"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 about 250 for "charity" or "love." Which is not to say, of course, that faith is more important than love, since Paul makes it clear that love is the greatest of the three theological virtues: "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (1 Cor. 13:13).

But there is no doubt—pun intended—that faith is essential to being a Christian and to having a right relationship with God, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews states, emphatically and succinctly: "And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Heb. 11:6).

The daunting work of defining and analyzing faith has been described, with perhaps a dose of knowing humor, as the "cross of theologians." As with hope and love, the virtue of faith can appear initially rather simple to define, often as "belief in God." But some digging beneath the surface suggests a far more complicated task, as some basic questions suggest: What is belief? How is faith obtained? Is it human or divine in origin? How should man demonstrate his faith? What is the relationship of faith to the will, to the intellect, and to the emotions?

The Catholic, meanwhile, must respond to charges against faith: that it is "irrational" or that it is the cause of conflict and violence. In recent years a number of popular, best-selling books written by atheists have called into question not only tenets of Christianity—the historical reliability of the Bible, the divinity of Jesus, the Resurrection, and so forth—but the viability and rational soundness of faith itself.

One such book is The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, which repeatedly—mantra-like—uses words such as "ignorant" and "irrational" in making the case that religious faith is not only outdated, but overtly evil. Every religion, Harris muses, "preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidenc e is even conceivable. This puts the ‘leap’ in Kierkegaard’s leap of faith" (Harris, The End of Faith, 23). He adds: "Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible" (Harris, The End of Faith, 25).

Calling Christians and other religious believers stupid and unreasonable is often the default argument for Harris; it is also an approach, crude yet often effective, embraced by many who believe that religious faith is an offense to enlightened, modern man. With that basic opposition in mind, let us take up two basic tasks: defining what faith is and answering some of the charges against belief.

Do I Trust the Chair?

A witticism goes: "Everybody should believe in something; I believe I’ll have another drink." It is more accurate to say that everybody does believe in something, even if it is belief in the ability to live without belief. Of course, even the skeptic understands that life in the material world requires certain types of belief or faith, using those terms broadly and non-theologically: the belief that stop lights will work correctly, faith that I will be given a paycheck at the end of the month, the trust that my grasp of basic math will keep me on the good side of the IRS.

One argument posits that sitting upon a chair is an act of faith, so even atheists have faith when they sit on a chair in, say, a home they are visiting for the first time. If for some reason I doubted the chair in question would hold my weight, I could ascertain its load-bearing capabilities by asking my host to sit in it first, thereby ridding myself of concern (and likely puzzling or offending my host). The argument only goes so far when it comes to faith in what cannot be seen, touched, or proven by scientific means. It does, however, suggest what many people are reluctant to admit: that all of us have beliefs and we live our lives based on those beliefs, even if we never articulate or define them. As Joseph Ratzinger observes in Introduction to Christianity, "Every man must adopt some kind of attitude to the basic questions, and no man can do this in any other way but that of entertaining belief." (Introduction to Christianity [2nd ed.], 71)

We, as creatures, have limited, finite knowledge, and so must make decisions—practical, relational, philosophical—without the luxury of proof. We use common sense and rely on our experience and, significantly, on the experience and testimony of others. I may not know for certain that the chair will hold me, but I conclude it is rational to think it will, based on certain observations: The chair looks well-constructed; it appears to be used on a regular basis; and it is in the home of someone who isn’t the sort of person to ask guests to sit on a chair that might fall apart upon human contact. Sitting on the chair is a reasonable thing to do. Implicit here is the matter of trust. Do I trust the chair? Do I trust my host? And, more importantly, do I trust my perception and assessment of the chair?

Consider another example. You receive a phone call at work from your best friend, who is also your neighbor. He exclaims, with obvious distress, "Your house is on fire! Come home quickly!" What is your reaction? You believe your friend’s statement—not because you’ve seen a live shot of your house in flames on a Channel 12 "news flash" but because of your faith in the truthfulness of the witness. You accept his word because he has proven himself worthy of faith in various ways. Trust in testimony and witness is an essential part of a theological understanding of faith.

God’s Gift and Our Response

The Old Testament emphasizes trusting in God and obeying his utterances, which were often (although not exclusively) entrusted (there’s that word again!) to patriarchs and prophets: Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Samuel, Jeremiah, and others. But while there are many men and women of faith in the Old Testament, trustworthiness and faithfulness are most clearly ascribed to God: "Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments …" (Deut. 7:9). The well-known narratives of the Old Testament are accounts of faith and faithfulness (and much faithlessness), all deeply rooted in a covenantal understanding of God’s revelation of himself to man. It is God who initiates and it is God who gives wisdom, understanding, and faith.

