Posted on 03/22/2014 5:46:52 PM PDT by Diago
While I had doubts about the existence of God before entering college, I considered myself a Christian and checked off the Protestant Methodist box on my application. Still, I had some apprehension in attending Boston College—a religious, Jesuit, Catholic institution. So, it came much to my surprise that nearly as soon as I stepped on campus, my faith in Christianity and God started to wane.
I took both sections of Philosophy of the Person my first year at BC, not because I was interested in the subject, but solely as a means to fulfill the Core curriculum that’s a major part of BC’s Jesuit identity. I hadn’t previously taken a philosophy course, though I quickly came to enjoy the deep and abstract thinking required of the class as a contrast to the quantitative work present in my economics and finance courses.
We read a number of proofs for the existence of God, and as any good intro philosophy class allows, we examined each side of the argument. After both class discussions and my own thinking, I realized I sided more with arguments against God. I recall writing an essay disputing St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs of existence, my finishing line reading, “Couldn’t God have left more compelling evidence [for his existence]?” Little did I know this marked an important turning point in my educational journey—it was the first time I seriously considered the distinct possibility that God didn’t exist.
These thoughts continued during a two-semester Religious Quest class my sophomore year that compared Islam and Christianity. It was my first exposure to Islam besides what I’d seen and read in the news, and I also learned extensively about Christianity. Never before had I gained such a detailed perspective on the origins, sects, and traditions of the two religions. The power of community provided by each faith throughout history was immense, and based on their shared teachings of peace and worship, it was easy to see why each has thrived and accumulated millions of members worldwide.
A major point of the class was how similar the religions are, and indeed, they are more similar than I’d have ever thought. But by examining them so closely, I also studied their many differences. And those differences, most historians agree, have contributed to millions of deaths around the world—not only between the two religions (The Crusades), but also due to intra-religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants (30 Years’ War) and Sunni and Shiite Muslims (Iran vs. Saudi Arabia & Iraq).
After a great deal of reflection undertaken both as a requirement inside the classroom and on my own, I came away with two conclusions. One, no higher being would ever tolerate millions of people being killed over the right way to worship him. Two, the differences between each religion made it unlikely that followers of both could be accepted into the same afterlife, meaning that, if there were a God, millions would be left out of eternal life—in my view, an unjust punishment for having the “wrong” belief.
Due to those two required core classes, by the second half of my sophomore year I had enough qualitative reasons for not believing in God. A class I took the following semester supplied me with more technical explanations. I enrolled in evolutionary economics, a course that discussed how humans have developed certain traits through evolution. Evolutionary psychologists believe that sexual selection and preference has shaped much of how we behave today, explaining behaviors such as riskier tendencies in men compared to women, outward displays of fitness to attract mates, and, ultimately, the development of a creative and intelligent human mind.
As one can imagine, the class required intensive reflection on views of human behavior that we’d previously considered to be quite basic. We also expanded our knowledge by reading a number of evolutionary passages, including a section from Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene (emphasis on gene). His work, in addition to meticulously explaining how natural selection works down to the genetic level, offered a solid explanation of how life began without a creator.
By the end of the semester, I fully believed evolution as a fact for the first time. Further, as someone who finds the existence of God and evolution mutually exclusive, it was much harder for me to identify with the Christian faith. But I was not yet committed to saying I didn’t believe in God.
That changed the next semester, the first of my junior year. I registered for Philosophy of Existence to fulfill my minor in the subject—a route I would never have pursued had I gone to a different school. We studied a number of existentialist philosophers, some who based their philosophies in religion, and others who didn’t. Two of the latter were Sartre and Nietzsche, known atheist scholars. Sartre wrote that the essence of being human is being free, while Nietzsche famously said, “God is dead … and we have killed him.” They both provided a view of the world in which mankind had created the notion of God.
By the end of the class, and after deep contemplation, I finally realized what I truly believed—there is no God. Both the idea of a higher being, and the many religions of the world, were founded by man to inspire hope and influence human behavior.
Despite entering college as a Christian, two months from now I will graduate this Jesuit, Catholic school as an atheist. Ironically, the basis of that belief was developed in classes I was required to take based on Jesuit values and ideals —the education of the whole person through BC’s core curriculum. The Jesuits don’t teach students what to think. They teach them how to think. Above all else, that’s what college is for. And I’m grateful that I chose BC as the place to learn that.
Editor’s Note: The views presented in this column are those of the author alone and do not represent the views of The Heights.
Not surprised...You want to be secular, study human philosophy...You want to be a Christian, study the bible...
It however doesn’t have to be permanent...Could be some day God will rap his head up against a tree and he will allow a little light to shine in...
I think it would be funny, but they certainly wouldn’t publish it, of a student who wrote that when he entered school he was an atheist, but *despite* their efforts to reinforce his atheism, he became a Christian.
Perhaps go on a while about how he discovered atheists were weak and unhappy people, determined to inflict atheism on others precisely because they were wracked with doubts about their atheist beliefs. How they felt isolated and alone, leading useless and empty lives, and destined for nothingness.
Maybe conclude by saying how much his teachers must be disappointed in him. That instead of pursuing a meaningless existence, he now has the solace and succor of faith, and feels the warmth of love and purpose in his life.
Such a letter would bug the heck out of them.
LOL
You’ll be back ....
Riddle me this:
.
“Everything has a mathematical formula as well it’s existence for place and time are mathematically predictable.
