Like Nothing You’ve Seen Before: Big Bang Errors and God Errors

NOTE: Today we share a guest post on cosmology from one of our top non-theistic commenters, Paul Rimmer. Tomorrow, we'll post a response from Fr. Andrew Pinsent, Research Director at Oxford University's Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion.     First things First   Many articles about God and cosmology begin with ignorance, and this article will be no different. I'm not a cosmologist. My research involves much of the same mathematical formalism cosmologists use, and... Read More

The Myth of Religious Violence

One of the enduring myths of the secular state is that religion is so dangerous, so volatile, so likely to burst into conflagrations of violence, that the only protection we have from societal destruction is the erection of a wall that separates religion from the state. We've all heard the story, and in fact, having also heard endless tales of horror about the great religious wars—especially the French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years War—we might be strongly inclined to believe... Read More

Answering Two Objections to Aquinas

I'd like to share an excerpt from my new book Answering Atheism, which answers two common objections to Thomas Aquinas’s first way of proving the existence of God. This way is usually called the argument from motion. Objection #1: What moved God?   The “new atheists,” like Richard Dawkins, sometimes make a caricature of Aquinas and claim he is arguing that, “Everything needs a cause. Therefore, there had to be a first cause called God. God is the exception and... Read More

Bill Nye, Ken Ham, and the Catholic Third Way

Did you watch the big debate last night between Ken Ham and Bill Nye? It was an excellent exchange with good points made on both sides, but decidedly missing from the debate was the fuller and traditional Catholic view. Thus for the purpose of our dialogue here at Strange Notions, I'd like to explore the "third way" absent from last night's event. How are Catholics taught to view the world? To quote the apologist Frank Sheed, in the very beginning of his book Theology and Sanity: “There... Read More

In Defense of Nice Churches

At some point in discussions between Catholics and atheists, the Catholic is obliged to defend the flair his Church has for covering everything in gold. The criticism, veiled as a question, isn’t without foundation. There have been all manners of abuse regarding wealth within the Church, and — if I may prophesy — there will continue to be. No sane man would defend the personal hoarding of wealth, especially not among clergymen. But when the man outside of the Church bemoans... Read More

The Rational Judgment of a Miraculous Cure

Dr. Manuel Nevado (left) and St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer (right). My goal in this post is to show how the Catholic Church made the rational judgment, after serious investigation, that one man received a miracle of healing through the intercession of another. In discussing this “miracle,” I will rely on two definitions of the word miracle. Fr. John Hardon, S.J., wrote: “In theological language, a miracle is an extraordinary event, performed by God, which can be perceived by... Read More

Is God Pro-Life or Pro-Death?

This is the second in a series of posts on the “dark passages” of the Bible. These are texts which understandably raise the eyebrows of both nonbelievers and believers who encounter them and say, “How can that be in the Bible if it is God’s own word?” In my previous post I took up the problem of violent Old Testament passages in light of Pope Benedict XVI’s claim that violence is contrary to God’s nature. My book Dark Passages of the Bible likewise deals with this and various... Read More

The Road from Atheism: Dr. Edward Feser’s Conversion (Part 3 of 3)

NOTE: On Monday we shared Part 1 of Dr. Edward Feser's conversion story from atheism to theism and on Wednesday we posted Part 2. Today we share the final Part 3. We'd also like to note that 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.   Several crucial background elements were in place by the late 90s.  Fregean and related arguments had gotten... Read More

The Road from Atheism: Dr. Edward Feser’s Conversion (Part 2 of 3)

NOTE: On Monday we shared Part 1 of Dr. Edward Feser's conversion story from atheism to theism. Today we're posting Part 2 and on Monday we'll post Part 3.We'd also like to note that 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.   Not that that led me to give up naturalism, at least not initially. A more nuanced, skeptical naturalism was... Read More

The Road from Atheism: Dr. Edward Feser’s Conversion (Part 1 of 3)

NOTE: Today we share the first part of Dr. Edward Feser's conversion story from atheism to theism. We'll post Part 2 this Friday and Part 3 on Monday. We'd also like to note that 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 many friends and readers know, I was an atheist for about a decade—roughly the 1990s, give or... Read More

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