Well I'm currently starting my second semester of law school and I can already feel the urge to ignore my own blog mounting. I think I'll try to promise myself that I will post at least once a week.
In just one semester of law school you encounter quite a lot of original sin. What I mean is that you encounter the inherent wretchedness of mankind. Loving the law means you appreciate the natural limitations of human beings. We need laws because we are so imperfect and so awful to one another. Yet, we are also great. The greatness of humanity can be seen in the mere fact that we create laws to combat our own wretchedness, but even more profoundly it is seen in our art, creativity, heroism, etc. We are simultaneous wretched and great. We are a strange mix of good and evil. Everyone of us.
Many skeptics sneer at the doctrine of Original Sin, which I find quite odd because it is probably the most empirically verifiable claim of Christianity: everyone deep down knows that we have a moral standard and that literally no one lives up to it. When was the last time you lied, sneered, jeered, backstabbed, ignored, or dismissed another human being? You probably won't have to think very far back. Even the saints knew they were sinners.
For my part, even as an atheist, I readily accepted the basic claim of original sin. It seems obvious to me that human nature is corrupted. All you need to do is turn on the news to see this.
One of my first "aha!" moments in becoming Catholic came when I realized that Christ is the only real answer to Original Sin. Christ is the only way we can reconcile our inherent wretchedness and our inherent greatness. I realized that human beings cannot erase sin on their own. Again, no human being lives up to his own moral standard (he may believe he does, but he is always wrong. It is usually an illusion created by pride). No amount of moral teaching can stop us from sinning. We need outside help. This is one of the many ways in which Christianity is totally unique. For Christ is not just a moral teacher, (although He is also the perfect moral teacher) He is the perfect priest. His death on the Cross and His Resurrection are miracles. Miracles which free us from sin, which we cannot accomplish on our own. This claim of Christianity, and especially the Catholic emphasis on this priestly function, makes Christianity different than any other religion that has ever existed. It is totally and beautifully unique.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Divine Revelation and the path to monotheism
Happy New Year everyone! I haven't posted in several days so I thought I'd give it a go.
Looking over my posts I noticed that I have barely touched on why I chose Christianity as opposed to some other religion. It certainly did not happen over night. In fact for several months there was this period where I merely manifested a vague assent to the existence of some supernatural entity. This did not last long because it left so many loose ends and I was still quite curious, so I did a little of religion shopping.
Two things I want to make clear though: (1) I am not an expert in world religions. Whatever I say about them is from my own experiences, perceptions, amateur knowledge, and brief interactions. (2) "Choosing" a religion might not be the best way to describe the process. It is difficult to articulate properly, but the mental "choosing" is only half of it. In reality, God chose me as much as I chose him. The work was 50/50. Again, it is difficult to properly articulate how this works because it is ultimately part of the Mystery of God. I remember going to the first RCIA (Rite of Christian Initian for Adults) meeting and thinking "Wow, this is quite uncomfortable, and I'm far from being totally convinced. I should probably just quit and practice my own private spirituality. It can't be all that different, right?" Yet, for some reason I kept coming back. Ultimately, I think becoming Catholic for me was a combination of exercising my own free will and divine intervention. Many of the other Catechumens in my group also described a similar feeling when we finally got baptized.
One of my starting points in my "search" for a religion was the necessity of divine revelation. For me, "God" as a concept was very intuitive (as it is for most people), but also quite difficult to explain accurately, much less completely. But the basics were there; I knew that God established and reigned over the Mysteries of life: the meaning of life, moral behavior, beauty, creativity, and comprehension. I was aware of the need to fill these categories, but I was also aware of how much human philosophy disagrees over them. People on their own cannot comprehend God; we need help. God is so much higher in a metaphysical sense that most of the information about Him would have to come from Him. It is true of most any form of creation. Most of the information a dog has about people comes from people trying to plant that information inside the dog's head. A dog without a person's intervention would know very little about people and even less about how to please them. This relationship holds true in the hierarchy of being, so God would have to tell us about Himself. Thus, I concluded the necessity for divine revelation. I also figured that God was a personal God, because if He weren't, there would be little reason for caring about Him even if you knew He existed. In other words, it came fairly intuitively that God would at least have some interest in us. The combination of the necessity for divine revelation and the quasi-corollary that God was a personal God left me confidently rejecting pantheism (such as several varieties of Hinduism) and the vague "spiritual philosophy" religions of the East like Buddhism and Confucianism.