The New Testament places more emphasis on the doctrinal content of faith, focusing upon man’s response to the message and person of Jesus Christ. Again, faith is a gift that comes from God, accompanied by God’s promises of life. "No one can come to me," Jesus declares, "unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day" (John 6:44). Paul repeatedly states that faith is intimately linked with trust and obedience, referring to the "obedience of faith" (Rom. 1:5), exhorting the Christians at Philippi to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12), and telling the Galatians that circumcision is not the issue of concern, "but faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6). Faith is portrayed as a living, vital movement that brings man into a grace-filled union with the Father, through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit. According to James and John, while faith is distinct from good works, it is never separate from them, for they display the reality of faith: "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith" (Jas. 2:18), and "this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us" (1 John 3:23).

Needless to say, the Old and New Testaments together present a complex and rich tapestry of understandings of faith, including elements, Cardinal Dulles writes in his study, "such as personal trust, assent to divinely revealed truth, fidelity, and obedience" (Assurance, 17).

At the Threshold of Belief

Augustine and Aquinas stressed that the object of belief cannot be seen or directly perceived, nor proven by mere logic. If you can prove it, you don’t need to believe in it. And yet, as Josef Pieper explained in his essay, "On Faith," the believer must

know enough about the matter to understand "what it is all about." An altogether incomprehensible communication is no communication at all. There is no way either to believe or not to believe it or its author. For belief to be possible at all, it is assumed that the communication has in some way been understood. (Faith Hope Love, 24)

God has revealed himself in a way that is comprehensible to man (in an act theologians call "divine condescension"), even if man cannot fully comprehend, for example, the Incarnation or the Trinity. Reason and logic can take man to the door of faith, but cannot carry man across the threshold. "What moves us to believe," explains the Catechism, "is not the fact that revealed truths appear as true and intelligible in the light of our natural reason: We believe because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived" (CCC 156).

Belief can also rest upon the testimony of someone else, as Paul states: "But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:14). Aquinas succinctly remarks: "Now, whoever believes, assents to someone’s words…" (Summa Theologiae II:2:11). Pieper points out, however, that this leads to a significant problem: that no man is superior enough spiritually to serve as "an absolutely valid authority" for another man. This problem is only solved when the One who is above all men communicates with man. This communication, of course, reaches perfection in the Incarnation, when God becomes man—that is, when the Word, God’s perfect communication, becomes flesh. And this is why, to put it simply, the historicity of Jesus Christ and the witness of those who knew him is at the heart of the Catholic faith.

Faith is ultimately an act of will, not of emotion or deduction. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting Aquinas, teaches, "In faith, the human intellect and will cooperate with divine grace: Believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace" (CCC 155). This submission is called "the obedience of faith" (CCC 143). Logic, reason, and recognition of authority go only so far; an act of will, dependent upon God’s grace, is required for faith to be realized. Yet this response of the will is not an impersonal act, like selecting numbers for the lottery, but an intensely personal response. "We believe, because we love," wrote John Henry Newman in a sermon titled, "Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition." "The divinely enlightened mind," he continued, "sees in Christ the very Object whom it desires to love and worship,—the Object correlative of its own affections; and it trusts him, or believes, from loving him."

So much for understanding what faith is. What are some of the popular, common criticisms of faith that need answering?

Faith is contrary to reason. Harris puts it in this provocative form: "And so, while religious people are not generally mad, their core beliefs are. This is not surprising, since most religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial truths" (The End of Faith, 72). Yet the claim, "I don’t need faith!" is ultimately a statement of faith. If reason is the ultimate criteria of all things, can the skeptic prove, using reason, that reason explains everything about reality? To say "I will only trust that which I can logically prove" begs the question: "How do you know you can trust your mind and your logic? Aren’t you placing your faith in your reason?"

Thus atheism requires belief, including faith in (choose one) the perfectibility of human nature, the omniscience of science, the equality of socialism, or the steady conquest of political, technological, and social progress. But reasoned observation shows that the "truths" produced by these philosophies and systems of thought are lacking and incomplete; they cannot provide a satisfactory answer to the big questions about life, reality, and existence. The belief in science is a good example. The Catholic Church recognizes that science, the study of physical realities through experimentation and observation, is a valid source of truth. But this is quite different from believing that science can and will provide the answers to every question put forth by man. That is a belief—commonly called scientism—that cannot be proven but rests upon the unstable premise of materialism, which is a philosophical belief, not a matter of proven scientific study. For example, Harris writes that there "is no reason that our ability to sustain ourselves emotionally and spiritually cannot evolve with technology, politics, and the rest of culture. Indeed, it must evolve, if we are to have any future at all" (The End of Faith, 40). If that isn’t an overt statement of dogmatic faith, what is?

