Revolution and Revelation

Many people are surprised when I, a Catholic priest, tell them that God does not exist—at least, he doesn't exist as we exist. He is, instead, the very ground of all existence. He does not exist so much as he is existence. Yet this often provokes a good question: “How does one move from God who is ipsum esse subsistans (the very substance of existence) to the God of scapulars and rosaries?” In other words, how does one move from the philosophical concept to all the details of... Read More

Do ‘Religiously Knowledgeable’ Atheists Believe in God?

A new Pew study has found that a majority of Americans (53%) say they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate if that candidate self-identified as an atheist. Only 5% say that self-identified atheism would make them more likely to vote for a candidate. Perhaps Americans would think a bit differently if they knew about a secret that was hidden (until now) in the data for Pew's U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. Recall what the media focused on when this was data was released: Los... Read More

From Faith Came Science: The Condemnations of 1277

In 1277, Étienne Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, issued a list of 219 condemned propositions relating to details of Aristotelian texts that were irreconcilable with the Christian worldview. These propositions were not binding on Christians, but served as a guide for the scholars at the University of Paris. The decree largely dealt with the eternity of the world and creation. The Condemned Propositions   The propositions are often referenced by historians of science, and their intent... Read More

10 Atheists Who Engage Religion Charitably

David Bentley Hart is one of our foremost theologian-philosophers, an American intellectual treasure who has ransacked the thesaurus while writing books such as The Beauty of the Infinite, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?, and the recent The Experience of God. One of the things I enjoy about his writing is how he rightfully gives credit to Nietzsche for recovering the scandalous nature of Christianity. In The Beauty of the Infinite he goes as far as saying: "Nietzsche... Read More

Soft Atheism and Rational Religion

A very instructive exchange between Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor at Notre Dame, and Philip Kitcher, a philosophy professor at Columbia, just appeared in the pages of The New York Times.  Kitcher describes himself as a proponent of “soft atheism,” which is to say an atheism distinct from the polemical variety espoused by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.  Unlike his harsher colleagues, Kitcher is willing to admit that religion can play an ethically useful role in a... Read More

Faith and Unbelief: An Interview with Dr. Stephen Bullivant (Video)

Dr. Stephen Bullivant has long been one of our most popular contributors here at Strange Notions. Atheists appreciate his respectful, fair-minded articles while Catholics value his careful articulation of what Catholicism actually teaches about atheism. Stephen has authored two books, The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Faith and Unbelief (Canterbury Press, 2013; Paulist Press, 2014). He also just released a massive tome that he... Read More

What is an Ad Hominem Fallacy?

NOTE: Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his own blog, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.     As students of logic know, not every appeal to authority is a fallacious appeal to authority.  A fallacy is committed only when the purported authority appealed to either does not in fact possess expertise on the subject at hand, or can reasonably be supposed to be less than objective. ... Read More

Top 10 Tips for Atheists When Engaging Christians

As an intellectual movement, Christianity has a head start on atheism. So it's only natural that believers would find some of the current arguments against God less than satisfying. But in the interests of a more robust debate, I want to offer my tips for atheists wanting to make a dent in the Faith. I've got some advice on arguments that should be dropped and some admissions about where Christians are vulnerable. Before beginning, though, I want to point out that these tips don't necessarily... Read More

Why It’s Okay To Speak Religiously in the Face of Tragedy

True suffering — whether in death, disaster, or disease — is united by the fact that we hate it. Our beings reject it, our minds refuse to comprehend it, our bodies are sickened by it, and it’s all a simple matter of definition: To suffer is to experience that which we do not want to experience. Now it’s impossible, from a purely secular standpoint, to answer the question of why we suffer. For if there were a good reason for our suffering, then that suffering would become tolerable... Read More

Moral Relativism, Conscience, and G.E.M. Anscombe

What should we make of the proposal that there's no such thing as objective morality, that morals are just determined by cultures or by individuals? That's what I'd like to address in this post. I specifically engage the cultural relativism advocated by Ruth Benedict, who claimed that “good” and “evil” are socially determined. I argue instead for the moral absolutism advocated by the British Catholic analytical philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (G.E.M. Anscombe). This post will proceed... Read More

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