How Do You Know Your Religion Is True?

[Guest Jon]

[quote name='Paladin D' post='1688146' date='Oct 28 2008, 03:00 PM']Recently, someone I know who was raised Catholic, is now going to a Methodist church, but is thinking about registering with my local Catholic parish, brought up this question:

"How do you know your way (religion) is the right way (true)?"

The context was not so much having to do with which Christian sect contains the fullness of truth, but in a broader sense to include all religious beliefs. It's easier to make such a case within the context of Christianity, but it's much more difficult (at least for me) to make a case for Catholicism compared to non-Christian religions. There are so many religions that claim (or partly claim) to be "the way", does this mean ours is just another religion lost in the mix? How do we stand out?

Are there any tips on how to approach this, and/or reasons to give?[/quote]
[color="#000080"]
Hello Paladin D,

Hope I'm not too late to post to you - I didn't read the previous posts bec of time -but will later.

May I humbly say, Jesus did not come here to start a religion - who cares what religion someone belongs to - true/untrue ---Do they love the Lord? Do you love the Lord ? Do you love them as yourself ---you get the picture ---life is simple - Jesus gave 2 commandments.
Who cares - just love.

Focus on the Lord, love Him, love others - it all falls into place when we seek Him and His Kingdom first. Do that for even a week -see what happens.
If man would focus his mind - ohhh the things he could accomplish. It's all so simple. Man tries so hard to complicate things. Don't you find?

Love and God bless you,
Jon[/color]

[Guest Jon]

[color="#000080"]PS-just an aside...

I read a little from above and was reminded of something - in case you didn't know this story -

Did you know that Ghandi while in prison read the whole Bible? Upon his release he went to a Christian Church (Presby.) in Africa -they wouldn't let him in - his clothes, his skin - you know how prejudice can be...When he left he said, " If this is Chistianity I want no part of it."

He later led an entire nation of millions -but not to Christ.[/color]

[LouisvilleFan]

[quote name='Paladin D' post='1688146' date='Oct 28 2008, 05:00 PM']There are so many religions that claim (or partly claim) to be "the way", does this mean ours is just another religion lost in the mix? How do we stand out?

Are there any tips on how to approach this, and/or reasons to give?[/quote]

Everybody from birth to death ultimately yearns for happiness, love, and joy. All religion, and even atheism, philosophies, altruism, greed, etc. is an attempt to reach these goals, but all of them have a common problem in that they're rooted in or created by people who were also searching. The only access to happiness, love, and joy is at their source: our Creator. And because our Creator [i]is[/i] Love, He inherently pursues us through salvation history, climaxing during the years when He came to earth as one of us in order to establish in our world a way for seekers to find what we are seeking. Our Creator meets humanity in Jesus Christ and the way He established is where grace comes to earth through His creation in the sacraments.

[MC IMaGiNaZUN]

i turn the question on its head...
because we never can know with absolute certainty. That is the adventure, because looking ahead, we never know with certainty. When God calls us we never know when things will be easy, but our faith fortifies us with the assurance of a great cloud of witnesses that we are not alone, and the Holy Spirit is still working.

Philothea, i also want to affirm your statement about the witness of the saints.

Tertullian says "the blood of the martyrs is the seeds of our faith."
I was convicted by the witness of the saints before us, and some of the wonderful Catholics i encountered who i saw Christ in them.

shalom
bro mark

[LouisvilleFan]

Or as Stephen Colbert has put it so succinctly, we know the Catholic faith is true because it says it is, and Catholicism is infallible.

[Ziggamafu]

I'm pulling this from the outlines of a couple of recent talks I've given:

[u][b]
STEP 1: Proving God[/b][/u]

[b]Argument from desire as a hint:[/b]
- All innate desires correspond to a reality that satisfies those desires
- There is an innate desire for something that nothing in this world satisfies
- Therefore something beyond this world is hinted at to satisfy this innate desire

o We argued against the objection that there is worldly satisfaction for all desires by highlighting Man’s ambivalence and unquenchable “thirst” throughout history. Moreover, man’s nearly universal belief in some form of God-concept throughout history, as well as the early exercise in “God-play” amongst children (e.g., the imaginary friend) supports such an innate desire.

[b]Argument from conscience as a pointer:[/b]
- An absolutely binding moral rule points to a Divine law-giver as its source
- An absolutely binding moral rule exists in / as the conscience
- Therefore, the human conscience points to a Divine law-giver as its source

o Everyone has a conscience and feels guilty when violating it.
o Society and instinct fail to account for the obligatory nature of conscience, as we commonly violate the pressures of both in favor of obedience to our consciences.

