Another part of a video series from Wordonfire.org. Bishop Barron will be commenting on subjects from modern day culture. For more visit www.wordonfire....
Really nicely put. I might give God another chance lol. I am a huge fan of Father Coyne. He reminds me of a Priest at my all boys Catholic High School. Adding humor and realness to his lectures.
@SquirrelGott The problem with your proposal is that the universe is radically contingent. It does not contain within itself the reason for its own existence. This can be seen in the fact that everything in the cosmos comes into being and fades away, and also in the fact that the cosmos as such came into being and will one day, presumably, fade out of being. In order to explain this, you have to appeal to some reality which does contain within itself the reason for its own existence.
Then how do you explain the fact that the formulator of the Big Bang theory, Georges Le Maitre, was a Catholic priest? How do you begin to make sense of John Polkinghorne, who is a Cambridge particle physicist and Anglican priest, or Stanley Jaki, who is a physicist and Benedictine monk, or George Coyne, astrophysicist and Jesuit priest? Friend, you're operating out of prejudices at least a century out of date.
That is just silly propaganda. How do you square this perspective with the existence of such figures as Teilhard de Chardin (Catholic priest and paleontologist), George Coyne (Catholic priest and astrophysicist), John Polkinghorne (Anglican priest and Cambridge particle physicist), Stanley Jaki (Catholic priest and particle physicist), etc, etc. You keep insisting that religion and science are enemies, and I'm telling you that Catholicism teaches their utter compatibility.
Bobby, it's a nonsensical question, akin to asking why a triangle doesn't have four sides. God is defined as the unconditioned reality from which all contingent being arises. Hence God, by his very nature, is uncaused. His essence is the same as his existence, which is precisely what makes him different from all creatures.
I took a class on Astronomy as an extra class over the summer. I have always had a fascination with astronomy and it had been a long time since I learned more about astronomy. Well as I went through the class, I learned just how elegant everything really is. Take a star for instance, it is a careful balance between the compressing force of gravity and the expanding caused by the generation and release of energy from the result of nuclear fusion and the influences of the random movement of the atoms within the star. From being massive and the basic forces of nature alone we are given a brilliant generator-factory and shines and has a dynamic structure and life cycle all to itself. And from this are born the elements higher than helium that make up the majority of the planets and life itself where by, the dance plays out on a smaller but much more intricate level. Everything lives and moves in tandem, analogous to one another. Even on a galactic and supragalactic scale there can be seen the patterns of this. The Universe on the largest scales we can see resembles the appearance of the network of neurons in the brain. My point is, in studying this with a prayful desire for God to show me His Majesty in His creation...I was shown things incredibly more beautiful than I could ever have imagined or conceived of. Science and religion make am incredible partnership, if only people would not allow their pride and short-sighted factionalism to get in the way. There is so much more we can be informed of by working together than working against one another, as with so many things. We are our own biggest obstacles.
Friend, if they're looking for "evidence," it's proof that they don't know what serious believers mean by "God." The creator of the universe in its entirety is not an item within the universe that would leave physical traces behind! There are indeed rational paths to God, but the scientific method--valid only for beings and events within the world--is surely not one of them.
Well sure, the universe eventually fades away, precisely because it is contingent. But even though every human body fades away, I should still celebrate the wonder of its complexity and appreciate it as a reflection of God's perfection.
God is not a particular being who stands at a distance, either spatial or temporal, from the world. God is utterly present to and providential toward the world that he has made. This distinguishes my view radically from Deism.
Woah I thought I was the only Atheist who liked to listen to this guy!? He actually knows what he is talking about, occasionally I do disagree but still I have respect for this guy.
God can do whatever he wants. And sometimes he does intervene in his creation in a causal way. But this type of divine intervention doesn't have to be invoked in order to explain the evolution of the cosmos. Having said that, we must affirm that the creative ground of all existence is intimately involved in the whole of the cosmos all the time, though not typically in an interventionist way.
@Neosaigo No! This is the "scientism" that I complain about: you're trying to draw religion into science or reduce it to science. Science and religion deal with reality, but in qualitatively different ways. That's why they are compatible and not competitive.
Contingency implies that a thing is not the cause of its own existence, that it therefore comes into being and passes away. Resurrected bodies are transfigured bodies, still physical but no longer caught in the ordinary dimensions of space and time. They are like circles that have been elevated to spheres or squares that have become cubed.
@Key2daUnderground No! The god of the gaps theory, to which you are referring, is an attempt to situate God as one cause among many within the nexus of conditioned causes. This has always been a mistake. Thomas Aquinas knew in the 13th century that God is a qualitatively different kind of cause, precisely because he is the cause of the to-be of the world in its entirety. You're quite right that the kind of search you've indicated will never arrive at the true God.
@mjduke27 No! The very fact that God is not a being or one thing among many enables him to relate in the most intimate way to all things in the cosmos. I'm advocating the polar opposite of Deism.
@juntaon Friend, go to the library and get a good book of metaphysics by Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, or Whitehead. Real metaphysics doesn't have a thing to do with "fairies beyond the universe."
@quantumystery Nonsense! The Church reverences all forms of reason--mathematics, science, philosophy, etc.--inasmuch as they participate in the Logos, the divine reason, made manifest in Christ.
No! God is not the coalescing of creaturely essences. He is the transcendent and utterly self-sufficient cause of creatureliness. Evil is not grounded in God, since evil is a species of non-being, which God permits but doesn't cause.
