California Catholic Daily reporter, Mary Rose, visits a California college each week and asks students about God, good, and evil. Interview with Patty, who is studying philosophy and chemical engineering, outside the Student Affairs building at San Diego City College on April 29, 2019.

Do you consider yourself religious?

Patty: I guess. Well, reading the Bible. I don’t actually have a group. I just go solo style.

Do you think we’re supposed to follow the Bible and that the teachings of Jesus apply to us today?

Patty: I think they do apply today. I don’t know where I read it but it says that Jesus said not to judge others and I guess you can apply it anywhere even if you’re not religious. Why would I go judging the whole world if I don’t know their motives or their past?

If an atheist asked you why you believe in God, what would you say?

Patty: I have two examples. One, someone has to be better than us. There’s always somebody that’s better, somebody that’s worse. Two, take for an example technology. Somebody had to create technology in order for it to exist, so I think that everything has a creator and we had to come from somewhere, so why not?

Do you believe in an afterlife?

Patty: Yeah. I would take physics, for example, we’re like energy and the energy doesn’t get destroyed, it just transforms. So basically we die here, we’re transforming into something else. But I don’t know what the afterlife is, of course, but there should be an afterlife because we’re matter of energy.

Some Christians say abortion is wrong because the Bible says “Thou shalt not kill.” Other Christians say you shouldn’t judge and you should let women make their own decisions. What do you think about abortion?

Patty: It all depends. It all depends on the person, as well. What do they believe? For them something that’s wrong is right and something could be right to you even though it’s wrong. I don’t really like this example but I’m going to use it: if a woman got raped and she got pregnant. If you abort it, it just doesn’t get a chance to live but it doesn’t get a chance to experience pain. If you’re not going to love your baby, why would you bring it here? You’re doing it a wrong by having it, knowing that you don’t love it and you don’t want it. If you give it away, chances are 50/50. It could get adopted into a good family or bad family, so you’re not doing any good to your baby.

Let’s say that that student who just walked by grew up in a very abusive home. Do you think it would have been better for him to have been aborted? 

Patty: If his life is a total mess, I guess, yes, because he would attempt to commit suicide. Some children that grew up in abusive housing are suicidal and some of them get what they want. If the mother doesn’t kill them when they’re forming, they do it sometime in the future, due to all the experiences. Not all of us are the same. Some of us have more strength, some are weaker. If he was a child that grew up in an abusive family but he had the courage and the strength to get up and rise, then no. But what if your baby happens to be the type of weak person and anything can get him down. He’s either way going to commit suicide. The question is kind of controversial. In many ways it’s okay and in many ways it’s terrible. You can say everybody should have a chance to live. That’s true. I agree. But what if they’re only going to be born to kill themselves?

Earlier you said some people’s rights and wrongs are different than other people’s rights and wrongs. Do you think some things are wrong no matter what anyone thinks about them?

Patty: That’s a hard question. I’m not so sure because I don’t know all the cultures of the world. In some of them human sacrifice is something right and you come over here and it’s like you don’t do that. We don’t do that here. I don’t feel I can answer that because of everybody’s individual choice. If I say, this is wrong, yeah, some of them are going to say, okay fine, but they’re still going to think it’s right.

Even something like raping a three-year-old – do you think that’s wrong no matter how many people think it’s ok?

Patty: Well, yeah, that’s wrong, but the person who’s doing that doesn’t see it that way. That’s what I’m talking about. I can say, that’s wrong, and to the person who did it it’s not wrong. Some people are so difficult to make them understand that whatever it is, it’s wrong.

If someone with no knowledge of Christianity asks you who Jesus is, what would you say?

Patty: I don’t think I can answer that. It goes back to individuality. I can explain to them all I want, take a year of explaining to them, but if they just don’t want to believe it, don’t want to understand it, you’re not going to move them. Same thing for the wrong and right thing. You can see a wrong, most people can completely agree that raping a three-year-old child is way too wrong, but the person who did it will never agree.

But now that I’m remembering, I’m going to go back to the abortion thing. My aunt told me that one of her co-workers was going to abort but then did not do it because she heard the baby cry. That gets me thinking. You have a baby. You have a life there. It would be wrong to just throw it away. You would have to have the baby and yeah, everybody experiences pain throughout life so the only thing you can pray for the individual is to be strong. So I think abortion is completely wrong. You cannot do anything about the pain and all the problems people pass through life but nothing lasts forever. The pain you’re experiencing isn’t going to last forever. I feel bad for the people who commit suicide because they couldn’t find the strength to get up. So abortion is completely wrong.

California Catholic Daily exclusive by Mary Rose.

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