[b]Proof from time, cause and change:[/b]
- The universe cannot be infinitely old, but instead must have been deliberately created by an eternal consciousness for the following reasons:

o Since all physical things of space/time have the real possibility of nonbeing, given an infinite amount of time, the collection of all things (that is to say, the universe) would have realized the possibility of total nonbeing (irrevocable annihilation); but the universe exists, so it cannot be infinitely old.
o All effects have a cause; but the process from cause to effect takes time, like one domino hitting another. If we wait for a particular domino to fall but the series of dominos behind it (that is, the series of causes & effects) is everlasting (that is, an infinitely old universe) then it would take forever for that domino to fall. In other words, the present effect, the state of the universe at this moment flows from a series of causes that stretch back to…what, exactly? If the series of causes is endless – if the universe stretches back in time forever – then it would take forever to reach the present effect, the universe as it is right now.
o We refuted the proposition that an unconscious generative force of nature could be the eternal cause of time’s “beginning”, since only a free agent (that is, a consciousness) could “move” in eternity; if the eternal cause was unconscious, then it could not have the freedom to not actualize its effect; the universe would therefore be as everlasting as the cause (an infinitely old universe), which is absurd for reasons already listed.

[b]Argument against atheism:[/b]
- Critical inquiries and objective argumentation presume objective meaning/value when such analysis takes place in public (that is, on the objective level)
- Objective meaning/value necessarily presumes an eternal, conscious Creator
- Therefore, atheism is intellectually dishonest when critical inquiry or argumentative analysis takes place in public (that is, on the objective level)

o The honest atheist must be a radical nihilist, contradicting human nature
o Only if a Creator-God exists is any experience truly meaningful / valuable
o An empirical proof of God (according to the verifications of the physical sciences) should not be expected, since God (in his eternal form) is Spirit, and therefore imperceptible by the five physical senses. The objection that "we just don't see God" is therefore invalid. We do indeed "see" God with the powers of our minds.
o God does not serve to fill merely any particular gap in human knowledge but "The Gap" of knowledge itself; that is, the universe in its entirety and our experiences of it.



• Why not polytheism: ultimately, there must be one source and standard by which all things are created, sustained, and judged. If there are many “gods”, only one of them may have ultimate Being by nature; only one can truly be called “God” with a capital “G”.

• Why not pantheism: because the universe cannot infinitely regress in time, and saying it is “God” is the same as saying that it always was, is and will be. The universe, by definition, is the collection of matter (all “things”) within time/space; therefore it is not eternal (eternity being defined as the absence of time) nor infinite (infinity being defined as the absence of space). To posit it as “God” is therefore (at the nearest equivalent) to say events in time go backwards forever.

• Why not an impersonal, unconscious “force”: because then the universe could not help but be an infinite regress, which is impossible.


[u][b]STEP TWO[/b][/u]

Jesus claimed to be God, according to the Apostles and the Early Church
If the claim is true, then ultimate meaning and value – in fact the source and standard of Truth – is found in Christ, and ultimate allegiance is due him.
Therefore, it is important to establish which is more reasonable: was Jesus God or not?

If not God, there are only four other options:

[b]1. Christ was a liar; a megalomaniacal trickster.
2. Christ really believed he was God or every New Testament author who wrote of him did; in which case one or the other or both was insane or at least very stupid.[/b]

These two objections are listed together because their answer is the same: neither the character of Christ as depicted in the New Testament or the character of his Apostles (even according to extra-biblical sources) indicate wickedness, stupidity or insanity. On the contrary, we see the exact opposite: people who lived in exclusion and died brutally horrific deaths for the sake of convictions they believed to be factually accurate. Evil people are not so selfless. Crazy people are not so considerate. Stupid people are not so compelling.

[b]3. Christ was an Eastern-style mystic or guru. He was grossly misinterpreted by his followers.[/b]

The word “grossly” here would not be capable of being stretched enough if this were true. The New Testament paints such a strikingly different picture of Christ that this objection would have us believe that the historical man behind the records was virtually the opposite of the very Jewish, very mono-theistic Jesus we see in the Bible. What’s more, it would mean that all of his Apostles (besides John, who died in exile) and many of his other followers, chose cruel execution rather than compromise their cherished “misinterpretation”. If this were true, Jesus wouldn’t have merely NOT been God – he would have been the single most astonishingly terrible, most horrifically abysmal, most clumsily idiotic teacher OF ALL TIME.
We can only judge what a person was like by the reliable documents we have; redefining Jesus as a guru is re-writing history for the sake of a presupposition.
[b]
4. Final objection: Jesus was either entirely mythical or mythological elements were added onto historical identity. In other words, the biblical accounts cannot be trusted.[/b]

At last, a plausible objection. The previous three made no sense because they did not fit the historical data. But this objection argues that the data has been falsified. And this is a true possibility. But almost anything is possible; is it probable? Is this objection even reasonable? To find out, we will examine and respond to each facet of the objection.