"The now wherein God made the first man, and the now wherein the last man disappears, and the now I am speaking in, all are the same in God, where this is but the now." Meister Eckhart
@theclarinet1234 The miracles of the New Testament are best understood as proleptic events, which is to say, manifestations of the future, or better, of God's deepest intentions vis-a-vis his creation. Or look at it along the lines suggested by Thomas Aquinas. As the first cause of all motion and existence, God typically works through secondary causes, but in some rare cases, for his own purposes, he chooses to work directly. None of this "contradicts" science.
I don't see why this should puzzle you. You've never poorly or inadequately understood the nature and intentions of people who are reaching out to you? God wants a relationship with each of us, but he leaves us free.
A contingent event must have a cause; otherwise, you are defending the proposition that something can come from nothing. To put this principle in more classical metaphysical language, nothing can reduce itself from potency to act.
Rabbi Jesus was wrestling with someone very real, but someone whose will had become perverse, hence marked by non-being. And God permits evil so as to bring out of it a greater good. As Thomas Aquinas put it: without the cruelty of the tryrant there would be no patience of the martyr.
That's interesting, on the fertility and iconic reflective nature of the Universe, but I'm still uneased by what I sense as a retreat of apologetics, from explanations that would have been valid within the Church, even one century ago. If we are truly achieving a fertile exchange , and a better understanding, with a richer theology as a result, then thats wonderful. I'm not there yet. I loved the exchange of Fr. George Coyne with Richard Dawkins, so respectful, so intelligent, so open, and so thought provoking. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.
@theclarinet1234 Friend, you're the one forcing this into a stark either/or. I'm with you: the overwhelming statistical probability is that virgins don't give birth and dead bodies don't come back to life. But God, who is responsible for the intelligibilities and describable rhythms within nature, can certainly work, on very rare occasions, in a surprising manner. I've also suggested that your strict determinism is kind of "old science." Postmodern science is much more open to novelty.
The church needs more people like you and George Coyne. Stephen Hawking said the Pope told him to explore the universe but not to look into the big bang because it would be prying into God's creation.
Of course God can do whatever he wants, but he is "limited" by the structures of logic, which are identical to his own existence. That's why God can't make a square circle or declare that adultery is morally right. But this doesn't limit God in any way. As to "intervention," God's properly creative causality can operate at a less intense level, and this we call the divine providence or God's influencing of the world. But God never acts as one cause among many.
I can't vouch for all of Fr. Coyne's opinions, but I for one am not a Deist! My point is that God is not one competing cause among many; rather, he is the very ground of the being of the cosmos. But that means that he is intimately involved in every detail of the cosmos that he makes. It's not whether God is involved, but rather how.
God informs you that he exists all the time. "The heavens proclaim the glory of God" and the radical contingency of the entire universe leads the rational mind to conclude that there must be a non-contingent ground. But God doesn't force himself on anyone. He proposes but doesn't impose. People opt for illogic all the time, for all kinds of reasons. God doesn't circumvent this, but rather allows us to come to him freely and intelligently, if we wish.
@thebigcougar And that's why it's time to learn how to read the Bible properly. As I've said a thousand times, the Bible is not science. It is theology and spirituality, and it often speaks in the language of poetry. No one is asking you to "accept" the language of Genesis in the sense of taking it literally.
@megamus3 No one is proposing belief in God without evidence. I offer the argument from contingency as evidence. It is impossible to explain the existence of contingent things simply through an endless appeal to similarly contingent things. We must come finally to some non-contingent ground of contingency. This is what Catholic theology means by "God."
When Moses asked God for his name, the Lord replied, "I am who I am." The theology of God as Being Itself is simply an amplification of that statement. And why should you think this implies that God is impersonal? The one who is Being Itself is the one in whom essence and existence coincide and who therefore possesses the fullness of ontological perfection, very much including intellect, will, personality, etc.
@juntaon No! It's a different kind of question altogether. Your much-lamented "god of the gaps" would be some explaining value in the world, some missing-link in an inner-worldly causal chain. I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about the ground for the contingent universe in its totality, the reason why there is something rather than nothing.
@Blarghonius Again, I didn't say "life." Take a look at George Coyne's reflections on the way in which the universe in its totality is increasingly marked by fecundity and creativity.
@theclarinet1234 Fine: certain very rare events within the physical universe cannot be fully and adequately explained by the sciences. To say otherwise is to succumb to scientism or scientific imperialism. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies..."
Well, if you think that God "comes down a mountain," you're much more of a Biblical literalist than I am! Mixarm is right in saying that God, in his proper nature, can never be the object of a scientific investigation. But this doesn't mean for a moment that the effects of God don't show up in the world and can't be used philosophically as a means to arguing for God's existence.
@AcidWacker Heaven and Hell designate states of being. "Heaven" is the state of being utterly in love with God and utterly saved. "Hell" is the state of suffering that follows from having rejected the divine love. Of course Jesus is physically resurrected, but his resurrection is not merely a return to life in this world, as was the case, for example, with Lazarus. These answers are coming, by the way, from the wealth and depth of the Catholic interpretive tradition.
You're right. You can never be separated from the source of existence, as long as you exist. "Hell" is the state produced by the conscious rejection of God, turning away from the divine love. And this lights up fires of suffering in the one who does it. God doesn't "send" anyone to Hell; nor does he rejoice in it. But it is the result of having rejected his offer of love.
Please note that the Catholic Church de-mystified a lot of phenomena that ancient pagens had once thought of as acts of the gods (e.g., lightning, earthquakes, etc.). If it weren't for this view put forth, many such natural phenomena would not have had their physical origins investigated. Scientific assertions are sometimes wrong, instead of right as we'd obviously like. Uncertainty is a powerful thing (one learns that when they are a practicing scientist).
