This is a defense of our Catholic faith that is taking place on our Catholic Brothers For Christ Youtube account where we posted the videos from the 2015 North Texas Catholic Men’s Conference. Father Larry Richards’ “Be A Man” video seems to be causing quite a bit of controversy.
25EllisDee25 response to +Catholic Brothers For Christ: All religions are corrupt. You know what keeps me from doing wrong to others? Not religion. I do not need a bible to tell me what the difference is between right and wrong. I have a conscience for that. The whole concept of religion was invented as a means to control others, and make them accept a life of poverty, believing they were making an investment in the afterlife. Greed is the mother of religion. If you think you are not weak minded, why do you need religion at all? The entire concept is perverse. There is no evidence to support that belief. If there was, why faith? So given the lack of evidence, you are basing quite a lot on what other men have told you. It stretches the limits of credulity. It has all the hallmarks of a hoax. The biggest hoax ever played on mankind. I think its time to wake up and smell the coffee, and see that religion is cause for more harm than good in the world today, and in fact, was even the topic of a debate between xtians and atheists and easily found on youtube. a debate that was clearly won by the atheists.
+Catholic Brothers For Christ response to +25EllisDee25: It is true that all religions are corrupted by the sinners that inhabit them. Usually, the most corrupt rise to the top of the bureaucracy.
After all, the scum rises to the top when your stir the pond. The hierarchy of most religions control their members so they can live lives of luxury and pleasure on the backs of their subjects.
However, there is a huge difference between being religious and having a true faith and belief in God and His absolute laws. The gift of the Holy Spirit that allows true believes to live out their faith in real life comes only from God.
Not everyone receives the Holy Spirit, especially those who profess to be religious but live lives no different from the unbelievers. From your comments, I assume you are an avowed atheist. I have discovered atheists refuse to be members of any religion but their own.
They believe that, “Religion was invented as a means to control others, and that it makes them accept a life of poverty, believing they are making an investment in the afterlife.” I used to believe the very same thing.
I was raised Catholic but back in 1967-1971, I attended Revelle College at UCSD on La Jolla campus in San Diego. It was a liberal college that set out to destroy my Catholic faith. We were required to take courses in the humanities, specifically communism and socialism.
The courses were taught by real socialist, liberal professors. Of course, rebellion against parents, the laws of society and faith sounded great.
I was a horny teenage boy, ready for as much sex, pot and psychedelics that I could get. What do you need faith and God for if they make you feel guilty for giving into the sensual pleasures life had to offer in abundance? “Yeah man, I was ready to dump faith, God, holiness and become a sinner with gusto.”
Soon, I denied God and dove into the muddied waters of secularism and relativism. I experienced atheism, satanism, hedonism, Buddhism and many more faiths ending in “ism”. Sadly, I felt lost, desperate, confused and eventually hopeless. No pleasures, material possessions or relationships brought extended periods of happiness….definitely NO PEACE!
Personal fulfillment was as much a fiction and hell and heaven.
Thankfully, days before I committed suicide because of the moral darkness and despair, a direct result of atheism, a friend shared the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. God had mercy on me. I became a born again Christian, then a Reformed Calvinist, Protestant and ultimately back to the Catholic Church.
As an atheist, I debated Christians in an attempt to destroy their faith. I was pretty proficient at it. Most of the Christians I met were ignorant of the foundation of their faith and easy targets. They were quickly persuaded to join the Hippie Revolution and get involved in sex, drugs and rock and roll.
However, there was a nagging problem that haunted me as a atheist, “How do you know right from wrong if there is no God? If there is only evolution, am I just a conglomeration of cells that evolved from muck to molecules.”
The more I studied science and mathematics, the possibility that our human conscience evolved spontaneously is pretty remote….the statistics incomprehensible. If there is no intelligent designer of the universe, then it takes greater faith to be an atheist than a Christian.
However, for the sake of the discussion, what gives you the right to impose your concept of right and wrong on anyone else? Atheists believe anything they want. No one has the right to judge them.
Individuals with faith in God and His laws have a firm foundation of shared belief and the teaching of the Bible and Church. The bottom line is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Luke 10:27
Catholics are called by God to lay our lives down for others…take up our crosses and follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who was a suffering servant. World-wide, there is no other organization that accomplishes so much. Catholics feed the hungry, care for the sick, provide shelter, clothing and educational opportunities for the poor.
Atheists agree there are no absolutes. Honest atheists admit that the concept of right and wrong is purely subjective. That is why they have great hatred for God, His laws and Christians.
Atheists demand total freedom with no constraints. They want to force all religions to accept atheism as the social standard or there are dire legal and financial consequences.
I personally believe in loving others and making the world a better place by laying my life down for others. I feel there has always been room for one more hypocrite in the Catholic Church. That is why I joined up to become a Catholic after studying and experiencing many of the different religions for over 60 years! (-: