"The ability to choose has to exist because only through it can man truly love."

Then how is heaven set up?

Brandon:

In truth you have adopted a fraudulent equivalence between the barking madness of the "something from nothing" atheist world view, and the resplendent, comprehensive truthfulness of the Catholic world view.

This false first principle leads, predictably, to the demolition of weak-as-a-kitten Catholic compromisers at the hands of firmly committed atheist "evangelists".

Your site is a very important demonstration of the catastrophic inadequacy of the ridiculous notion that common ground exists between Christ and the enemies of the gospel.

Please keep it up- we need to see the fruits of this approach.

Fr Sean should have worded it a bit better. God created conditions of freedom to choose between good and evil. The ability to choose has to exist because only through it can man truly love. No freedom- no love. And we chose poorly. No mistake on God's part, only on ours.

Thanks Father, all is well. I have sent you an email in any event.

Hi GreatSilence,
I checked my e-mail but didn't see an e-mail from you. I would love to help you through your faith difficulties, so if you just want to e-mail me i'm confident i can help. just go to my website at 2fish.co . then go to the "contact" button, then go to the "ask a priest" button. I'll be looking for your e-mail and am confident i can help you discern the source of your doubts. In the Subject box just put "GreatSilence" Be assured of my prayers!
Fr.Sean

But then, all of that may in any event be rather academic. Even though I have tried to walk away these last few days, I find myself unable to do so. It feels as if I am walking away from the most beautiful part of my life, where truth and love can really be found. I am clearly going through some crisis of faith, so I am going to leave you guys to continue with these wonderful debates while I go and kickbox with my demons. I will see you all later.

Hi Brandon, maybe before calling my post "disingenious" and then editing it, but retaining the "misleading", you could have asked me for an explanation. The account was a joint one, which we used in a little business a few of us ran together. The atheist comments were run by a friend of mine, using that account. He no longer bothers with comments on the internet, so I thought it would be acceptable simply to use the same account here, having changed whatever name he previously used to "Great Silence", the name I have been using for inter alia my Twitter account. But your acceptance or approval is not important, but you claim to want to be "clear on the facts", so let's do so. You really should have that passive aggression of yours seen to, it is not doing this project of yours any favors.

I guess so. To me, it would seem extremely implausible for someone to comment for several years as a vigilant atheist, and then someday suggest it was all a guise and that he really *was* a believer the whole time, but *now* he's decided to become an atheist, thanks to this website.

That's the way my comments were for the first few years, but again, I can't speak for GreatSilence...

If you read his comments, which you can do by clicking on his Disqus name, it's clear they weren't of an exploratory nature. He was already a convinced unbeliever who sought to disprove the faith of others.