@juntaon No! The whole point is that God, precisely as the creator of the universe, is not a being within the universe and hence cannot be examined by the sciences, which are geared toward finite beings and events within the cosmos. This doesn't mean for a moment that his existence cannot be arrived at through metaphysical reasoning. Like so many others on these forums, you are reducing all knowledge to the scientific type.
@AcidWacker You seem to assume that poetic and philosophical texts don't contain truths! Heaven and Hell are very much real, though neither is a "place." Jesus' resurrection is supremely real, though it's not merely the resucitation of a corpse.
@michiman57 For the thousandth time: religion is not science, primitive or otherwise. Science deals with the causal relations between events and objects in the empirical world; religion deals with the unconditioned ground of existence as such. Therefore, science and religion have entirely different methods and aims.
@Jugglable But "science" can never adjudicate such a matter. All the sciences take for granted the existence of a contingent universe. "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is not a scientific question, but a metaphysical or religious one, for it tries to get at the ultimate cause of that which the sciences, by their very nature, have to assume.
@AcidWacker I might invite you to read a basic book of commentary, which would tell you how to approach the book of Leviticus. Here's a hint: Catholics don't think of the Bible the way Muslims think of the Koran.
@elguanteloko The more precise formulation would be: why should a contingent universe exist? Contingent things--things that come into being and pass out of being--require a causal explanation. Endless appeal to other contingent things wouldn't solve the problem; therefore we have to arrive at some non-contingent reality. This is what we call "God." Do you see now why the question, "why is there a God rather than not?" is just silly?
That's nonsense! First of all, the Galileo story is far more complicated than your caricature would suggest. Second, it is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. On the whole, the Church has had a remarkably positive relationship with the sciences. And take a good look at Fr. Georges LeMaitre, the formulator of the Big Bang theory.
@powereddrive Friend, I don't know with any great clarity. No one does. Take a look at the book of Job. God takes Job on a grand tour of the cosmos in order to impress upon him the sheer breadth and depth of what Job doens't know of God's plan. Is God about something good? Yes. What is it precisely? I don't know in every detail. A child would have a very hard time understanding everything his parents do or permit. That doesn't mean there isn't a plan or deeper purpose.
"Science does not permit magical explanations," --Then scientists should stop saying the universe popped into existence from nothing at all, which is worse than magic.
@mjduke27 Well, you're just expanding the definition of the word "science" to include what I mean by "philosophy." When I use the word "science," I mean an intellectual discipline determined by the scientific method of empirical observation, the formation of hypostheses, the performance of experiments and the making of judgements. That method cannot adjudicate properly philosophical issues.
@mjduke27 Well, if you accept the fact that God exists--and this can be shown through the argument from contingency--it is not that difficult a rational leap to hold that the miraculous is possible.
@scotttebben Like a whole army of others on these forums, you have no idea what serious religious people mean by "faith." Newman explained that faith is the "reasoning of a religious mind." Faith is never below reason, though it passes beyond reason. The Catholic tradition has never driven a wedge between faith and reason.
@theclarinet1234 Yes, but Einstein took the speed of light to be an incontrovertible constant, which is why the equation works. And John Polkinghorne is an Anglican priest and Cambridge particle physicist. Take a look at his books and find plenty of scientifically respectable evidence for his positions. But we're actually straying far from the original point, which his that the author of the intelligibilities within nature can occasionally suspend them or work around them for his purposes.
@asa1342 But friend, the very fact that you are bothering to have this argument with me (someone presumably outside of your consciousness) proves that you don't believe a shred of what you just wrote!
@juntaon To ask that question is to show that you don't understand what "Creator" means. God is not one more contingent thing in a line of contingent causes. He is the ground of contingency and hence exists through the power of his own essence. His very nature is to be.
@theclarinet1234 Absolutely not! The progressive edge of science today is exploring the possibility of motion beyond the speed of light E=mc2 is a statistical probability, not an iron law. The universe is a stranger and more magical place than determinists imagine. Take a look at John Polkinghorne's speculations concerning the puzzles and paradoxes of quantum mechanics and their implications for miracles and God's action within the universe.
@mjduke27 I said that you were a "modern rationalist," by which I meant one influenced by the epistemological assumptions of modernity. I'm suspicious that there is a particular form of reason that you have accepted uncritically. One of the marks of this form of reason is a tendency to see religion as, ipso facto, irrational.
@mjduke27 And you're a modern rationalist. How is that not a bias or prejudice? Can you really say that you have thoroughly examined the Biblical God, read all of the relevant theology and commentary? See, two can play at your game. I would suggest that you return to the arguments that I've made.
Fr. Barron is right. After all, no scientist can explain what it's like to see yellow to a blind person, or what it's like to fall in love to a person who has never fallen in love. Even after we give purely physical description of these phenmena in terms of behavior, structure, and function, it is still the case that no one can convey the qualitative aspect of those 1st-person experiences to someone who has never had them. Some things are beyond the domain of science to describe.
@juntaon No! You're posing an illegitimate question. The existence of a creator is arrived at through metaphysical reasoning from contingency to non-contingency. Unless there is a properly non-contingent ground, it is impossible to explain the existence of a contingent universe. "God" is the name that we give to this essentially existing ground. Hence to ask "what created the creator" is to prove that you haven't grasped the nettle of this argument.
But they are saying the same thing! Where is the contradiction? God is the cause, not of this or that particular event, but of the act of being itself.
@SquirrelGott Oh friend, come on, that's a total caricature! Explain to me how the Catholic sense of God as Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the sheer act of to-be itself, is "anthropomorphising!" Take a look at any two pages of Thomas's Summa dealing with the nature of God. Aquinas consistently removes from the idea of God anything that is redolent of creation: time, space, matter, change, etc. God cannot even be situated in the category of being. This is not anthropomorphising!
