was molested as a child and has since then been a chronic masturbater . I hate that I have the urge to do it .it makes me squirm and just feel like crap . i converted to Catholicism but this is something I’m having a major problem with . is it a mortal sin ? I know it’s wrong and o know Im knowi doing it but I can’t stop thinking about it and it’s driving me crazy. I pray for strength to overcome it and stop being weak . But I don’t know how much longer o can go .

If there is no physical impediment to all the deeds that we oppose, will the whole domain of ethical inquiry not be rendered obsolete? I’m not necessarily claiming that ethical theories lack sense or factuality, but rather claiming that in their very truth they fail to provide an impediment to any and all deeds.