[b]a.) Too much time passed before the documents were written to trust their accuracy.[/b]

Did enough time pass for myth to be accepted?

No.
The documents were written in the same generation that the events occurred.
Churches on the other side of the world were already well-organized by the time the documents were written.
Aramaic creeds and hymns from the original Jerusalem community of Christians are found in the documents
Any mythical element would have been contested by eye-witnesses who were still alive.

[b]b.) Late additions and edits were made[/b]

Do the changes made to the documents over the course of their evolution compromise their reliability?
No. There are only a few edits and additions in the New Testament. None of them compromise the material presented to us either in the pre-existing Pauline creeds & hymns, or in the Gospels taken as a whole. Rather, the edits merely serve to smooth out the narratives and can be safely assumed to come from the same oral testimonies that spawned the writings in the first place.
[b]
c.) There are contradictions and errors in the New Testament.[/b]

There are two ways to respond to this and neither of them pose a problem to the faith:
1. “No there ain’t!”People in this camp do interpretational gymnastics in order to arrive at a possible harmonization or solution to any “alleged” problem in the texts. And they are successful. There is not one problem posed that this camp has not addressed in a plausible manner.
2. “So what if there are?”People in this camp find the prior camp’s explanations improbable. They argue that the little flaws and difficulties actually contribute to a greater reliability of the text. A diversity of testimonies, all telling the same basic story, might have oppositional or contradictory details, but this just demonstrates that the agreed upon story was not fabricated or rehearsed. In most cases, the problems are extremely minute. In the other cases, the problems are argued to be intentional, thereby conveying a deeper truth under inspiration. In no case is the Gospel itself compromised.

[b]d.) The documents contain miracles, which are maximally improbable.[/b]

How we be expected to believe in impossible events?
This is not a real objection, nor is it an honest question; it is a statement. If you believe miracles are impossible, no amount of evidence will convince you that one has occurred. But since we’ve already demonstrated the reasonability of belief in God, we should have no problem discerning his supernatural interventions, if enough evidence supports them. There have been many such interventions documented throughout history, contrary to the claims of atheists. Several of them are very credible. Of course, to the atheist, since God does not exist, miracles are impossible from square one. For the theist, all that is required is an extraordinary level of credibility and a lack of any more reasonable explanations. And this is exactly what Christians argue for in the case of the Gospel.

[b]e.) Parallels to Christ exist in other ancient myths and religions.[/b]

Isn’t it obvious that Christianity just mashed other religions together to produce a largely – if not entirely – fictional god-man?
No.
[i]First, [/i]we already know that the Gospel goes back to the time of the original events. Not only would witnesses have objected, but nobody have a motive for joining yet another new religious cult.
[i]Second,[/i] we have multiple accounts from multiple witnesses on the same events, all corroborating the same basic story.
[i]Third,[/i] there is more textual evidence for the Gospels (that is, sheer volumes of ancient copies) than there is for any other person or event in ancient history.
[i]Fourth,[/i] upon closer examination, many of the alleged parallels are in fact not as similar to the Gospels as skeptics would have us believe.
[i]Fifth,[/i] although the “parallel” religions themselves pre-dated Christianity, our only records of parallels to the life of Christ in these religions are dated after Christianity had begun its rapid spread. In other words, it makes more sense to believe that the religions in question copied Christianity’s “recipe for success” than vice-versa.

[i][b]Jesus is Lord: The Only Reasonable Option[/b][/i]

We have answered the objections. The only reasonable option left is that Jesus was and is God. It accounts for:
The existence and perseverance of the Church
The Church’s rapid growth in spite of loss sustained by members
The speed of documentary authorship and duplication
The quality of the documents circulated
The basic agreement of all documents (even false ones)
The accuracy of the documents and their attention to “little details”
The documents’ inclusion of audacious weaknesses for the sake of truth
The documents’ radical new theology
The number of witnesses contemporary to the documents
Archeological verifications of the documents
Fulfillment of prophecy in the documents
Ad-hominem attacks of contemporary objectors.
The theological brilliance of the Gospel
Impact of the Gospel: changed world, changed lives

[u][b]STEP 3[/b][/u]

1. Peter is clearly portrayed as the leader of the New Testament Church, and this is corroborated by the Early Church Fathers.

2. Peter is given the keys of the kingdom, indicating a perpetual office that exists to retain the unity of the Church in the king's directly visible absence.