@AcidWacker Both Heaven and Hell begin here; that's true. But they reach their culmination in the life to come. God's knowledge is not determining, for it is not caught in time. God knows all things in the "eternal now" of his consciousness. Just as my knowledge of what you're doing right now wouldn't determine you; so God's knowledge of the entire universe doesn't determine the universe.
@AcidWacker Do you think that Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, or Georgia O'Keefe give us access to truth? Than you have to admit that there are paths to truth other than the strictly scientific. Religious texts mean in much the way that poetic and philosophical texts mean.
@Mike96727 Mike, please do me a favor and read John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent or the first several questions of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. You have a woefully inadequate understanding of what sophisticated Christians mean by "faith" and you continue to propagate it. Fundamentalists might drive a wedge between faith and reason, but Catholics don't.
Mine. He is of it all. Not separate. Not standing back but brilliant cause, here. Thank you. It looks at what design all had thinking I was a thing, Sue, i hear now we are of everything tell him ..I hear God. Novel Ten Men and a Road. Thank you for this discussion. Wow what a difference. Thank you Susan Mellott dolan
@juntaon Can "science" answer the following questions: what is the meaning of life? What is the nature of beauty? What makes a society just? What is a morally praiseworthy act? Why is there something rather than nothing? My point is this: everything IS NOT a "scientific claim." The sciences are very good at asking and answering certain types of questions, but not all.
Your ideas of coherency are conditioned by this dimension of space and time. A circle couldn't possibly imagine what it would be like to be a sphere. So we can't possibly imagine what it would be like to have a body which remains a body but is translated into a more complex dimensional system.
+Bishop-elect Robert Barron I notice you left out the fact that Fr Coyne doesn't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, accepts that the Genesis story of creation (of which there are two that contradict each other) is just a story. Fr Coyne doesn't believe that at some point in human evolution we were given a "soul". He also says the primitive Bible can't compete with the many scientific discoveries we've had since. I find this fascinating. Especially since you and so many others in your position never fail to utilize a VERY literal interpretation of the Bible when it comes to those mere 6 verses about Gay people. Then suddenly the scientific discoveries we now have about gay people can't trump those 6 verses...... and suddenly the Bible is extremely literal. Hypocrites.
What makes the meaning of the Big Bang Theory more compelling is that it models the data we have, it's not based on theological assumptions, but the mathematical model itself demonstrates the origin of creation. This makes you argument as a theist more not less powerful.
@elguanteloko Friend, you're just hung-up on Heidegger's formulation. Stay with what I've said twice now: how does a contingent universe exist? The answer--if we are to avoid a hopelessly infinite regress--is some self-exixsting reality. This is what Catholic theology means by "God." I'm not just positing God's necessity; I'm making an argument for it.
God is the mystery that men reach after to always escape our grasping. While some hearing his calling for war and plunder still others see it in sowing the seed of peace the nurture that the most lowly of life looks after its young. But when we are ready God will come like a thief in the night, to offer his comfort to all that ask.
@elguanteloko Yes, I did get the point--which is why I put the question in more precise form, namely, why should a radically contingent universe exist?
@theclarinet1234 Why would a handful of extremely rare exceptions to the statistical probabilities undermine our reliance in the vast majority of cases on those probabilities?
I'm afraid, Paul, that you're operating out of a scientistic perspective here. It's absolutely right that science cannot adjudicate questions about God, but that doesn't mean that all speech about God is therefore irrational. Philosophy, following its own rational method, can say a good deal about God.
@michiman57 For myself personally, I have come to a greater love of the Church because of the rationale and consistency behind the modern day teachings. One would ask why and would be able to get a very rational and consistent answer. I have also found that the Church is the best way to grow closer to God. We must understand that all these institutions are run by people w/ a fallen nature & do make mistakes, but that takes nothing away from the truth in, and behind, any teaching.
@SquirrelGott Whatever is fluctuating already exists and needs to be explained. I'm interested in the philosophical question "why is there something rather than nothing?" No amount of science could ever answer that question, since all science presupposes an already existing world or set of relationships.
I wish I knew Meister Eckhart better, but he sensed God in the very phenomenon of existence itself, almost to the point of identifying Him with it. Your question is indeed the fundamental scientific-philosophical one. I'm not certain that our continued existence is a " default entitlement " of the cosmos, even moment to moment in time. We are so bathed within it, that we assume it to be so......but I wonder. May God bless your work Bishop Barron.
These videos never get old. It's always a pleasure to watch them over and over again 🙂.
The Church has faults and failings but I still love her and She is still very much needed in our world.
Really nicely put. I might give God another chance lol. I am a huge fan of Father Coyne. He reminds me of a Priest at my all boys Catholic High School. Adding humor and realness to his lectures.
Father Coyne is a really terrific individual.
TSpoonER
I think your understanding of God is.... inadequate.
Exactly how does one give consciousness, truth, love, and being Itself another chance?
@SquirrelGott The problem with your proposal is that the universe is radically contingent. It does not contain within itself the reason for its own existence. This can be seen in the fact that everything in the cosmos comes into being and fades away, and also in the fact that the cosmos as such came into being and will one day, presumably, fade out of being. In order to explain this, you have to appeal to some reality which does contain within itself the reason for its own existence.
Then how do you explain the fact that the formulator of the Big Bang theory, Georges Le Maitre, was a Catholic priest? How do you begin to make sense of John Polkinghorne, who is a Cambridge particle physicist and Anglican priest, or Stanley Jaki, who is a physicist and Benedictine monk, or George Coyne, astrophysicist and Jesuit priest? Friend, you're operating out of prejudices at least a century out of date.
