The purpose of this page is to get people to Christ. That's it.
Rules:
disclaimer: im not a priest
I was "raised Catholic". Like many suburban Catholics, this is almost meaningless. It amounts to attending Mass and being Confirmed. Our religious education does not prepare us to defend our faith. It barely teaches us to memorize traditions.
After highschool I somehow ended up watching an episode of The Atheist Experience and found myself agreeing with basically everything that was being said. Fast forward, and I'm watching it weekly, watching TheAmazingAtheist and other "skeptics", reading Dawkins(The God Delusion) and Hitchens(God is Not Great) and Russell(Why I Am Not a Christian), etc. Oh man, I think I-- yeah, I read Sam Harris too. Cringe. What was the book... "The End of Faith" Ohhohohoho man. Okay, I'm sorry. I don't regret any of it, because it's good to expose yourself to ideas. I definitely regret acting like a jackass, though.
No-one was more of a hardcore atheist than I was. I annoyed the everloving shit out of everyone around me. I knew all the arguments, I understood all the logical fallacies. I debated countless people online over the course of a few years, just racking up theist scalps like such a total badass.
A favorite line of mine, and many atheists, was "Well I'd LOVE to believe in God, but I just *CAN'T* because I'm not convinced."
We don't know it when we say it, but this isn't true.
The year was 2016.
I don't want to make this too long. Basically, after Bernie Sanders had his cuck soul spirit cooked from his body, I started supporting Donald Trump as a joke. Many of us said we'd sooner go to him than Hildawg, and I did it. But it quickly stopped being a joke when I realized how fucking feeble the aruguments against him were. (Around this time I also accquired a disdain for journalists, weaselly language, and the word "horrifying") Sure, he wasn't promising me free shit, but so what? He wanted to build us a Big, Beautiful Wall, and the pearl clutching about "racism" for being realistic about our immigration issues no-longer affected me.
The night of the election, I watched on the New York Times website as the gauge sloooooowly moved from "HILLARY CLINTON 99%" all the way over to Trump. It was the funniest thing that ever happened, and it made me realize that miracles could happen. In half a year I went from an atheist Bernie Bro to a Semi-ironic Trump Supporting "Christian".
It started half-hearted and ironic. But I wanted to be sincere. And eventually, it became sincere. Because if you really want to identify as something, you just will.
That might not sound like such a great idea if you're still hung up on """logic"""(it's not btw, ur not really that smart). But you can't learn anything if you don't want to learn it. Imagine how hard it'd be to learn math if you'd already convinced yourself that math was wrong, because math being true would be unpleasant.
I could just post a bunch of cruel memes here, right? But I won't. (maybe just one, idk)
Really think about the kind of people who reject and hate Christianity. They list their mental illnesses so you don't even have to play armchair psychologist. They're depressed, they're weak, their relationships fall apart because they're based entirely on sex and there's nothing stronger tying them together. They don't have children because children cost money and they need their money to buy plastic crap for their plastic lives. Their entire lives are just excuses to reject tradition and embrace the path of what they perceive to be the least resistance.
It's all petty, trivial, meaningless shit.
I know. #NotAll. You can totally "reason" your way into a secular good(Christian) life. Accepting Christianity from the start just happens to make it about 100x easier.
I'm not going to argue against other religions. I'm only arguing for Christianity.
Arguments against Christianity are largely moral ones, and not really that good.
1- Choose to be. You literally just have to want it. That's step 1. This involves swallowing your pride. For me, it was easy (I'm so very very modest) But that's it. Pride is sin, and it's so obviously evil that even if Christianity were completely wrong, pride would still be transparently demonic. Accepting that you're not perfect is one of the healthiest things a person can do. A lot of people would accept that previous sentence in a casual talk-- but if you add the religious context to it, they'll get very defensive. That's probably because while we might own up to some faults, there's plenty of sins that we don't want to face--typically ones named by Christianity. This, of course, comes from pride. Consider why you're OK with that monster from Courage the Cowardly dog saying "you're not perfect", but when a Priest tells you that, it's horrifyingly abusive to your mental health.
2- Get comfortable with the idea of faith. Get over the idea of "proof" and accept that everything ultimately amounts to Christian faith or Atheist solipsism. If you're a redditbrain, you'll never be "satisfied" with the "evidence" for why you should be a Christian instead of someone who believes we're aliens living in a simulation. It's really just your choice. You could also just be a nihilist, but nihilists are frankly subhuman.
3- Accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior-- his sacrifice saves you from what you deserve for being such an idiot loser. It's easy to think we don't deserve Hell, less or moreso depending on what your idea of Hell even is (ultimately doesn't matter imo), and there's an idea that Christ's sacrifice doesn't satisfy our modern conception of "justice", but the atheist thought of these things, as always, amounts to "I don't think it's fair, so it's not true." That's not how logic works.
4- That's it, congrats, you're a Christian. Well, you know, kinda. Now go to Church and follow Christ's teachings. Do your best.
Feel free to reach out, but since I went through my atheist phase already, I'm not interested in whatever you think I haven't seen before. I've seen it. Other Christians/wannabe-Christians welcome. Suggestions welcome.