Put simply, the Church believes that reason is limited and not contrary to faith. True faith is not irrational, but supra-rational. In the words of Blaise Pascal, author of Pensées, whose rational genius is difficult to deny (unless one wishes to be unreasonable about it): "Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them" (Pensées, 68). So faith does not contradict the facts of the material world, but goes beyond them.

Faith is a crutch for those who can’t handle the difficulties of life.I once worked for a delightful Jewish lady who was married to a self-described atheist. She once told me, with obvious frustration, that he would often tell her that faith in God was simply "a crutch." This is not an argument at all; it is simply of way of saying, "I’d rather trust in myself than in God." But belief in self only goes so far; it obviously does not save us from death, or even suffering, disease, tragedy, heartache, depression, and difficulties. Everyone has a "crutch," that is, a means of support we turn to in the darkest moments. These can include power, money, drugs, sex, fame, and adulation, all of which are, by any reasonable account, limited and unsatisfying when it comes to the ultimate questions: What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? Who am I? Harris, for his part, spends a considerable portion of the final chapter of his book arguing that Eastern mysticism is a thoroughly rational and legitimate means for living a full life. In the end, his book says, "Religion is evil. Spirituality is good." But spirituality does not provide answers; religion does.

Faith is the source of superstition, bigotry, and violence. We’ve all heard variations on this theme, mouthed by the increasing number of people indoctrinated to believe that nothing good ever came from Christianity and that every advance in human history has been due to the diminishing influence of Christian thought, practice, and presence. Never mind that the bloodiest and most savage century in human history was dominated by forms of atheistic Marxism (e.g., the Soviet Union) and neo-pagan Fascism (e.g., Nazi Germany), accounting for the deaths of tens of millions. Harris insists that Communism and Nazism were so bad because they were religious in nature:

Consider the millions of people who were killed by Stalin and Mao: Although these tyrants paid lip service to rationality, communism was little more than a political religion. … Even though their beliefs did not reach beyond this world, they were both cultic and irrational. (Harris, The End of Faith, 79)

This is actually quite true, and provides further evidence that every "ism"—even atheism, materialism, and the "pragmatism" endorsed by Harris—is religious in nature. History readily shows that man is a religious animal who thinks religious thoughts and has religious impulses. As Chesterton wrote in Heretics:

Every man in the street must hold a metaphysical system, and hold it firmly. The possibility is that he may have held it so firmly and so long as to have forgotten all about its existence. This latter situation is certainly possible; in fact, it is the situation of the whole modern world. The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. ("Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy")

Chesterton suggests elsewhere that if you wish to be free from contact with superstition, bigotry, and violence, you’ll need to separate yourself from all human contact. The choice is not between religion and non-religion, but between true religion and false religion.

Christian faith, then, is not contrary to reason. Nor is it merely a phantasmal crutch built on pious fantasies. Neither is faith the source of evil. Faith is a supernatural virtue, a gift, and a grace. Faith is focused on God and truth; it is the friend of wisdom. "Simple secularists still talk as if the Church had introduced a sort of schism between reason and religion," wrote Chesterton in The Everlasting Man, "The truth is that the Church was actually the first thing that ever tried to combine reason and faith" ("Man and Mythologies"). The challenge for every Catholic is to give assent and to have faith, while the Catholic apologist must strive to show that such assent is not only reasonable, but brings us into saving contact with the only reason for living.
 
 
Originally posted at Catholic Answers.
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NOTE: This fictitious dialogue takes place between two friends, Chris, a Catholic, and Sal, a sincere skeptic, and centers on some basic questions here at Strange Notions regarding faith, reason, and the existence of God.

Sal: Chris, before we go any further in our conversations about Christianity, I have to ask you a very basic question.

Chris: Ask away.

Sal: Do you think this is going to get us anywhere, arguing about religion?

Chris: What you mean by "arguing"?

Sal: Fighting with words.

Chris: I don't want to do that. We're friends, not enemies. What I mean by "arguing" is just "giving reasons".

Sal: Trying to prove something, right?

Chris: Yes.

Sal: Well, I'm not sure that's going to get us anywhere either.

Chris: Neither am I, but I'm not sure it isn't, either. So if there's a chance, let's take it. Let's try.

Sal: Why?

Chris: If a lot of people say a great prize is behind a door, should you try to open it, or not?

Sal: You should, but what does that have to do with arguing?

Chris: The prize here is the truth about God and the meaning of our lives, whatever that truth may be. That's what we're both committed to, isn't it?

Sal: Truth, yes.

Chris: And isn't that valuable, like a prize?

Sal: Yes, if we ever find it.

Chris: Shouldn't we try? Shouldn't we knock at the door?

Sal: What's the door?

Chris: Honest dialogue. Looking for reasons.

Sal: Reasons to believe?