That is just silly propaganda. How do you square this perspective with the existence of such figures as Teilhard de Chardin (Catholic priest and paleontologist), George Coyne (Catholic priest and astrophysicist), John Polkinghorne (Anglican priest and Cambridge particle physicist), Stanley Jaki (Catholic priest and particle physicist), etc, etc. You keep insisting that religion and science are enemies, and I'm telling you that Catholicism teaches their utter compatibility.
Bobby, it's a nonsensical question, akin to asking why a triangle doesn't have four sides. God is defined as the unconditioned reality from which all contingent being arises. Hence God, by his very nature, is uncaused. His essence is the same as his existence, which is precisely what makes him different from all creatures.
I took a class on Astronomy as an extra class over the summer. I have always had a fascination with astronomy and it had been a long time since I learned more about astronomy. Well as I went through the class, I learned just how elegant everything really is.
Take a star for instance, it is a careful balance between the compressing force of gravity and the expanding caused by the generation and release of energy from the result of nuclear fusion and the influences of the random movement of the atoms within the star. From being massive and the basic forces of nature alone we are given a brilliant generator-factory and shines and has a dynamic structure and life cycle all to itself. And from this are born the elements higher than helium that make up the majority of the planets and life itself where by, the dance plays out on a smaller but much more intricate level. Everything lives and moves in tandem, analogous to one another. Even on a galactic and supragalactic scale there can be seen the patterns of this. The Universe on the largest scales we can see resembles the appearance of the network of neurons in the brain.
My point is, in studying this with a prayful desire for God to show me His Majesty in His creation...I was shown things incredibly more beautiful than I could ever have imagined or conceived of. Science and religion make am incredible partnership, if only people would not allow their pride and short-sighted factionalism to get in the way.
There is so much more we can be informed of by working together than working against one another, as with so many things. We are our own biggest obstacles.
I really enjoyed this one father. thank you for the guidance.
As an Architect, I appreciate this.
I am a published theoretical physics and my first thesis was on quantum gravity, my second on condensed matter, and I've learnt something from this
Friend, if they're looking for "evidence," it's proof that they don't know what serious believers mean by "God." The creator of the universe in its entirety is not an item within the universe that would leave physical traces behind! There are indeed rational paths to God, but the scientific method--valid only for beings and events within the world--is surely not one of them.
Well sure, the universe eventually fades away, precisely because it is contingent. But even though every human body fades away, I should still celebrate the wonder of its complexity and appreciate it as a reflection of God's perfection.
God is not a particular being who stands at a distance, either spatial or temporal, from the world. God is utterly present to and providential toward the world that he has made. This distinguishes my view radically from Deism.
Woah I thought I was the only Atheist who liked to listen to this guy!? He actually knows what he is talking about, occasionally I do disagree but still I have respect for this guy.
God can do whatever he wants. And sometimes he does intervene in his creation in a causal way. But this type of divine intervention doesn't have to be invoked in order to explain the evolution of the cosmos. Having said that, we must affirm that the creative ground of all existence is intimately involved in the whole of the cosmos all the time, though not typically in an interventionist way.
Well, they had a more poetic sensibility than most moderns do!
No! To be outside of time is not, necessarily, to be outside of reality. It is to be outside of the kind of reality that the sciences can measure.
Min 2 I had sighted. We are of all Being. As creator always, INNATELY, a part of all. Thank you.
@Neosaigo No! This is the "scientism" that I complain about: you're trying to draw religion into science or reduce it to science. Science and religion deal with reality, but in qualitatively different ways. That's why they are compatible and not competitive.
Silly fundamentalist Protestant doesn't know how to read the Bible!
Contingency implies that a thing is not the cause of its own existence, that it therefore comes into being and passes away. Resurrected bodies are transfigured bodies, still physical but no longer caught in the ordinary dimensions of space and time. They are like circles that have been elevated to spheres or squares that have become cubed.
@Key2daUnderground No! The god of the gaps theory, to which you are referring, is an attempt to situate God as one cause among many within the nexus of conditioned causes. This has always been a mistake. Thomas Aquinas knew in the 13th century that God is a qualitatively different kind of cause, precisely because he is the cause of the to-be of the world in its entirety. You're quite right that the kind of search you've indicated will never arrive at the true God.
@mjduke27 No! The very fact that God is not a being or one thing among many enables him to relate in the most intimate way to all things in the cosmos. I'm advocating the polar opposite of Deism.
@juntaon Friend, go to the library and get a good book of metaphysics by Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, or Whitehead. Real metaphysics doesn't have a thing to do with "fairies beyond the universe."
@quantumystery Nonsense! The Church reverences all forms of reason--mathematics, science, philosophy, etc.--inasmuch as they participate in the Logos, the divine reason, made manifest in Christ.
No! God is not the coalescing of creaturely essences. He is the transcendent and utterly self-sufficient cause of creatureliness. Evil is not grounded in God, since evil is a species of non-being, which God permits but doesn't cause.
"The now wherein God made the first man, and the now wherein the last man disappears, and the now I am speaking in, all are the same in God, where this is but the now."
Meister Eckhart
@theclarinet1234 The miracles of the New Testament are best understood as proleptic events, which is to say, manifestations of the future, or better, of God's deepest intentions vis-a-vis his creation. Or look at it along the lines suggested by Thomas Aquinas. As the first cause of all motion and existence, God typically works through secondary causes, but in some rare cases, for his own purposes, he chooses to work directly. None of this "contradicts" science.
I don't see why this should puzzle you. You've never poorly or inadequately understood the nature and intentions of people who are reaching out to you? God wants a relationship with each of us, but he leaves us free.
