My Conversion Story

To read my conversion story, I have posted it in .pdf format available for download.


Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The problem of atheism

"How could anyone really know that there is no God?

To know that there is no God is to claim to know all levels and reaches of the universe and reality. But of course, only a being who is omniscient knows this. Therefore, the only being in a position to know that there is no God, is God."

From a PowerPoint presentation of Peter Kreeft's, mentioned on the same Catholic Answers radio episode as my last post.

"What's true for you is not necessarily true for me"

On a recent Catholic answers radio program, a caller, Ann, asked if modern philosophers believe that there is no objective reality and how does that affect the ethics of what's going on in our society today.

Guest, Chris Kaczor answered,”A lot of people, just regular folks are what you might call “relativists”. They think there is no truth. They say things like, “that may be true for you but it's not true for me”. Now among professional philosophers… very few… today hold that position…The reason that philosophers have rejected that view is that that's an example of a self-defeating view. It just cannot possibly be correct. It has to be wrong. And the reason is this. Let me give you another example of a self-defeating idea.

If I say to you “I am not speaking English right now”--well I said that in English right? So it can't be right. So if someone were to say there is no truth, they are asserting that something is true. Namely, that there is no truth. But if it’s true that there is no truth then that statement has to be false. The philosophers have recognized that there is a self-contradiction, a self-defeating nature in these sorts of denials truth.

The good news is that contemporary philosophy has turned away from that kind of relativism. The bad news is that that kind of relativism is still very common in people who haven't really studied the issue very deeply.

You can listen to the whole show here. It is titled, "God and the Problem of Evil".

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Religion v. relationship

Something that really chaps my saddlebags: When people start pitting "religion" vs. "relationship". An example can be found on this website. Mute your speakers. A song starts playing with no visible means of shutting it off!

Typically the argument goes like this:

"Christianity is not a religion. A 'religion' is man trying to reach God by his own effort. Christianity is a 'relationship' because it is God reaching out to man."

The problem with this is that that is NOT the definition of the word "religion." Evangelicals simply made it up in the 1970s so they could make a sermon point and it stuck. It's is nothing more than a meaningless, trite phrase.

According to Peter Kreeft in Catholic Christianity, "The word religion comes from religare in Latin and means 'relationship'—-relationship with God."

So while it is true that God reaches out to man, and that man would never reach out to God without Him first enabling Man through grace, the phrase just makes Christians sound unitelligent by creating definitions out of thin air.