Chris: Yes. Or not to believe.

Sal: I don't think it'll work. I don't think you can reason your way into religion.

Chris: Oh, neither do I. But you might reason your way to the place where you can believe - like walking to the beach, and then swimming. Walking to the beach is like reason and swimming is like faith. You have to go to the place where you can swim before you can swim. And you have to go to the place where you can believe before you can believe.

Sal: You mean you have to prove it first by reason before you can believe it?

Chris: No, not at all. But I think it's your reason that's holding you back from believing. I think your reason is asking some good questions that no one has ever answered for you.

Sal: That's true.

Chris: So if we can find the answers to those questions, we can at least make faith possible for you. Then it's up to you, of course.

Sal: I see. You agree, then, that religious faith is a matter of personal choice.

Chris: Of course.

Sal: But reason and logic isn't the way we usually make personal choices. Therefore it's not the way to make the choice about religious faith.

Chris: That sounds like pretty good logic, Sal. Let's examine your argument. What do you mean by a "personal choice"?

Sal: What's right for one person can be wrong for another.

Chris: I see. You mean things like getting married or not, or deciding on a career, or how to spend money.

Sal: Right. There's no one right way for everybody.

Chris: But religion isn't like those things, Sal.

Sal: I thought you agreed it was a personal decision.

Chris: I did. But it claims to tell you something that's true for everybody. What's personal is your response to it.

Sal: What do you mean, "true for everybody"? What religious things are true for everybody?

Chris: Things like God and Heaven - whether they're true or not doesn't depend on you, or on your personal choice, any more than the sun does.

Sal: But if I believe it's true, then it's true for me, and if I don't then it isn't true for me.

Chris: Do you think that believing something makes it true?

Sal: True for me, yes.

Chris: But really true? Objectively true?

Sal: There's no objective truth. Truth is subjective.

Chris: Really?

Sal: Yes.

Chris: Truly?

Sal: Yes.

Chris: I don't think so. Am I wrong? Is this a truth I don't see?

Sal: Yes.

Chris: An objective truth, then. It's an objective truth that there is no objective truth.

Sal: Oops.

Chris: And you were so logical a minute ago!

Sal: Wait a minute. We're talking about religious truth. That's subjective.

Chris: You mean nobody can be right or wrong about religious truth?

Sal: Right.

Chris: Except you?

Sal: What do you mean?

Chris: You first said nobody can be right or wrong about religious truth. Then you assumed you were right about religious truth when you said it isn't objective.

Sal: You're tangling me up in my words.

Chris: No I'm not. You said it yourself. You tangled yourself up. You contradicted yourself.

Sal: Well, what I mean to say is that nobody can prove whether there really is a God or not.

Chris: Oh, but that's a different question, whether anybody can prove it. Surely God might exist without your proving it. Plenty of things exist that you can't prove, don't they?

Sal: Like what?

Chris: Like the fact that I'm thinking about the color yellow now. Or the fact that I honestly care about you. Can you prove those things?

Sal: No.

Chris: Then things can be true without our proving them.

Sal: Yes.

Chris: So God might be true even if we couldn't prove him.

Sal: O.K., but we can't prove him. No one can settle religious questions. So I think it's a waste of time to argue about them.

Chris: I see. And why do you think no one can settle religious questions?

Sal: I just think so, that's all.

Chris: You have no reasons to think that?

Sal: Sure I do.

Chris: I think you can guess what my next question is going to be.

Sal: You mean, what are my reasons?

Chris: Good guess.

Sal: Well, you can't prove God like you can prove other things, like galaxies and germs and scientific stuff.

Chris: You mean you can't use the scientific method.

Sal: Right.

Chris: And you think the scientific method is the only way to prove anything.

Sal: Really to prove anything, yes.

Chris: Can you prove that?

Sal: What?

Chris: What you just said: that the scientific method is the only way to prove anything.

Sal: Hmmm. I guess not.

Chris: Then you contradict yourself again. You say you should believe something only if it's proved scientifically, yet you believe that even though it isn't proved scientifically.

Sal: Pretty clever.

Chris: No. I'm not trying to be clever. I'm trying to show you that your faith in science isn't scientific. It's a faith.

Sal: Let me ask the questions for a minute.

Chris: All right.

Sal: Do you think there are other ways to prove things besides the scientific method?

Chris: Yes.

Sal: And can you guess what my next question is going to be?

Chris: "What are they?"

Sal: Yes. What are they?

Chris: Common sense, experience, intuition, insight, reasoning, and trustable authority. We use everything we have to look at all the evidence.

Sal: And how do you know which of those methods to use?

Chris: You use the method that fits your subject matter. You don't use the scientific method to understand people you love, for instance, any more than you use love to understand math or chemistry.