A contingent event must have a cause; otherwise, you are defending the proposition that something can come from nothing. To put this principle in more classical metaphysical language, nothing can reduce itself from potency to act.
Rabbi Jesus was wrestling with someone very real, but someone whose will had become perverse, hence marked by non-being. And God permits evil so as to bring out of it a greater good. As Thomas Aquinas put it: without the cruelty of the tryrant there would be no patience of the martyr.
That's interesting, on the fertility and iconic reflective nature of the Universe, but I'm still uneased by what I sense as a retreat of apologetics, from explanations that would have been valid within the Church, even one century ago.
If we are truly achieving a fertile exchange , and a better understanding, with a richer theology as a result, then thats wonderful. I'm not there yet.
I loved the exchange of Fr. George Coyne with Richard Dawkins, so respectful, so intelligent, so open, and so thought provoking. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.
@theclarinet1234 Friend, you're the one forcing this into a stark either/or. I'm with you: the overwhelming statistical probability is that virgins don't give birth and dead bodies don't come back to life. But God, who is responsible for the intelligibilities and describable rhythms within nature, can certainly work, on very rare occasions, in a surprising manner. I've also suggested that your strict determinism is kind of "old science." Postmodern science is much more open to novelty.
The church needs more people like you and George Coyne. Stephen Hawking said the Pope told him to explore the universe but not to look into the big bang because it would be prying into God's creation.
Of course God can do whatever he wants, but he is "limited" by the structures of logic, which are identical to his own existence. That's why God can't make a square circle or declare that adultery is morally right. But this doesn't limit God in any way. As to "intervention," God's properly creative causality can operate at a less intense level, and this we call the divine providence or God's influencing of the world. But God never acts as one cause among many.
I can't vouch for all of Fr. Coyne's opinions, but I for one am not a Deist! My point is that God is not one competing cause among many; rather, he is the very ground of the being of the cosmos. But that means that he is intimately involved in every detail of the cosmos that he makes. It's not whether God is involved, but rather how.
God informs you that he exists all the time. "The heavens proclaim the glory of God" and the radical contingency of the entire universe leads the rational mind to conclude that there must be a non-contingent ground. But God doesn't force himself on anyone. He proposes but doesn't impose. People opt for illogic all the time, for all kinds of reasons. God doesn't circumvent this, but rather allows us to come to him freely and intelligently, if we wish.
@thebigcougar And that's why it's time to learn how to read the Bible properly. As I've said a thousand times, the Bible is not science. It is theology and spirituality, and it often speaks in the language of poetry. No one is asking you to "accept" the language of Genesis in the sense of taking it literally.
@megamus3 No one is proposing belief in God without evidence. I offer the argument from contingency as evidence. It is impossible to explain the existence of contingent things simply through an endless appeal to similarly contingent things. We must come finally to some non-contingent ground of contingency. This is what Catholic theology means by "God."
When Moses asked God for his name, the Lord replied, "I am who I am." The theology of God as Being Itself is simply an amplification of that statement. And why should you think this implies that God is impersonal? The one who is Being Itself is the one in whom essence and existence coincide and who therefore possesses the fullness of ontological perfection, very much including intellect, will, personality, etc.
@juntaon No! It's a different kind of question altogether. Your much-lamented "god of the gaps" would be some explaining value in the world, some missing-link in an inner-worldly causal chain. I'm not talking about that at all. I'm talking about the ground for the contingent universe in its totality, the reason why there is something rather than nothing.
@Blarghonius Again, I didn't say "life." Take a look at George Coyne's reflections on the way in which the universe in its totality is increasingly marked by fecundity and creativity.
@theclarinet1234 Fine: certain very rare events within the physical universe cannot be fully and adequately explained by the sciences. To say otherwise is to succumb to scientism or scientific imperialism. "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies..."
Well, if you think that God "comes down a mountain," you're much more of a Biblical literalist than I am! Mixarm is right in saying that God, in his proper nature, can never be the object of a scientific investigation. But this doesn't mean for a moment that the effects of God don't show up in the world and can't be used philosophically as a means to arguing for God's existence.
@AcidWacker Heaven and Hell designate states of being. "Heaven" is the state of being utterly in love with God and utterly saved. "Hell" is the state of suffering that follows from having rejected the divine love. Of course Jesus is physically resurrected, but his resurrection is not merely a return to life in this world, as was the case, for example, with Lazarus. These answers are coming, by the way, from the wealth and depth of the Catholic interpretive tradition.
You're right. You can never be separated from the source of existence, as long as you exist. "Hell" is the state produced by the conscious rejection of God, turning away from the divine love. And this lights up fires of suffering in the one who does it. God doesn't "send" anyone to Hell; nor does he rejoice in it. But it is the result of having rejected his offer of love.
@Blarghonius I didn't say "life;" I said "fecundity" and "possibility."
Please note that the Catholic Church de-mystified a lot of phenomena that ancient pagens had once thought of as acts of the gods (e.g., lightning, earthquakes, etc.). If it weren't for this view put forth, many such natural phenomena would not have had their physical origins investigated. Scientific assertions are sometimes wrong, instead of right as we'd obviously like. Uncertainty is a powerful thing (one learns that when they are a practicing scientist).
@juntaon No. By the argument from the contingency of the universe.
@juntaon No! The whole point is that God, precisely as the creator of the universe, is not a being within the universe and hence cannot be examined by the sciences, which are geared toward finite beings and events within the cosmos. This doesn't mean for a moment that his existence cannot be arrived at through metaphysical reasoning. Like so many others on these forums, you are reducing all knowledge to the scientific type.
@AcidWacker You seem to assume that poetic and philosophical texts don't contain truths! Heaven and Hell are very much real, though neither is a "place." Jesus' resurrection is supremely real, though it's not merely the resucitation of a corpse.
