Did Pope Francis Really Say All Atheists are Redeemed?

Yesterday, the Internet buzzed about some recent remarks from Pope Francis. A headline at Huffington Post read: "Pope Francis Says Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics". A similar Reddit article became yesterday's second most-shared piece. But was the headline right? Did the Pope really suggest that all atheists are redeemed? And if so, is this a shift in Catholic teaching? To answer those questions we must first note the Gospel passage Pope Francis preached on when he... Read More

No Naysayers at NASA: Responding to Bob Seidensticker

EDITOR'S NOTE: This post from Fr. Dwight Longenecker is in response to atheist Bob Seidensticker's post yesterday titled 10 Reasons to Just Say Nay to the Naysayer Hypothesis.   Atheist Bob Seidensticker has a quip at the bottom of yesterday's blog post which reads, “If a million people say a foolish thing it is still a foolish thing.” I couldn’t agree more, and we should remember this as we read the rest of his post. His basic argument is this:   “Apologists tell us... Read More

10 Reasons to Just Say Nay to the Naysayer Hypothesis

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today we share our first atheist guest post. It's from Bob Seidensticker who writes for the Patheos Atheist Channel at Cross Examined. Be sure to read Fr. Dwight Longenecker's reply: No Naysayers at NASA: Responding to Bob Seidensticker.   Apologists tell us that the gospels were written at a time when many disciples—the eyewitnesses—were still alive. If they heard an inaccurate story, they’d say, “I was there, and that’s not the way it happened!” They’d... Read More

Why We Should Be Cautious Using the Big Bang Argument

Since it was proposed by Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Big Bang has been common in discussions of the existence of God. The reasons are obvious. The Big Bang looks like a plausible beginning for the physical universe. Things that begin need causes. The beginning of the physical universe would need a cause, which would seem to lie outside the physical universe. This coheres well with the Christian claim that God is a non-physical being who created the physical universe. The argument has been... Read More

Why the Scandals Increased My Faith in the Church

When people hear that my husband and I began exploring Catholicism in 2005, one of the first questions they often ask is, “What about the sexual abuse scandals? Didn’t that scare you away from the Church?” They’re usually surprised when I report that the answer is no; in fact, the scandals and the negative media coverage actually increased my faith in the Church. Here’s why: Getting the Facts Straight   One of the first things I did was to look into the numbers behind the... Read More

Scientism and God’s Existence (Video)

Fr. Robert Barron comments on the explanatory limitations of science when it comes to the question of whether God exists:   "To appeal to matter or science is to appeal to something that is, by its very nature, contingent. What we have to come to, finally, is some reality that is radically other than the universe...Philosophy can shed some light on God but the one thing the sciences can never do is eliminate the possibility of God."       (Image credit: Potolok)  Read More →

How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the last half of the twentieth century, Antony Flew (1923-2010) was the world's most famous atheist. Long before Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris began taking swipes at religion, Flew was the preeminent spokesman for unbelief. However in 2004, he shocked the world by announcing he had come to believe in God. While never embracing Christianity—Flew only believed in the deistic, Aristotelian conception of God—he became one of the most high-profile... Read More

Atheism, Evidence, and the “God-of-the-Gaps”

Many atheists say that all arguments for the existence of God are just fallacious “God-of-the-gaps” reasoning. They claim that any evidence offered for the existence of God, such as the beginning, contingency, and fine-tuning of the universe, are nothing more than appeals to ignorance. These arguments are supposedly on par with primitive explanations of natural events (such as lightning) that erroneously included God as a direct cause. Modern arguments for theism are likewise lampooned... Read More

Atheists, We Need Your Help!

Since launching Strange Notions last week, we've been keeping close tabs on the feedback. And it's been excellent. We've heard from hundreds of people through email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, the Contact Form, and more, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. However, among the negative reactions, the most common critique was that Strange Notions doesn't feature enough atheist contributors. Atheists do have an equal platform in the comment boxes—in fact we've had more... Read More

Einstein and God

It was recently revealed that, toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein wrote a letter in which he dismissed belief in God as superstitious and characterized the stories in the Bible as childish. During a time when atheists have emerged rather aggressively in the popular culture, it was, to say the least, discouraging to hear that the most brilliant scientist of the twentieth century seemed to be antipathetic to religion. It appeared as though Einstein would have agreed with the Christopher... Read More

« Previous Page — Next Page »