Sal: What do you use for God?

Chris: He's a person, so you use the method that fits persons: love and faith.

Sal: That's naive. Unscientific.

Chris: But it's right for persons. Look. Science is rightly critical and distrustful. It accepts nothing until it's proved. Nature treated as guilty until proven innocent, so to speak. But people are innocent until proven guilty. If we treated people the way science treats nature, we'd never understand them. The only way to understand them is to trust them, not to distrust them. And to love them.

Sal: Just shut your eyes and believe, eh?

Chris: No. Open your eyes and believe.

Sal: But "love is blind."

Chris: Not real love. Real love sees the other person's inside, like an X-ray.

Sal: But sometimes it makes mistakes. Sometimes you trust somebody and he lets you down. Trust doesn't always pay.

Chris: But it's a chance worth taking, isn't it? To live without loving anyone, without trusting anyone - that would be Hell, wouldn't it?

Sal: Yes.

Chris: Worse than being let down, wouldn't it?

Sal: I guess so.

Chris: Well, it's the same with God. It would be even worse never to try him, never to trust him at all, never to give him a chance, than to trust him and then be let down. But he won't let you down.

Sal: So you say.

Chris: I'm not asking you to believe it because I say it. I'm asking you to test it, like a good scientist. Faith is like an experiment. It's testable, like trusting a human being. Life is like a laboratory, and loving someone - whether a human being or God - is like an experiment. It's something you do, and you learn by doing.

Sal: I see. It either works or not.

Chris: Yes.

Sal: But I have to have reasons for doing this experiment of believing in God because you're asking me to put myself in the test tube. It's not a light little thing.

Chris: I'm glad you see that. It's not a little thing at all. All right, let's look at some reasons for believing in God next time.

Sal: O.K.
 
 
Excerpted from "Faith and Reason" in Yes or No: Straight Answers to Tough Questions about Christianity by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1991), 23-30. Used with permission.
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Prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins have consistently chastised religion for thwarting scientific research. But Professor Dominique Lambert, a respected expert in theoretical physics and the philosophy of science at the University of Namur, Belgium, believes not only does the Catholic faith, when correctly applied, not hinder science, but gives it vital intelligibility, meaning, and purpose.

In this interview, Professor Lambert speaks about the necessity of a harmonious relationship between faith and science and why the Catholic faith is best equipped to provide it.

Q: Can you explain what you mean by your assertion that only with faith is it possible to give complete intelligibility to science?

Lambert: In this dialogue, we have to say first of all that I cannot extract from science some theological point of view. In other words, science is producing many questions—rational and coherent questions—which are beyond the scope of its own methods. For example, the question of the ultimate foundation of existence, the meaning and history of existence—life, values, questions of a metaphysical and ethical nature—these are in fact produced by scientific activity but cannot be solved within the borders of scientific method.

Q: But atheists will insist that science can offer all the answers. Why is this not so?

Lambert: Because methodologically, science puts into brackets this question of meaning, the foundation [of existence]. The source of the existence is not solved by science because science presupposes this assumption, but rationally you need some explanation. For example, you can say: “I believe the world is a source of existence” or I can say, “Rationally, no, the existence of the world is received from a cause that is external to the world.” So you have a rational question but the answer cannot be formed because of methodological reasons. Intelligibility in fact needs some other explanation than this.

[With the Christian faith] you can shed some light on scientific findings. You can discover that many questions of a foundational value of meaning can receive some kind of intelligibility coming from this source of intelligibility. If you start from point of view of a believer, then you can get some coherent answer, with an increase in intelligibility. This point of view respects science completely, because you don’t modify science and you don’t try to extract from science that which is not science. You respect its autonomy, but you shed some light on it, [giving] an answer and an increase in intelligibility.

This is important. It’s not straightforward because we can, for example, adopt a religious position but one which will decrease the intelligibility of the world. But, in fact, we can prove that Christian belief is not like this. The Catholic tradition, for example, can shed some light and provide some elements as answers to fundamental questions, completely respecting the autonomy of science while at the same time increasing the intelligibility of science.

Q: You say that Richard Dawkins and other such atheist scientists try, in their own way, to offer a metaphysical perspective to science, but this doesn’t work. Could you explain more?

Lambert: His [Dawkins’] way of looking at religion, his way of giving to science some metaphysical power, does not respect the epistemological level of science. In fact, he is giving to science some metaphysical power that science does not possess. I respect his point of view, but we can in fact show that Dawkins gives to science some non-scientific powers.

Q: You also have observed a common trait among Nobel Prize winners in science, that they almost always write about philosophy after receiving their awards. Why is this and what does it say about science and faith?