As a final note, anyone interested in a deeper treatment of comparative religions and the uniqueness of Christianity, I suggest reading books by Dr. Peter Kreeft who is a Catholic professor of philosophy at Boston College and has a remarkable knowledge of world religions.
Looking over my posts I noticed that I have barely touched on why I chose Christianity as opposed to some other religion. It certainly did not happen over night. In fact for several months there was this period where I merely manifested a vague assent to the existence of some supernatural entity. This did not last long because it left so many loose ends and I was still quite curious, so I did a little of religion shopping.
Two things I want to make clear though: (1) I am not an expert in world religions. Whatever I say about them is from my own experiences, perceptions, amateur knowledge, and brief interactions. (2) "Choosing" a religion might not be the best way to describe the process. It is difficult to articulate properly, but the mental "choosing" is only half of it. In reality, God chose me as much as I chose him. The work was 50/50. Again, it is difficult to properly articulate how this works because it is ultimately part of the Mystery of God. I remember going to the first RCIA (Rite of Christian Initian for Adults) meeting and thinking "Wow, this is quite uncomfortable, and I'm far from being totally convinced. I should probably just quit and practice my own private spirituality. It can't be all that different, right?" Yet, for some reason I kept coming back. Ultimately, I think becoming Catholic for me was a combination of exercising my own free will and divine intervention. Many of the other Catechumens in my group also described a similar feeling when we finally got baptized.
One of my starting points in my "search" for a religion was the necessity of divine revelation. For me, "God" as a concept was very intuitive (as it is for most people), but also quite difficult to explain accurately, much less completely. But the basics were there; I knew that God established and reigned over the Mysteries of life: the meaning of life, moral behavior, beauty, creativity, and comprehension. I was aware of the need to fill these categories, but I was also aware of how much human philosophy disagrees over them. People on their own cannot comprehend God; we need help. God is so much higher in a metaphysical sense that most of the information about Him would have to come from Him. It is true of most any form of creation. Most of the information a dog has about people comes from people trying to plant that information inside the dog's head. A dog without a person's intervention would know very little about people and even less about how to please them. This relationship holds true in the hierarchy of being, so God would have to tell us about Himself. Thus, I concluded the necessity for divine revelation. I also figured that God was a personal God, because if He weren't, there would be little reason for caring about Him even if you knew He existed. In other words, it came fairly intuitively that God would at least have some interest in us. The combination of the necessity for divine revelation and the quasi-corollary that God was a personal God left me confidently rejecting pantheism (such as several varieties of Hinduism) and the vague "spiritual philosophy" religions of the East like Buddhism and Confucianism.
As a final note, anyone interested in a deeper treatment of comparative religions and the uniqueness of Christianity, I suggest reading books by Dr. Peter Kreeft who is a Catholic professor of philosophy at Boston College and has a remarkable knowledge of world religions.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Why isn't there more evidence for God?
Why does God hide? Why do we not have more evidence of Him? I have always found it amazing that Catholic thinkers and theologians were always acutely aware of this problem and that many Catholic Saints simply thought: well, how could it be any other way?
We all know that God could make Himself more obvious and apparent, especially to non-believers, if he wanted. "Why isn't there more evidence for God?" the skeptic always asks. "And if God is the same God that the Church professes to be the real God, then why doesn't he make that plainly obvious so as to invalidate all other false religions?" I think these are perfectly reasonable questions.
After I had abandoned hard atheism and moved into the amorphous agnostic category, this was certainly the most prominent question I had. The startling answer to this question is that God doesn't really want to be more obvious. I think there is enough evidence for those who truly wish to find God to find Him, and yet not so much that those who do not wish to find Him are forced to. God is love and He is not a rapist. The only way His love is meaningful is if it is taken with no strings attached. One of the most brilliant passages in Scripture, in my opinion, is Luke 11:10. "For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened" (Luke 11:10). This means that the most important distinction is NOT between believers and unbelievers, but between those who seek and those who do not. God does not want those who do not seek to find him. How can you receive God's love if you do not really want it? You can't. Only those who seek will find.
