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philia
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| Joined: | Mon May 12th, 2008 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 16 |
| First Name: | Sophia | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | universal agnostic, marxist, pantheist, marxist again, non-marxist hegelian, atavistic polytheist, ... |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 02:02 am |
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One thing I notice is that most people here have been Christian before. But I have never been Christian. I was not brought up Christian, and most of my short (nearly 22 years) life I was antagonistic to Christianity. Needless to say though a lot has changed… I have been backwards and forwards through time in philosophy, when I awoke to the world of ideas I was a child of the enlightenment pure and simple. My entire thought process was stuck in the 1700 and 1800’s and I idealised that time.
Then I jumped forward and became a Marxist at age 11 (sometimes I wonder if somehow I have permanantly stunted my ability to relate to human beings by focusing the energies of my adolescence on chasing ideas rather than boys), which is not so big a leap from enlightenment thought as some libertarians might like to claim. I think I became a Marxist because I was rich and upper-middle class at a state school (my parents went to private(uk public) schools and wished to spare me their bad experience) full of working and lower middle class kids, this made me want to compensate for my being privileged – but Marxism offered me more than that, it offered me a whole system to explain the world with.
By the time I was near the end of my final Marxist phase I had very little interest in the working class per-say. I was interested in solving the “problem of philosophy” and participating in “history”. Somehow my method of reconciliation with the working class had brought me to an odd philosophical elitism which left me vulnerable to attack from Nietzschean philosophy. I finally gave up communism one day when I read a work by Adorno, who explained very cleverly and most convincingly that one could not believe Nietzsche and be a socialist. I was indeed convinced and was so forced to abandon socialism. Despite giving up socialism I was still heavily influenced by Hegel and his concept of “geist”. Unfortunately combining Nietzsche and Hegel brought me close to another philosopher (who despite everything I do believe I learned from) – Giovanni Gentile, infamous for being “the philosopher of fascism” and loyal to Mussolini even during the disastrous Salò Republic.
I will be honest, I suppose ideologically, though not actively I was for a short time a fascist. But in retrospect it was more as a way to purge myself of all the assumptions I had taken for granted as true when I was a Marxist. Everything that had then seemed self evident I questioned and eventually I came away from both Marxism and fascism and most importantly – from the idea that political change can save humanity or serve for us as the higher purpose of our existence.
I spent a brief time wallowing in cheap eastern mysticism, westernised buddhism as well as Julius Evola, Rene Guenon and the like believing I could divorce them from their far-right overtones. I built up a vaguely polytheistic tribalistic worldview, and unable to give up the temptations of politics entirely became a loud advocate of subsidiarity (something I still am!) and distributism – which as it turns out, although I did not know it at the time, was largely developed out of Catholic social theory.
When I had seen the world polytheistically it was because as I put it “does the world look like the product of one overarching will, or of multiple conflicting wills?” An argument addressed quite neatly by the idea that God gives his creatures free will.
I slowly came to monotheism – via existentialism and nihilism – because I came to really understand Nietzsche – after all these years of adoring him – when I really got into another writer who came after him, Emil Cioran. And threw this writer, and threw Nietzsche – I discovered – in an utterly and terrifyingly visceral way what “the death of God” really meant, for me as an individual, and for human society. And at first, like Sartre I tried to say that despite that, despite the fact that we need God to exist, he doesn’t.
But several things conspired to change my mind. First of all, I started to develop and unchosen conviction that God did exist. I did so because of beauty. I really cannot explain it better than that, the existence of beauty, of the human faculty to appreciate beauty, and the human faculty to yearn for eternity – that God must exist. Where else would we get such faculties?
Then alongside that I …adjusted Pascal’s Wager a little. Pascal’s Wager is that if we bet on God existing we go to heaven, if we don’t we lose nothing. This is unsatisfying, it comes across as selfish for one, and it denies the contradictory exclusivist claims of other religions too. I rather made a square shown below:
This doesn’t fix all the problems of Pascal’s Wager but for me it shows that the key issue is not one of “do we get to heaven” but “what are our duties? What duties do we risk leaving unfulfilled?” clearly it seems to me that in either case a wrong decision has dire consequences. However another thing was biasing me to the God idea…
…I was coming to the conclusion that without a monotheistic god, there can be no objective morality. I still have yet to be convinced otherwise. Of course something that is not God can serve as this god. That is the arbiter and final authority. For instance – if there is such a thing as natural law, but no such thing as God, natural law becomes god. If there is such a thing as truth, but no such thing as God, truth becomes god – that is the absolute authority. If anything is objective – god exists even if God doesn’t.
So I became convinced of the reality of god because I was not capable of accepting a world without truth. However I was a long way from being convinced of the Christian God.