Lambert: This is, for me, a clue that science is not self-sufficient. Many, many great scientists are writing books on their activities, but books which are in fact philosophical works. This is normal, but it’s important to look at this phenomenon, because it shows us that in fact science cannot be self-sufficient. Science produces metaphysical questions and, in fact, great scientists tend to solve these problems. This is normal because their scientific activities produce these questions.

The problem is to believe that these solutions belong to science, or to believe that a philosophical solution is given immediately by science. It’s not true. We cannot say biology leads to atheism because we cannot extract from science something that is not scientific. But we can say, for example, that a religious, theological point of view can illuminate scientific research and can help to extract some coherent meaning.

We have to realize that sometimes it doesn’t work. For example, I can assume some theological point of view, and I realize it can be completely incoherent with the scientific research. Take American creationism in the literal sense: if we adopt this point of view we will discover it does not respect the contents of contemporary biology—there is a kind of contradiction and it doesn’t work. But in the Catholic Church, we have a theology of creation whose point of view respects evolution and so on completely, but gives to evolution an additional meaning which is not directly present in the scientific research but that scientific research is coherent with this point of view.

Q: It is therefore essentially about respecting philosophical and Christian methods, allowing the two to come together?

Lambert: Yes, and both are articulated without any confusion and without destroying the link completely, because it is important, on the one hand, to methodologically distinguish the levels. But it is important on the other hand to unify them by a kind of articulation which is not concordism [the practice of identifying a scientific fact or theory with a particular phrase or passage in the Bible].

Q: You also talk about faith giving hope to science. Could you explain more?

Lambert: If we are believers or atheists, we are carrying out the same science, but a religious attitude can change the way we do science. Of course, your ethics, your ontological perspective is influenced by your theological point of view or religious attitude, and this gives you a kind of optimism. Msgr. Georges Lemaître, who discovered the Big Bang theory, said that science is the same for atheists and believers, but religious beliefs give you a nice optimism and hope, hope in the enigma of the universe as a solution. Of course, it doesn’t change the science, but it gives you an optimism of hope and maybe it changes, not science, but your life.

Q: Would you say it also gives life to research?

Lambert: Yes, it gives you some meaning to your scientific life, a sense of your scientific practice and action. You can have other nice motivations, but faith gives you a nice impulse and realization that all of this world has a deep meaning to be discovered. That is the solution to the enigma, as Msgr. Lemaître said.

I would also like to emphasize that, regarding the relationship between science and faith, it is important to avoid two kinds of problems: those coming from concordism and discordism. We need to avoid them and instead need some kind of articulation. In fact, in the Catholics tradition we have this quest for articulation because we have the nice tradition of fides et ratio [faith and reason], intellectus quaerens fidem [seeking to understand faith], and fides quaerens intellectum [faith seeking understanding]. The First Vatican Council condemned rationalism—that is, reason alone without faith—but also fideism, faith without reason. It’s very nice to realize that in the Catholic tradition we have such a dynamic articulation between fides et ratio. I think this tradition proffers absolute respect but without breaking the autonomy of science and theology.
 

 
 
Originally posted at ZENIT. Used with permission.
(Image credit: YouTube and Fundp)

Pope Benedict XVI dramatically underscored the importance of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) recently. In a series of general audiences dedicated to the Church fathers, Benedict devoted one or two audiences to luminaries such as St. Justin Martyr, St. Basil, and St. Jerome, while dedicating five to Augustine. One of the greatest theologians and Doctors of the Church, Augustine’s influence on Pope Benedict is manifest. "When I read Saint Augustine’s writings," the Holy Father stated in the second of those five audiences (January 16, 2008), "I do not get the impression that he is a man who died more or less 1,600 years ago; I feel he is like a man of today: a friend, a contemporary who speaks to me, who speaks to us with his fresh and timely faith."

The relationship between faith and reason has a significant place in Augustine’s vast corpus. It has been discussed often by Benedict, who identifies it as a central concern for our time and presents Augustine as a guide to apprehending and appreciating more deeply the nature of the relationship. Augustine’s "entire intellectual and spiritual development," Benedict stated in his third audience on the African Doctor (January 30, 2008), "is also a valid model today in the relationship between faith and reason, a subject not only for believers but for every person who seeks the truth, a central theme for the balance and destiny of all men."

This is a key issue and theme in Augustine’s Confessions, his profound and influential account of his search for meaning and conversion to Christianity. Augustine testifies to how reason puts man on the road toward God and how it is faith that informs and elevates reason, taking it beyond its natural limitations while never being tyrannical or confining in any way. He summarized this seemingly paradoxical fact in the famous dictum, "I believe, in order to understand; and I understand, the better to believe" (Sermo 43:9).