Where did that math come from???”
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
I don't really have much hesitation to send my son, should he wind up there.
It's all in the preparation. My parents (and my wife's parents) had no idea that the culture had turned against them and their faith even by the 1950s (when our older siblings were very young). They thought that the culture would support them in raising their children Catholic. By the time they realized that they were losing their children to the culture wars, it was too late.
My wife and I saw what happened to our siblings. By the grace of God, we managed to hold onto our Catholic faith, cooperated with God to deepen it, and deepened our understanding of it. We prayed for more faith, and God never refused us.
When we had our own children, we were bound and determined that the most important part of our vocation as parents was to transmit the faith, bring our sons up in the faith, and equip them with everything they needed to keep the faith. We prayed a bunch, we homeschooled, and instead of merely giving them the intellectual and spiritual tools to defend their faith, we also taught them how to go on the offense for Jesus and His Gospel. My guys are Warriors for Jesus. Don't get in the way. It could be bloody.
My wife and I are blessed in that their intellectual faith is informed by real spiritual lives, alive by their relationship with God, Himself. Each of them has experienced the power and presence of God in their lives, and thus, they believe first-hand, so to speak, rather than merely on the witness of others.
But the best defense is a good offense. My older son is at a university that most would consider the belly of the Beast. He sought out the local Catholic community, joined the local Knights of Columbus council, got involved in serving others through the Knights and the local Catholic community, has found a competent confessor, and seemingly has far more effect on non-believers than they have on him.
Parents, you don't need to see your children go off to college to lose their faith. But you DO need to understand that transmitting the faith and giving your children all the moral, intellectual and SPIRITUAL gifts they need to sustain and grow their faith is the most important part of being a parent.
You cannot, of yourself, force the Holy Spirit to directly nourish them with a personal relationship with the Most Holy Trinity, but you can make sure that the Holy Spirit will have a clear field to do His thing. And he will. Every single time. Jesus promised.
And you have to start early. The earlier, the better. We started when we found out we were pregnant. We asked the Holy Spirit to come be with our children in the womb, and to never let them out of His care.
I know that it is God's will that we do NOT abandon the high places of our culture. It is NOT God's will that we cede institutions like Boston College to the enemy, but rather, that we do what we must to counter-invade and counter-attack, and make the enemy disgorge his ill-gotten gains. We must do battle and prepare our children for battle, as well.
For Catholic parents, finally, one really big piece of advice: pray the Rosary, teach your children to pray it, and pray it frequently with them.
Or Descartes.
Apparently he missed the forest for the trees.
All you really need to study is the salvation method of the two religions.
So facing a perfect Holy God, a God who knows no sin, which one do you thing will fly?
While I had doubts about the existence of God before entering college, I considered myself a Christian and checked off the Protestant Methodist box on my application. Still, I had some apprehension in attending Boston College—a religious, Jesuit, Catholic institution. So, it came much to my surprise that nearly as soon as I stepped on campus, my faith in Christianity and God started to wane
based on this I suspect this person was never a born again gave his life to Christ Christian but someone who’s parents were Christian and he went to church with them.
Myself, I prefer Jesus's call, "I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly."
The ONLY way to be sure of salvation is through Jesus Christ and His finished work on the Cross!
That’s not what Buddhism teaches.
I have trouble buying this whole account. Who ever really believed that someone taught them "how to think" ? This is nothing but a formula, and the whole article is nothing but cliches.
April 1st coming up soon! Boston College has prepared him to enthusiastically celebrate the annual atheists holiday, thanks to Jesuitical casuistry. (Psalms 14:1, 53:1; 1 Corinthians 2:14)
He was headed that way when he got there. Conclusion: Either (a) his professors didn’t really challenge his beliefs all that much or (b) they did and he wasn’t paying attention. Either of which is a problem, but they’re strictly speaking both separate from BC actively turning him into an atheist.
They don’t think. They half bake and emote. It is better if they focus on beer and the opposite sex rather than pretend to be profound.
>>Despite entering college as a Christian, two months from now I will graduate this Jesuit, Catholic school as an atheist. Ironically, the basis of that belief was developed in classes >>I was required to take based on Jesuit values and ideals —the education of the whole person through BC’s core curriculum. The Jesuits don’t teach students what to think. They teach them how to think. Above all else, that’s what college is for. And I’m grateful that I chose BC as the place to learn that.<<
Yep, classic Jesuit college education right there. Glad I was well versed in the Holy Scriptures before attending, Praise God! Made for some wild debates as the Profs and Jebbies defended the leftist secular atheist tripe. All this kid had to do was take the Liberation Theology course (which I was mislead into taking) and he would have left BC an atheist and a communist!
Yes avoid Jesuit universities they are NOT conservative and not Christian. One has to be strong in their beliefs to withstand their onslaught of liberalism.
Yes I noticed the selfishness too. However, he should be leaving this self proclaimed Jesuit Catholic college with a conviction of Christ, not the tools of denial. The young man entered as really agnostic or unconvinced or seeking. And what he found was the synagogue of Satan and not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Sure teach the stuff he learned but do so as Liberty University does it...as a means of developing apologetics in defense against the whiles of the devil and not embracing his equivocations.
Ah, maybe if he went to a real Christian school things would be different. Like one that is Christ focused and not evolutionary focused.
This was a Roman Catholic Jesuit University. Somehow Christ escaped the curriculum and Muslims and atheist philosophers were more prominent.
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