To get to why I became convinced of the Christian God and the divinity of Jesus Christ… we have to go back to my flirtations with fascism and with Julius Evola, Rene Guenon and those who are termed the “radical traditionalists”. I think, even now I learned a lot from them about authority, the validity of hierarchy and about the dangers of the modern worldview and progressivism especially, but they were wrong about a lot of things, dangerously so. They are like very right wing, ultra-conservative new agers – as opposed to the fluffy love and light types that you usually encounter. They are tremendously elitist and they justify all manner of horrible things in the name of that elitism. Evola sacrificed compassion for a distorted and twisted concept of ultramasculinity. Guenon was more meditative than that, his problem is that despite warning against relativism and modernism and all that sort of stuff – he is still taken in by it in his attempt to create a “Sophia Perennis” and in the process of actively rejecting living Tradition for an imaginary “tradition” patchwork quilt made up of all the parts he likes of the religions he studied. He is in that regard as bad as those he condemned. But what really made me think about Christianity, really consider it – and reject once and for all Pagan Atavisms (and believe me, it was – it IS – painful. I still hurt to think of them cutting down Thor’s Oak all those centuries ago – even though from my vantage point in history I can never know really what that Oak meant…) was to observe the people calling for these pagan atavistic movements, who believed Wodan would come back to save the North-European peoples, his children – and realise how …um, I hate to use so strong a word, but evil their ideas were. How power mad, how brutal, how utterly lacking in caritas or mercy. I saw in myself this hideous lust for honour and glory and heroism – which I do not entirely wish to neglect (but rather to sublimate, to turn it from the glory of violence, to the glory of agape in the name of the Lord) – and the more I watched these people, the more I realised I could have no part in their desires and no part in their community. So I left and I was adrift (around the same time I was contemplating God from a vantage point of existentialism) and then in dawned on me that soulless rationalism/empiricism was on one side, pagan atavism on the other – but in the middle lay something different – and something beautiful, and that was Medieval Christendom. Between Barbarian Europe and Secular Europe – it lay like a muddy jewel.
And I know I romanticise it a bit – believe me, I am aware it was a difficult time to live and people were as bad and prone to folly and sin, then as ever – but it has something that both Secular Modernity that followed it and the Pagan world that preceded it lacked – and that is the awareness that it sinned! Because pagans and secularists alike do not admit as much – right and wrong do not exist to them, except perhaps as social mores, but never as objective fact. No-one else but the Christians ever made a virtue out of weakness. That is how I was convinced.
As for Catholicism specifically, I was sure that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church was either the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church (as much as I’d have loved it to be the High Church Anglicans so I could revel in jingoistic nationalism :p). The Orthodox Church was frankly more attractive to me – but it is not one and it is defiantly not catholic, not just in name but in practice – every encounter with them has caused me embarrassment over their nationalism and xenophobia (yeah I know I said I liked nationalism, but its not a good thing  ). That only left the Catholics.
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Sophia M.
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CajunRick
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
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| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 02:19 am |
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That's quite a journey, Sophia. Welcome to the forum.
If I may ask, where are you now on your faith journey? Have you become Catholic, or are you considering it? Have you begun formal instruction?
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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philia
Member
| Joined: | Mon May 12th, 2008 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 16 |
| First Name: | Sophia | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | universal agnostic, marxist, pantheist, marxist again, non-marxist hegelian, atavistic polytheist, ... |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 02:23 am |
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Not very far I am afraid. I have asked, but they are very busy at the Church and don't really have much time to help me.
Funnily enough that was going to be another post I was going to make (its why I was looking for forums like this) but I got distracted typing it up and typed up how I came to my conclusions and it was even longer than it is now - so I split it.
I was going to post the other half in a second XD.
I posted it there: http://www.chnetwork.org/forums/view_topic.php?id=3987&forum_id=7
I was not sure what sub-forum was most appropriate.
Last edited on Tue May 13th, 2008 02:27 am by philia
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Sophia M.
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CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 5353 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 02:43 am |
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philia wrote: I was not sure what sub-forum was most appropriate.
It's part of your ongoing faith journey, so I moved it back to Conversion Stories where it will accompany this thread.
Spring is a very busy month in many parishes with Easter, First Communion, Confirmation, weddings, end of the school year, etc. Things should settle down shortly. Be persistent and don't feel that they are willfully ignoring you. Jesus wants you to find the Truth in his Church. Don't settle for anything less.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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philia
Member
| Joined: | Mon May 12th, 2008 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 16 |
| First Name: | Sophia | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | universal agnostic, marxist, pantheist, marxist again, non-marxist hegelian, atavistic polytheist, ... |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 02:45 am |
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Yeah, I first wrote to them in January, but I was too shy to go down to visit till recently. I don't blame them or anything.
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Sophia M.
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Credo Catholic
Member
| Joined: | Sat May 5th, 2007 |
| Location: | Greenville, South Carolina USA |
| Posts: | 1400 |
| First Name: | Marsha | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Baptist, Catholic |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 02:19 pm |
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| Hi Sophia, welcome to the forum! Now I won't pretend here that I understand everything you've said, because everyone knows I'm not a scholar or a philosopher! But I do understand when someone is looking desparately for that narrow path that leads us to the Lord. And it seems that all other paths sooner or later end up at a dead end. So we are very glad to have you here, and we look forward to your questions and comments. God bless
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Annie
Banned
| Joined: | Wed Feb 14th, 2007 |
| Location: | Columbus, Ohio USA |
| Posts: | 731 |
| First Name: | Annie | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | nothing, Quaker, Mennonite, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Catholic |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 03:14 pm |
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By the way, Sophia, you are better off with ideas than boys.   
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Annie
Ora et labora
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Ave_Girl
Moderator
| Joined: | Wed Nov 7th, 2007 |
| Location: | Ohio USA |
| Posts: | 173 |
| First Name: | Mary Clare | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Cradle Catholic |
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Posted: Tue May 13th, 2008 03:27 pm |
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Welcome for the forum Sophia!
Just wanted to say hello and that after reading your post I see you might possibly be interested in Quo Vadis. It's the Coming Home Network's organization for young adults who are interested in the Catholic Church. We help young people by means such as a website (http://www.quovadisyouth.org), monthly e-newsletters on topics regarding the Catholic Church, weekly chats, a section of this forum and we also pair people on the journey to the Catholic Church with helpers to assist them with their inquiries about the faith.
Feel free to check us out!
God bless and I'm excited you found us.
Last edited on Tue May 13th, 2008 03:33 pm by Ave_Girl
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~Mary Clare Piecynski~
Coming Home Network Staff
740-450-1175 ext 105
maryp@chnetwork.org
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philia
Member
| Joined: | Mon May 12th, 2008 |
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Posts: | 16 |
| First Name: | Sophia | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | universal agnostic, marxist, pantheist, marxist again, non-marxist hegelian, atavistic polytheist, ... |
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Posted: Wed May 14th, 2008 08:20 pm |
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Credo Catholic:
Aww, don't say that. I am pretty sure if I said anything you can't understand its because I have a tendency to forget that just because I have read something doesn't mean everyone has. I am ceirtainly no scholar or philosopher. I am not even at university yet due to much indescision over what to do having left school and basically quitting a lot of things I have tried. I am going to go in the autumn though to do Medieval History (not philosophy XD I like philosophy but I say "I am not a historian so I can't really say this with confidence but..." so often that I think perhaps it is time to become a historian so I can say stuff about history with confidence - or at least as much as it is possible to have - basically though I just want to do it so I can look at really reaaaally old books, if I were better at music I'd want to be a music historian - but my music literacy is terrible these days).
Other paths leading to a dead end, yeah... exactly. They are all exhaustable when we need the inexhaustable. I was thinking about how totally unsatisfying the idea of the superman is as a replacement for God. How totally unsatisfying and horrifying the idea of progress as a replacement for God. How even an abstract God is not quite satisfying, even though its easier to believe.
Annie:
Tell that to my mother please! If I have to hear that if I "don't get a boyfriend right now" then I will "die an old spinster and never get to have children" one more time... It is not like I am not aware that fertility has a peak period and that I do need to get on it, but having missed the whole adolescent exploration phase I don't even know how to talk to members of the opposite sex and the second they show interest in me I feel like I am leading them on and break off all contact - because I don't know how to navigate those waters. I am sort of trapped in that regard, I don't talk to males because I don't know the rules of play, and I don't know the rules because I never talk to males.
A guy told me I shouldn't feel like if I talk to a man that means I owe them something, that they hope for something, but I don't owe it to them and they won't resent me if I don't give it to them - but it still seems safer to me to just stay away. I do hope my attitude changes before my fertility runs out though.
Ave_Girl:
Yeah I looked at that site. You know for those chat time, how does it translate to English time? (we are GMT but British Summer Time right now).
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Sophia M.
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Dave Armstrong
Network Apologist
| Joined: | Fri Nov 2nd, 2007 |
| Location: | Melvindale, Michigan USA |
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Posted: Wed May 14th, 2008 08:32 pm |
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| Thanks for sharing your interesting story, Sophia, and welcome to the forum. We're here to give you support and encouragement and to help you better understand and accept Catholic teaching.
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I'm happy to offer whatever theological & personal assistance I can. My blog, Biblical Evidence for Catholicism, contains 2000+ papers & web pages (absolutely free) & 16 apologetic books (for sale):
http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/
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