@michiman57 For the thousandth time: religion is not science, primitive or otherwise. Science deals with the causal relations between events and objects in the empirical world; religion deals with the unconditioned ground of existence as such. Therefore, science and religion have entirely different methods and aims.
@Jugglable But "science" can never adjudicate such a matter. All the sciences take for granted the existence of a contingent universe. "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is not a scientific question, but a metaphysical or religious one, for it tries to get at the ultimate cause of that which the sciences, by their very nature, have to assume.
@AcidWacker I might invite you to read a basic book of commentary, which would tell you how to approach the book of Leviticus. Here's a hint: Catholics don't think of the Bible the way Muslims think of the Koran.
@elguanteloko The more precise formulation would be: why should a contingent universe exist? Contingent things--things that come into being and pass out of being--require a causal explanation. Endless appeal to other contingent things wouldn't solve the problem; therefore we have to arrive at some non-contingent reality. This is what we call "God." Do you see now why the question, "why is there a God rather than not?" is just silly?
That's nonsense! First of all, the Galileo story is far more complicated than your caricature would suggest. Second, it is one paragraph in one chapter of a very long book. On the whole, the Church has had a remarkably positive relationship with the sciences. And take a good look at Fr. Georges LeMaitre, the formulator of the Big Bang theory.
@powereddrive
Friend, I don't know with any great clarity. No one does. Take a look at the book of Job. God takes Job on a grand tour of the cosmos in order to impress upon him the sheer breadth and depth of what Job doens't know of God's plan. Is God about something good? Yes. What is it precisely? I don't know in every detail. A child would have a very hard time understanding everything his parents do or permit. That doesn't mean there isn't a plan or deeper purpose.
"Science does not permit magical explanations,"
--Then scientists should stop saying the universe popped into existence from nothing at all, which is worse than magic.
@mjduke27 Well, you're just expanding the definition of the word "science" to include what I mean by "philosophy." When I use the word "science," I mean an intellectual discipline determined by the scientific method of empirical observation, the formation of hypostheses, the performance of experiments and the making of judgements. That method cannot adjudicate properly philosophical issues.
@mjduke27 Well, if you accept the fact that God exists--and this can be shown through the argument from contingency--it is not that difficult a rational leap to hold that the miraculous is possible.
@scotttebben Like a whole army of others on these forums, you have no idea what serious religious people mean by "faith." Newman explained that faith is the "reasoning of a religious mind." Faith is never below reason, though it passes beyond reason. The Catholic tradition has never driven a wedge between faith and reason.
@theclarinet1234 Yes, but Einstein took the speed of light to be an incontrovertible constant, which is why the equation works. And John Polkinghorne is an Anglican priest and Cambridge particle physicist. Take a look at his books and find plenty of scientifically respectable evidence for his positions. But we're actually straying far from the original point, which his that the author of the intelligibilities within nature can occasionally suspend them or work around them for his purposes.
@asa1342 But friend, the very fact that you are bothering to have this argument with me (someone presumably outside of your consciousness) proves that you don't believe a shred of what you just wrote!
@AcidWacker Take a look at my video on Bill Maher's movie. It will help you understand what I'm talking about.
My point was that the all-good God couldn't recommend that breaking one's marriage vows--an intrinsically evil act-- is a good thing.
@juntaon To ask that question is to show that you don't understand what "Creator" means. God is not one more contingent thing in a line of contingent causes. He is the ground of contingency and hence exists through the power of his own essence. His very nature is to be.
@theclarinet1234 Absolutely not! The progressive edge of science today is exploring the possibility of motion beyond the speed of light E=mc2 is a statistical probability, not an iron law. The universe is a stranger and more magical place than determinists imagine. Take a look at John Polkinghorne's speculations concerning the puzzles and paradoxes of quantum mechanics and their implications for miracles and God's action within the universe.
@mjduke27 I said that you were a "modern rationalist," by which I meant one influenced by the epistemological assumptions of modernity. I'm suspicious that there is a particular form of reason that you have accepted uncritically. One of the marks of this form of reason is a tendency to see religion as, ipso facto, irrational.
@mjduke27 And you're a modern rationalist. How is that not a bias or prejudice? Can you really say that you have thoroughly examined the Biblical God, read all of the relevant theology and commentary? See, two can play at your game. I would suggest that you return to the arguments that I've made.
Fr. Barron is right. After all, no scientist can explain what it's like to see yellow to a blind person, or what it's like to fall in love to a person who has never fallen in love. Even after we give purely physical description of these phenmena in terms of behavior, structure, and function, it is still the case that no one can convey the qualitative aspect of those 1st-person experiences to someone who has never had them. Some things are beyond the domain of science to describe.
@juntaon No! You're posing an illegitimate question. The existence of a creator is arrived at through metaphysical reasoning from contingency to non-contingency. Unless there is a properly non-contingent ground, it is impossible to explain the existence of a contingent universe. "God" is the name that we give to this essentially existing ground. Hence to ask "what created the creator" is to prove that you haven't grasped the nettle of this argument.
But they are saying the same thing! Where is the contradiction? God is the cause, not of this or that particular event, but of the act of being itself.
@AcidWacker But he knows you perfectly! And the very fact that he doesn't determine you means that he can judge you.
@SquirrelGott Oh friend, come on, that's a total caricature! Explain to me how the Catholic sense of God as Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the sheer act of to-be itself, is "anthropomorphising!" Take a look at any two pages of Thomas's Summa dealing with the nature of God. Aquinas consistently removes from the idea of God anything that is redolent of creation: time, space, matter, change, etc. God cannot even be situated in the category of being. This is not anthropomorphising!
