Reasons: for Faith, doubt, Protestantism, suffering . . .
As mankind, particularly those members of the race of man located in western Europe became more intellectually focused and enlightened they began in many instantances to doubt the spiritually focused Catholic Church and sometimes any spiritual belief at all. The fact that the Church seemed to behave in a less than holy manner helped facilitate doubt in her.
Christianity & the Enlightenment: While the Enlightenment is generally viewed as a positive turn of events in western Civilization it had repercussions that weakened religious belief for reasons other than the idea that enlightened people are just too smart to believe in ancient myth. Christians believe in the value of many of the scientific advances of the modern age that were triggered by the opening of minds during that period. The problem is that as man began to question everything unseen by either the human eye or scientific instruments he also began to question Christianity because God could not be seen. This doubt even went to the extent of ignoring what evidence of Christianity existed. There followed from this questioning of the existence of God a belief in relativism which states that truth is defined by each individual according to their personal beliefs. Following from this dangerous idea is the more dangerous concept that there are no universal truths like good and evil. This belief system states that good and evil, right and wrong, and similar concepts are true only to each individual's ideas of such concepts. In other words, there are no universal truths; if there is no God then there are no rules. Obviously this relativism is anti-Christian as Christianity believes that a Creator God holds mankind to a certain moral standard. Unfortunately, RELATIVISM is a driving force, if not the driving philosophy, of our current age.
Catholicism & Protestantism: Another result of the Enlightenment and its focus on logical thought and empirical evidence is the attack on supernatural, spiritual elements by rebels within the Catholic Church and outside it from offshoot, Protestant churches. Anti -Catholic views, that were born during the Reformation and fueled in part by the Renaissance, were ever more reinforced during the Enlightenment. Much of the conflict between Protestants and Catholics revolves around the former viewing Catholic spiritual beliefs and practices as illogical. This causes them to view certain words of Christ as symbolic while Catholics take them literally. The classic example of this is the Eucharist communion bread and wine which is viewed by Catholics as truly transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ in a miracle. The modern, practical mind can't handle this idea, even the minds of other Christians. Catholics simply say that if you believe he is God then you believe what he says. Furthermore, if he meant it (the communion) symboliocally why was the language so graphic "take this and chew it" and why did he let so many of his followers leave when the whole discussion repulsed them. He could have said that he meant it only symbolically and they would have stayed. Interestingly, I can grasp these miracles the Eucharist being Christ but appearing to be bread and wine; the concept of Father, Son & Holy Spirit in one person; a virgin birth; the parting of the Red Sea; and many more after years of science fiction shows such as Star Trek. The scenarios in such shows that purport to be a logical human future with different physical laws in play in other parts of the universe than the laws we are used to has conditioned me to believe that anything may be possible. Therefore, nothing should be impossible for God. Many very practical thinking people believe that God cannot exist because they have no proof; however, scholars have proposed the existence of many things before those things were ultimately discovered. Just as scientists suspect that different physical laws control other possible universes or plains of existence, could not different laws control the spiritual world in just the way we see in the Bible. How can logical scholars accept their own educated guesses about the total scope of existence, while they reject the spiritual world that we have some evidence of. Such evidence is found in the Bible, a text that has a respectable level of validity, and in many occurrences throughout history down to our modern times. |