The fact that God IS love adds another dimension: we find God more in our hearts than anywhere else. This is not accidental or coincidental. This makes perfect sense. If God were best found in nature, math, or philosophy (he can still be found in these, but only imperfectly), then it would be the smartest people who would be closest to God. But this is not how God operates. The people with the biggest hearts are the ones closest to God, not those with the biggest heads. This is why many Saints said something to the effect of "how it could it be any other way?" when questioned about "evidence" for God. People filled with charity, humility, and mercy will find God, no matter how dumb they are. People who are proud, arrogant, and cold-hearted will not, no matter how smart they are. This is just the way it is, and the Saints are correct. How could it be any other way?
We all know that God could make Himself more obvious and apparent, especially to non-believers, if he wanted. "Why isn't there more evidence for God?" the skeptic always asks. "And if God is the same God that the Church professes to be the real God, then why doesn't he make that plainly obvious so as to invalidate all other false religions?" I think these are perfectly reasonable questions.
After I had abandoned hard atheism and moved into the amorphous agnostic category, this was certainly the most prominent question I had. The startling answer to this question is that God doesn't really want to be more obvious. I think there is enough evidence for those who truly wish to find God to find Him, and yet not so much that those who do not wish to find Him are forced to. God is love and He is not a rapist. The only way His love is meaningful is if it is taken with no strings attached. One of the most brilliant passages in Scripture, in my opinion, is Luke 11:10. "For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened" (Luke 11:10). This means that the most important distinction is NOT between believers and unbelievers, but between those who seek and those who do not. God does not want those who do not seek to find him. How can you receive God's love if you do not really want it? You can't. Only those who seek will find.
The fact that God IS love adds another dimension: we find God more in our hearts than anywhere else. This is not accidental or coincidental. This makes perfect sense. If God were best found in nature, math, or philosophy (he can still be found in these, but only imperfectly), then it would be the smartest people who would be closest to God. But this is not how God operates. The people with the biggest hearts are the ones closest to God, not those with the biggest heads. This is why many Saints said something to the effect of "how it could it be any other way?" when questioned about "evidence" for God. People filled with charity, humility, and mercy will find God, no matter how dumb they are. People who are proud, arrogant, and cold-hearted will not, no matter how smart they are. This is just the way it is, and the Saints are correct. How could it be any other way?
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Truth, beauty, and goodness are probably the three best descriptive words I could use to describe God. I mention this because during the Christmas season I feel filled to the brim with all three.
What does this have to do with my conversion from atheism to Catholicism? Well, because I believed in all three when I was an atheist, but realized that atheism gives no reason for believing any one of them to be real. My previous post, "How do we know?" treats the question of knowing truth, but even if we assume that truth, beauty, and goodness really exist, atheism certainly gives no reason for preferring them. Why not be bad instead of good? Why not prefer ugliness instead of beauty? Why not prefer lies to the truth? Atheism simply gives no solid answer to anyone of these hypothetical questions.
Of course, on one level, these are silly questions. Everyone who is honest with themselves seeks truth, goodness (even if their idea of it is skewed), and beauty. It is simply part of being human. Everyone knows this; it is fundamental to being human. The problem is that nature by herself gives us no reason for seeking these things or caring about them. We have to go above nature to God to get this validation. It's ultimately a problem of authority. Think about it. If someone asked you, "What logical basis do you have for seeking truth?" I don't think you could come up with a satisfactory answer UNLESS you bring up God. You could do this with many philosophical questions. For example, the atheist believes that people just live briefly, then die, and cease to exist. Well then, what's the point of doing anything? The whole concept of "getting something done" becomes meaningless if you and every other person on earth (and earth itself) is doomed to destruction. Even living solely for pleasure becomes meaningless. The reality is that only God gives us Authority for anything in our lives.
To sum up: every human being who is honest with himself seeks truth, beauty, and goodness. No on prefers lies to truth, ugliness to beauty, or evil to goodness. It just doesn't make sense. Even people who do evil think they are doing good. Secondly, only God can give us any reason, or Authority, to seek these things.
So far my posts mainly deal with how I realized atheism is foolish, rather than how I actually came to be Catholic. One thing I will point out here, though, is that ultimately I became Catholic because the Church does Truth, Beauty, and Goodness better than anyone. If Christ is the source of these three things, then of course his Church is the way to experience them.
Finally, it's Christmas time! Go out and find some Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Experiencing it will do you a lot more good than just reading blog post!