@AcidWacker Both Heaven and Hell begin here; that's true. But they reach their culmination in the life to come. God's knowledge is not determining, for it is not caught in time. God knows all things in the "eternal now" of his consciousness. Just as my knowledge of what you're doing right now wouldn't determine you; so God's knowledge of the entire universe doesn't determine the universe.
@AcidWacker Do you think that Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, or Georgia O'Keefe give us access to truth? Than you have to admit that there are paths to truth other than the strictly scientific. Religious texts mean in much the way that poetic and philosophical texts mean.
@Mike96727 Mike, please do me a favor and read John Henry Newman's Grammar of Assent or the first several questions of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. You have a woefully inadequate understanding of what sophisticated Christians mean by "faith" and you continue to propagate it. Fundamentalists might drive a wedge between faith and reason, but Catholics don't.
Mine. He is of it all. Not separate. Not standing back but brilliant cause, here. Thank you. It looks at what design all had thinking I was a thing, Sue, i hear now we are of everything tell him ..I hear God. Novel Ten Men and a Road. Thank you for this discussion. Wow what a difference. Thank you Susan Mellott dolan
@juntaon Can "science" answer the following questions: what is the meaning of life? What is the nature of beauty? What makes a society just? What is a morally praiseworthy act? Why is there something rather than nothing? My point is this: everything IS NOT a "scientific claim." The sciences are very good at asking and answering certain types of questions, but not all.
Your ideas of coherency are conditioned by this dimension of space and time. A circle couldn't possibly imagine what it would be like to be a sphere. So we can't possibly imagine what it would be like to have a body which remains a body but is translated into a more complex dimensional system.
Father, what is a good book to get on Hermeneutics? I need help interpreting and understanding the Bible. Where would you recommend starting?
Start with one of N.T. Wright's popular books on the Bible.
Thanks!
+Bishop-elect Robert Barron I notice you left out the fact that Fr Coyne doesn't believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, accepts that the Genesis story of creation (of which there are two that contradict each other) is just a story. Fr Coyne doesn't believe that at some point in human evolution we were given a "soul". He also says the primitive Bible can't compete with the many scientific discoveries we've had since. I find this fascinating. Especially since you and so many others in your position never fail to utilize a VERY literal interpretation of the Bible when it comes to those mere 6 verses about Gay people. Then suddenly the scientific discoveries we now have about gay people can't trump those 6 verses...... and suddenly the Bible is extremely literal.
Hypocrites.
+atheistexchristian You get an "F" redo your homework and bring it back tomorrow.
Joshua19 An illiterate dope like you doesn't get to grade me. Take a hike and "F" off . :)
What makes the meaning of the Big Bang Theory more compelling is that it models the data we have, it's not based on theological assumptions, but the mathematical model itself demonstrates the origin of creation. This makes you argument as a theist more not less powerful.
@Webzlinger Total caricature of religion here, friend.
I'm a 8th grader for your information. And I will see this study.
@elguanteloko Friend, you're just hung-up on Heidegger's formulation. Stay with what I've said twice now: how does a contingent universe exist? The answer--if we are to avoid a hopelessly infinite regress--is some self-exixsting reality. This is what Catholic theology means by "God." I'm not just positing God's necessity; I'm making an argument for it.
God is the mystery that men reach after to always escape our grasping. While some hearing his calling for war and plunder still others see it in sowing the seed of peace the nurture that the most lowly of life looks after its young. But when we are ready God will come like a thief in the night, to offer his comfort to all that ask.
@elguanteloko Yes, I did get the point--which is why I put the question in more precise form, namely, why should a radically contingent universe exist?
@mjduke27 But science, qua science, cannot possibly adjudicate questions of right and wrong, for they are not, finally, empirical questions.
@megamus3 Well, how do you explain the fact that contingent things exist?
@theclarinet1234 Why would a handful of extremely rare exceptions to the statistical probabilities undermine our reliance in the vast majority of cases on those probabilities?
@elguanteloko Oy vey! Friend, all i can tell you is to read my responses again. I don't know how I can be any clearer.
I'm afraid, Paul, that you're operating out of a scientistic perspective here. It's absolutely right that science cannot adjudicate questions about God, but that doesn't mean that all speech about God is therefore irrational. Philosophy, following its own rational method, can say a good deal about God.
3:19
I think humans generally have a very poor understanding of God.
The only person who understood God well was Jesus. ;)
Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved -Tim Minchin
@michiman57 For myself personally, I have come to a greater love of the Church because of the rationale and consistency behind the modern day teachings. One would ask why and would be able to get a very rational and consistent answer. I have also found that the Church is the best way to grow closer to God. We must understand that all these institutions are run by people w/ a fallen nature & do make mistakes, but that takes nothing away from the truth in, and behind, any teaching.
@SquirrelGott Whatever is fluctuating already exists and needs to be explained. I'm interested in the philosophical question "why is there something rather than nothing?" No amount of science could ever answer that question, since all science presupposes an already existing world or set of relationships.
I wish I knew Meister Eckhart better, but he sensed God in the very phenomenon of existence itself, almost to the point of identifying Him with it.
Your question is indeed the fundamental scientific-philosophical one. I'm not certain that our continued existence is a " default entitlement " of the cosmos, even moment to moment in time. We are so bathed within it, that we assume it to be so......but I wonder.
May God bless your work Bishop Barron.
Bravo Father.
I think they put it best when the Circle of Vienna said, "Talk about God, can oftentimes confuse and befuddle."
True, but Wittgenstein went after Karl Popper with a poker, and as befuddlement goes, it's hard to beat.
@@genghisthegreat2034 This is true
NO man whould be called Father except God.