That's to say, what convinced you your religion was the correct one, and which arguments swayed you in favor of them over materialistic/nihilist ones?
Asing because I've had an interest in the faith for a while and grew up a protestant but fell out of the faith pretty quickly. It's not like I'm exactly the chad hedonist or anything, but I'm just not religious anymore. It's a nice thought, but nice thoughts don't count for much.
That said, I'm still interested in what erased the doubt for others, even if I don't have that comfort myself.
Well, I just read the Bible out of curiosity. Then I stepped into an Orthodox church. The Divine Liturgy was basically exactly what's in the Bible but in a dynamic format. I had to come back… and again… and again… then, oopsie, I ended up getting baptized and chrismated. Yeah, I don't really have solid philosophical, intellectual, or spiritual reasons to be a Christian. It's simply the truth. The resurrection has happened, the early Church testifies to this, and today the Church manages to express the worship and theology contained in the books of the Bible in an extremely correct way.
John Cruz
feels good
Matthew Garcia
There is no leap of faith. I know in God, I never had to take that so called "leap". That in itself is weak faith.
Xavier Hall
And you don't have to. Not every believer is called to be a super intellectual youtube debater that can answer every question directed at their faith by atheists and heathens. It's those with the simple faith of children that enter the kingdom of heaven, not those puffed up with their own wisdom.
Juan Wilson
I think materialism is clearly false and I think the cosmological argument is compelling. The narrative of the Bible to me is extremely beautiful, whereby God keeps his promises to an unfaithful people again and again and again. Each time they fall into sin and each time when they repent God accepts them back as his children. When judgement time comes instead of punishing humanity with the punishment we deserve God says "I will accept this punishment on your behalf, because I love you". The Bible hits right to the core of what it is to be Human, our flaws and our constant desire to know the infinite that we keep trying to fill with meaningless worldly things.
After all what is it to be Human? What separates us from the apes? We don't just accept how things are and work within the world as it is like other animals. We see how things COULD be and we work to shape things into the form of higher truths that we can perceive. The natural law of the jungle by which animals live by is repulsive to us. We create laws and rules to live by that do not exist in the natural world, but we know they're right because we understand the virtues of justice, compassion, equality and that the human form in some way is not just matter shaped into a specific form but instead the image of the divine.
God certainly exists, of that there is no doubt and we met Him in the person of Jesus Christ. The ideal man who exhorted us to move beyond just animalistic fleshly desires and seek higher truths, union with God that is what every person desires most dearly within their soul.
Landon Fisher
This is true. Every person knows instinctively that God exists. All you need to do is recognize that instinctive knowledge and not try to rationalize it. Nobody needs to justify their faith before anyone but God.
Parker Butler
As a child I had a vision of a young man and his sister discussing the same argument for God Aquinas made. This was years before I knew Aquinas made the same argument. I don't seem to experience the """option""" of faith other people do. God will give me a vision telling me how things are, or confront me with undeniable evidence from random source answering a question I had yesterday. I don't have the option of faith. God tells me the way things are in a way I can't deny. This is why so many people with their "struggle" with faith and silly contradicting politically correct beliefs just seem like nonsensical automatons having their folly to me. I suppose I could deny the truths I don't like if I really wanted to, maybe that's what these fools do and that's why they look so silly.
I think the leap of faith analogy sometimes makes folks think that it's a quick mental decision to accept Christianity. It was a longer process for me and there are temptations to stray away from it all the time, it's not exactly comfortable or easy to deal with sometimes. We're always prone to asking ourselves why we're doing this when the results aren't exactly clear, and seeking a quick answer hasn't been helpful to me. I've found that living the faith is the only real answer to such a personal question. You can certainly use reason to make an argument for the faith and that side of the discussion is important, but Christianity has no room for neutrality, so at a certain point you have to put it into practice. For me that was an important step and things clear up more and more, to the point where you develop that sense of confidence.
