Do Catholics Know Their Theology is Correct?: A Response

NOTE: On Monday we featured a guest post by one of our non-Catholic contributors, Steven Dillon, titled "Do Catholics Know Their Theology is Correct?". Today Catholic writer Brandon Vogt responds.   Before beginning my response to Steven Dillon's thoughtful article at Strange Notions, "Do Catholics Know That Their Theology is Correct?", I want to first thank him for contributing. I've long admired Steven's clarity, good-will, and irenic approach. It's always a delight to interact... Read More

Do Catholics Know That Their Theology is Correct?

NOTE: Today we feature a guest post from Steven Dillon, one of our regular non-Catholic commenters. On Wednesday, we'll share a response from Catholic writer Brandon Vogt.   This site is primarily a forum for dialogue between Catholics and atheists. We can see this clearest on the part of the Catholic contributors who post about everything from the influence of Catholicism on science, and the crusade history to Marian apparitions and Catholic policy in the public school system. By... Read More

Does Luke Contradict Himself on When Jesus Was Born?

St. Luke begins the second chapter of his Gospel with a chronological note about when Jesus was born, writing: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria." (Luke 2:1-2) This passage has been subject to a lot of criticism, because Luke has already linked the birth of Jesus to reign of Herod the Great (Luke 1:5), and Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until years... Read More

The 100-Year Old Mistake About the Birth of Jesus

You know how people often say that Jesus was born in 4 B.C., 6 B.C., 7 B.C., or a time earlier still? The calculations that lead to these dates are all based on a proposal that was made just over a hundred years ago. But now scholars are challenging this proposal, because it looks like it's wrong. And it's been distorting our understanding of when Jesus was born for over a hundred years. Here's the story. . . . When Herod Died   The Gospel of Matthew records that Jesus was born during... Read More

The Theory of Everything: A God-Haunted Film

The great British physicist Stephen Hawking has emerged in recent years as a poster boy for atheism, and his heroic struggles against the ravages of Lou Gehrig’s disease have made him something of a secular saint. The new biopic “The Theory of Everything” does indeed engage in a fair amount of Hawking-hagiography, but it is also, curiously, a God-haunted movie. In one of the opening scenes, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, in a bar and tells her that he is a cosmologist.... Read More

Important Features of the Metaphysical Proof for God

NOTE: Today we wrap up our six-part series by Karlo Broussard on a metaphysical proof for God's existence. You can reach reach of the prior posts below: Part 1 - Why Must There Be at Least One Unconditioned Reality? Part 2 - The Absolute Simplicity of Unconditioned Reality Part 3 - The Absolute Uniqueness of Unconditioned Reality Part 4 - The Key Divine Attributes of the Absolutely Unique and Simple Unconditioned Reality Part 5 - Key Attributes: Perfection and the Three Omnis Part... Read More

Why Believe?

"Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all of its conquerors," wrote G. K. Chesterton. Faith is the Christian word. Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., in his masterful theology of faith, The Assurance of Things Hoped For, writes, "More than any other religion, Christianity deserves to be called a faith". He points out that in the New Testament the Greek words for "faith" and "belief" occur nearly 500 times, compared to less than 100 for "hope" and... Read More

Does Evolution Contradict Genesis?

The theory of evolution proposes an explanation for how life in general and mankind in particular arose. It holds that that there was a long period in which natural processes gave rise to life and to the different life forms on earth. This in no way conflicts with the idea of God. As the omnipotent Creator, he is free to create either quickly or slowly and either directly or through intermediate processes that he sets up. He can even do a mixture of these things, such as creating the universe... Read More

Key Attributes: Perfection and the Three Omnis

NOTE: Today we continue our six-part series by Karlo Broussard on a metaphysical proof for God's existence. The posts will run each of the next two Mondays: Part 1 - Why Must There Be at Least One Unconditioned Reality? Part 2 - The Absolute Simplicity of Unconditioned Reality Part 3 - The Absolute Uniqueness of Unconditioned Reality Part 4 - The Key Divine Attributes of the Absolutely Unique and Simple Unconditioned Reality Part 5 - Key Attributes: Perfection and the Three Omnis Part... Read More

Debunking One of the Worst Arguments Against Atheism

There are a lot of good arguments against atheism (like the argument from contingency). There are also some good ones which unfortunately have been used incorrectly so many times that they have been misidentified as bad ones (like Pascal’s Wager). Even more unfortunately, there are also some genuinely bad ones (like the argument from the banana), and some of these are quite popular. One of the worst is all the more dangerous because it sounds enough like a good argument that... Read More

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