Falsehoods about Faith

 
There are, as we all know, many distorted and shallow concepts of faith, reason, and the differences between the two. For self-described "brights" and other skeptics, reason is objective, scientific, and verifiable, while faith is subjective, personal, and irrational, even bordering on mania or madness. But if we believe that reason is indeed reasonable, it should be admitted this is a belief in itself, and thus requires some sort of faith. There is a certain step of faith required in putting all of one’s intellectual weight on the pedestal of reason. "Secularism," posits philosopher Edward Feser in The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism,

can never truly rest on reason, but only "faith," as secularists themselves understand that term (or rather misunderstand it, as we shall see): an unshakeable commitment grounded not in reason but rather in sheer willfulness, a deeply ingrained desire to want things to be a certain way regardless of whether the evidence shows they are that way. (6)

For many people today the source of reason and object of faith is their own intellectual power. To look outside, or beyond, themselves for a greater source and object of faith is often dismissed as "irrational" or "superstitious." As the Confessions readily document, Augustine had walked with sheer willfulness (to borrow Feser’s excellent descriptive) down this dark intellectual alleyway in his own life and found it to be a dead end. He discovered that belief is only as worthwhile as its object and as strong as its source. For Augustine—a man who had pursued philosophical arguments with intense fervor—both the object andsource of faith is God.

"Belief, in fact" the Thomistic philosopher Etienne Gilson remarked inThe Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, "is simply thought accompanied by assent" (27). There is not and cannot be tension or conflict between reason and faith; they both flow from the same divine source. Reason should and must, therefore, play a central role in a man’s beliefs about ultimate things. In fact, it is by reason that we come to know and understand what faith and belief are. Reason is the vehicle, which, if driven correctly, takes us to the door of faith. As Augustine observed:

My greatest certainty was that "the invisible things of thine from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even thy eternal power and Godhead." For when I inquired how it was that I could appreciate the beauty of bodies, both celestial and terrestrial; and what it was that supported me in making correct judgments about things mutable; and when I concluded, "This ought to be thus; this ought not"—then when I inquired how it was that I could make such judgments (since I did, in fact, make them), I realized that I had found the unchangeable and true eternity of truth above my changeable mind. (Confessions 7:17)

Get through the Door

 
However, while reason brings us to the threshold of faith—and even informs us that faith is a coherent and logical option—it cannot take us through the door. Part of the problem is that reason has been wounded by the Fall and dimmed by the effects of sin. Reason is, to some degree or another, distorted, limited, and hindered; it is often pulled off the road by our whims, emotions, and passions.

But this is not why natural reason, ultimately, cannot open the door to faith. It is because faith is a gift from the Creator, who is himself inscrutable. In Augustine’s intense quest for God he asked: Can God be understood and known by reason alone? The answer is a clear, "No." "If you understood him," Augustine declares, "it would not be God" (Sermo52:6, Sermo 117:3). The insufficiency of reason in the face of God and true doctrine is also addressed in the Confessions. Writing of an immature Christian who was ill-informed about doctrine, the bishop of Hippo noted:

When I hear of a Christian brother, ignorant of these things, or in error concerning them, I can tolerate his uninformed opinion; and I do not see that any lack of knowledge as to the form or nature of this material creation can do him much harm, as long as he does not hold a belief in anything which is unworthy of thee, O Lord, the Creator of all. But if he thinks that his secular knowledge pertains to the essence of the doctrine of piety, or ventures to assert dogmatic opinions in matters in which he is ignorant—there lies the injury. (Confessions 5:5)

Augustine’s high view of reason rested on his belief that God is the author of all truth and reason. The Incarnate God-man, the second Person of the Trinity, appeals to man’s reason and invites him to seek more deeply, to reflect more thoroughly, and to thirst more intensely for the "eternal Truth":

Why is this, I ask of thee, O Lord my God? I see it after a fashion, but I do not know how to express it, unless I say that everything that begins to be and then ceases to be begins and ceases when it is known in thy eternal reason that it ought to begin or cease—in thy eternal reason where nothing begins or ceases. And this is thy Word, which is also "the Beginning," because it also speaks to us. Thus, in the gospel, he spoke through the flesh; and this sounded in the outward ears of men so that it might be believed and sought for within, and so that it might be found in the eternal Truth, in which the good and only Master teacheth all his disciples. There, O Lord, I hear thy voice, the voice of one speaking to me, since he who teacheth us speaketh to us. (Confessions 11:8)

Another example of Augustine’s high regard for reason and for its central place in his theological convictions is found in his experience with the teachings of Mani. As Augustine learned about the Manichaean view of the physical world, he became increasingly exasperated with its lack of logic and irrational nature. The breaking point came when he was ordered to believe teachings about the heavenly bodies that were in clear contradiction to logic and mathematics: "But still I was ordered to believe, even where the ideas did not correspond with—even when they contradicted—the rational theories established by mathematics and my own eyes, but were very different" (Confessions 5:3). And so Augustine left Manichaeanism in search of a reasonable, intellectually cogent faith.