3. The Catholic Church indeed traces through history an unbroken line of successors to Peter.

4. The Catholic Church has BY FAR contributed MORE good to humanity (in every field!) than any other institution.

5. The Catholic Church has the most (the only?) credible miracle stories in her history.


IN SUMMARY:

1. There is a God.
2. God did become Man as Jesus.
3. Jesus founded the Catholic Church.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Jon' post='1689248' date='Oct 30 2008, 11:54 AM'][color="#000080"]
Hello Paladin D,

Hope I'm not too late to post to you - I didn't read the previous posts bec of time -but will later.

May I humbly say, Jesus did not come here to start a religion - who cares what religion someone belongs to - true/untrue ---Do they love the Lord? Do you love the Lord ? Do you love them as yourself ---you get the picture ---life is simple - Jesus gave 2 commandments.
Who cares - just love.

Focus on the Lord, love Him, love others - it all falls into place when we seek Him and His Kingdom first. Do that for even a week -see what happens.
If man would focus his mind - ohhh the things he could accomplish. It's all so simple. Man tries so hard to complicate things. Don't you find?

Love and God bless you,
Jon[/color][/quote]

If we believe that:

a) God is Truth and Jesus is God

and

b) Loving Jesus means obeying Jesus

and

c) Jesus gave us seven sacraments in which to receive Him from One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church that he founded

then

d) we owe it to our Lord and ourselves to be in full communion with that Church.

[Paladin D]

Wow guys, I really appreciate the amount of responses I've been getting, thank you!

[b]Zigg[/b], did you take philosophy? Considering this is your material that you have used in your "talks", are you a Catholic speaker of some sorts?

[Noel's angel]

I've tried every argument under the sun, but if people don't want to believe, they'll just argue back that there is 'no proof'.

So now I just say, 'If I had to rely on absolute proof to justify my faith, it wouldn't be called faith at all.' I also point out that if my belief is in fact based on something that doesn't exist, I haven't lost out because I'll just die and rot in the ground, but if they are wrong...well..let's just say, uh oh.

In my experience, people don't ask these questions because they want answers. They ask to see if they can catch you out.

[Ziggamafu]

[quote name='Paladin D' post='1695911' date='Nov 6 2008, 04:20 PM']Wow guys, I really appreciate the amount of responses I've been getting, thank you!

[b]Zigg[/b], did you take philosophy? Considering this is your material that you have used in your "talks", are you a Catholic speaker of some sorts?[/quote]

I've spoken locally from time to time, whenever I've gotten an invite (both before and after I entered into full communion with the Church). I've recently decided to advertise myself, however. My posts come from a couple of talks I gave over the past three weeks - my first in quite some time. I am a theology major, but philosophy represents a good chunk of my credits. I do hope to eventually achieve an epistemology PhD and teach at a university.

[tinytherese]

[reyb]

[quote name='Paladin D' post='1688146' date='Oct 28 2008, 03:00 PM']"How do you know your way (religion) is the right way (true)?"[/quote]
[indent]For a believer, his religion is always the true religion but, if you really want to know where you are, who you are and what you are hoping then, you must see and hear God Himself. There is no difference between ‘Nirvana’ of Buddhism and ‘Coming of Christ’ in Christianity and Islam. [/indent]

[Tinkerlina]

[quote name='Paladin D' post='1688146' date='Oct 28 2008, 04:00 PM']Recently, someone I know who was raised Catholic, is now going to a Methodist church, but is thinking about registering with my local Catholic parish, brought up this question:

"How do you know your way (religion) is the right way (true)?"

The context was not so much having to do with which Christian sect contains the fullness of truth, but in a broader sense to include all religious beliefs. It's easier to make such a case within the context of Christianity, but it's much more difficult (at least for me) to make a case for Catholicism compared to non-Christian religions. There are so many religions that claim (or partly claim) to be "the way", does this mean ours is just another religion lost in the mix? How do we stand out?

Are there any tips on how to approach this, and/or reasons to give?[/quote]

I don't know if mine is anymore. I'm feeling very lost. I guess the best thing we can do is pray abou tit. -Katie

[Tinkerlina]

[quote name='Tinkerlina' post='1714805' date='Nov 30 2008, 03:14 PM']I don't know if mine is anymore. I'm feeling very lost. I guess the best thing we can do is pray abou tit. -Katie[/quote]

You know, I apologize for the previous post. It's not helpful to anyone and I shouldn't have posted it.

I can empathize with people who ask that question though, it is often very difficult to accept any religion, even one's own. -Katie

[tinytherese]

[quote name='Tinkerlina' post='1715222' date='Nov 30 2008, 07:19 PM']You know, I apologize for the previous post. It's not helpful to anyone and I shouldn't have posted it.

I can empathize with people who ask that question though, it is often very difficult to accept any religion, even one's own. -Katie[/quote]

Most people (myself included) go through at least one time where we really question our faith. It's nothing abnormal, but is a time for growth.