What does this have to do with my conversion from atheism to Catholicism? Well, because I believed in all three when I was an atheist, but realized that atheism gives no reason for believing any one of them to be real. My previous post, "How do we know?" treats the question of knowing truth, but even if we assume that truth, beauty, and goodness really exist, atheism certainly gives no reason for preferring them. Why not be bad instead of good? Why not prefer ugliness instead of beauty? Why not prefer lies to the truth? Atheism simply gives no solid answer to anyone of these hypothetical questions.
Of course, on one level, these are silly questions. Everyone who is honest with themselves seeks truth, goodness (even if their idea of it is skewed), and beauty. It is simply part of being human. Everyone knows this; it is fundamental to being human. The problem is that nature by herself gives us no reason for seeking these things or caring about them. We have to go above nature to God to get this validation. It's ultimately a problem of authority. Think about it. If someone asked you, "What logical basis do you have for seeking truth?" I don't think you could come up with a satisfactory answer UNLESS you bring up God. You could do this with many philosophical questions. For example, the atheist believes that people just live briefly, then die, and cease to exist. Well then, what's the point of doing anything? The whole concept of "getting something done" becomes meaningless if you and every other person on earth (and earth itself) is doomed to destruction. Even living solely for pleasure becomes meaningless. The reality is that only God gives us Authority for anything in our lives.
To sum up: every human being who is honest with himself seeks truth, beauty, and goodness. No on prefers lies to truth, ugliness to beauty, or evil to goodness. It just doesn't make sense. Even people who do evil think they are doing good. Secondly, only God can give us any reason, or Authority, to seek these things.
So far my posts mainly deal with how I realized atheism is foolish, rather than how I actually came to be Catholic. One thing I will point out here, though, is that ultimately I became Catholic because the Church does Truth, Beauty, and Goodness better than anyone. If Christ is the source of these three things, then of course his Church is the way to experience them.
Finally, it's Christmas time! Go out and find some Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Experiencing it will do you a lot more good than just reading blog post!
Christmas Time
It's nearly Christmas, the best time of the year!
I'll take a break from my amateur semi-apologetics to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. It's such a beautiful time of the year in every way imaginable. My prayers go out to all of those who are orphaned, in poverty, abandoned, depraved, and silenced who cannot fully enjoy Christmas. Let Christ warm their hearts and comfort their souls.
Look at the extraordinary beauty this time of year! It's a beauty of everything: nature (especially if you live in a snowy area like me), people, families, friendship, the dog - well, everything. This is the time of year that makes your heart glow and all I can say is embrace it. So put on some beautiful Christmas music, relax, and let Christ into your heart!
I'll take a break from my amateur semi-apologetics to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. It's such a beautiful time of the year in every way imaginable. My prayers go out to all of those who are orphaned, in poverty, abandoned, depraved, and silenced who cannot fully enjoy Christmas. Let Christ warm their hearts and comfort their souls.
Look at the extraordinary beauty this time of year! It's a beauty of everything: nature (especially if you live in a snowy area like me), people, families, friendship, the dog - well, everything. This is the time of year that makes your heart glow and all I can say is embrace it. So put on some beautiful Christmas music, relax, and let Christ into your heart!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
How do we know?
"How do we know?" This simple question might be the most ignored question in all of today's intellectual discussions. I'm not talking only of the question of how do we know God exists, for that cannot be answered in one simple blog post. What I mean is, how do we know anything? How can we be certain of our own knowledge and of our own reasoning ability?
From the atheist worldview, the whole universe is an orgy of randomness. The cosmos has no "design" to it at all. It just is. Everything, absolutely everything, from the Big Bang to the creation of life itself and our own species, says the atheist, is the result of an essentially chaotic and random universe. Most "hard atheists", as opposed to agnostics, will readily admit this. "Nature," they say, "is the whole show. And everything in it is the result of the same 'mindless' chaos of randomness." One of their favorite topics in religious discussion, biological evolution, is the perfect case in point. The atheist says that the neutral pressure of natural selection creates every single trait in every single biological species on earth. They are essentially saying that random chaos creates pressures which "select" those fit to survive under the current conditions. Thus, everything from mankind's arms and legs to reason capability is the result of this process. Do you see the problem here? This worldview thinks that the human mind was born out of randomness. That logic and reason are simply the by-products of a blind evolutionary process. Under this philosophy, there is no reason to believe that "logic" and "reason" yield truth. All it tells us is that these things have somehow helped us to survive.
I personally think my own realization of this problem was huge in accepting God. Blaise Pascal had a very similar point in one of his Pensees (too lazy to go find out which one). In other words, unless we believe in a supernatural source (God) for our own mind, we have no reason to trust it.
If my own explanation is confusing, I suggest reading Pascal. I believe C.S. Lewis also made the same point. Either way, their abilities far exceed my own and I wholeheartedly suggest them.
From the atheist worldview, the whole universe is an orgy of randomness. The cosmos has no "design" to it at all. It just is. Everything, absolutely everything, from the Big Bang to the creation of life itself and our own species, says the atheist, is the result of an essentially chaotic and random universe. Most "hard atheists", as opposed to agnostics, will readily admit this. "Nature," they say, "is the whole show. And everything in it is the result of the same 'mindless' chaos of randomness." One of their favorite topics in religious discussion, biological evolution, is the perfect case in point. The atheist says that the neutral pressure of natural selection creates every single trait in every single biological species on earth. They are essentially saying that random chaos creates pressures which "select" those fit to survive under the current conditions. Thus, everything from mankind's arms and legs to reason capability is the result of this process. Do you see the problem here? This worldview thinks that the human mind was born out of randomness. That logic and reason are simply the by-products of a blind evolutionary process. Under this philosophy, there is no reason to believe that "logic" and "reason" yield truth. All it tells us is that these things have somehow helped us to survive.
I personally think my own realization of this problem was huge in accepting God. Blaise Pascal had a very similar point in one of his Pensees (too lazy to go find out which one). In other words, unless we believe in a supernatural source (God) for our own mind, we have no reason to trust it.
If my own explanation is confusing, I suggest reading Pascal. I believe C.S. Lewis also made the same point. Either way, their abilities far exceed my own and I wholeheartedly suggest them.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
First Steps
This is my first blog and I'm not really sure where to start, so I thought I'd share the beginnings of my own conversion story. Of course it is incomplete and shortened for the sake of brevity.
The first step was simply questioning my own beliefs. I had been raised without religion of any kind, and in fact, was taught that those who had any kind of supernatural faith were either dumb, insane, disingenuous, or too intellectually apathetic to question their own dogmatic beliefs. Suffice it to say that for most of my life I thought religion was totally foolish.
During my teenage years I began to wonder about this. Freud is famous for believing that religious faith is a form of insanity. . . and if God does not exist then of course he is right! After all, believing in a supernatural entity that has supreme control over the universe, created mankind in his image, and is responsible for all beauty and goodness manifested by everything and everyone is behavior which would be sheer madness if it were not true. Adults get placed into psychiatric wards for having imaginary friends. If God is not real, then believing in him is infinitely more insane than having imaginary friends, because God is infinitely more important and influential than imaginary friends. Yet, I had definitely met orthodox men and women who seemed quite intelligent, not to mention lucid. My grandparents were ardent believers; were they insane? My own personal interests were laden with Christians. I loved the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's universe. Was he too insane? What about the 95% of the earth's population who believed in in some sort of supernatural entity? Insane? That is the thing about atheism: it requires an astonishing amount of arrogance and snobbery. It has to. How else do you tell the vast majority of people on earth that what they believe to be the most important thing in life is absurd and probably even insane?
The first step was simply questioning my own beliefs. I had been raised without religion of any kind, and in fact, was taught that those who had any kind of supernatural faith were either dumb, insane, disingenuous, or too intellectually apathetic to question their own dogmatic beliefs. Suffice it to say that for most of my life I thought religion was totally foolish.
During my teenage years I began to wonder about this. Freud is famous for believing that religious faith is a form of insanity. . . and if God does not exist then of course he is right! After all, believing in a supernatural entity that has supreme control over the universe, created mankind in his image, and is responsible for all beauty and goodness manifested by everything and everyone is behavior which would be sheer madness if it were not true. Adults get placed into psychiatric wards for having imaginary friends. If God is not real, then believing in him is infinitely more insane than having imaginary friends, because God is infinitely more important and influential than imaginary friends. Yet, I had definitely met orthodox men and women who seemed quite intelligent, not to mention lucid. My grandparents were ardent believers; were they insane? My own personal interests were laden with Christians. I loved the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's universe. Was he too insane? What about the 95% of the earth's population who believed in in some sort of supernatural entity? Insane? That is the thing about atheism: it requires an astonishing amount of arrogance and snobbery. It has to. How else do you tell the vast majority of people on earth that what they believe to be the most important thing in life is absurd and probably even insane?
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