Know the Limits

 
Reason, based in man’s finitude, cannot comprehend the infinite mysteries of faith, even while pointing towards them, however indistinctly. For Augustine this was especially true when it came to understanding Scripture. Early in his life, reading the Bible had frustrated and irritated him; later, graced with the eyes of faith, he was able to comprehend and embrace its riches:

Thus, since we are too weak by unaided reason to find out truth, and since, because of this, we need the authority of the holy writings, I had now begun to believe that thou wouldst not, under any circumstances, have given such eminent authority to those Scriptures throughout all lands if it had not been that through them thy will may be believed in and that thou might be sought. For, as to those passages in the Scripture which had heretofore appeared incongruous and offensive to me, now that I had heard several of them expounded reasonably, I could see that they were to be resolved by the mysteries of spiritual interpretation. The authority of Scripture seemed to me all the more revered and worthy of devout belief because, although it was visible for all to read, it reserved the full majesty of its secret wisdom within its spiritual profundity. (Confessions 6:5)

The contrast between reading Scripture before and after faith is one Augustine returned to often, for it demonstrated how reason, for all of its goodness and worth, can only comprehend a certain circumscribed amount. While reason is a wonderful and even powerful tool, it is a natural tool providing limited results.

Man, the rational animal, is meant for divine communion, and therefore requires an infusion of divine life and aptitude. Grace, the divine life of God, fills man and gifts him with faith, hope, and love. Faith, then, is first and foremost a gift from God. It is not a natural virtue, but a theological virtue. Its goal is theosis —that is, participation in the divine nature (see CCC 460; 2 Pt 1:4). The Christian, reborn as a divinized being, lives by faith and not by sight, a phrase from St. Paul that Augustine repeated: "But even so, we still live by faith and not by sight, for we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope" (Confessions 13:13).

Recognize Rightful Authority

 
Humble receptivity to faith requires recognizing true and rightful authority. "For, just as among the authorities in human society, the greater authority is obeyed before the lesser, so also must God be above all" (Confessions 3:8). What Augustine could not find in Mani, he discovered in the person of Jesus Christ, his Church, and the Church’s teachings. All three are in evidence in the opening chords of theConfessions:

But "how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher?" Now, "they shall praise the Lord who seek him," for "those who seek shall find him," and, finding him, shall praise him. I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee. I call upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and through the ministry of thy preacher. (1:1)

For Augustine, there is no conflict between Christ, his Body, and his Word. Christ, through his Body, demonstrates the truthfulness of his Word, as Augustine readily admitted: "But I would not believe in the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church already moved me" (Contra epistolam Manichaei 5:6; see also Confessions 7:7). Holy Scripture, the Word of God put to paper by men inspired by the Holy Spirit, possesses a certitude and authority coming directly from its divine Author and protected by the Church:

Now who but thee, our God, didst make for us that firmament of the authority of thy divine Scripture to be over us? For "the heaven shall be folded up like a scroll"; but now it is stretched over us like a skin. Thy divine Scripture is of more sublime authority now that those mortal men through whom thou didst dispense it to us have departed this life. (Confessions 13:15)

Humility and Harmony

 
"The harmony between faith and reason," wrote Benedict XVI in his third audience on Augustine, "means above all that God is not remote; he is not far from our reason and life; he is close to every human being, close to our hearts and to our reason, if we truly set out on the journey." Augustine’s life is a dramatic and inspiring witness to this tremendous truth, and it is why his Confessions continue to challenge and move readers today, 16 centuries after being written.

The young Augustine pursued reason, prestige, and pleasure with tremendous energy and refined focus, but could not find peace or satisfaction. It was when he followed reason to the door of faith, humbled himself before God, and gave himself over to Christ that he found Whom he was made by and for. "In its essence," Gilson wrote, "Augustinian faith is both an adherence of the mind to supernatural truth and a humble surrender of the whole man to the grace of Christ" (The Christian Philosophy 31).
 
 
Originally posted at Catholic Answers. Used with author's permission.
((Image credit: Patheos)

In Florida, some atheists, peeved that a monument to the Ten Commandments could not be protested out of existence, are planning to erect their own monument, celebrating their beliefs:

A small city in heavily Christian northern Florida is about to become home to the first public monument in the United States dedicated to atheism.
 
Florida members of American Atheists, a national advocacy group, plan to erect a 1,500-pound granite display in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Starke, Fla., next month, opposite a controversial year-old display of the Ten Commandments outside the same courthouse.
 
“We’d rather there be no monuments at all, but if they are allowed to have the Ten Commandments, we will have our own,” said Ken Loukinen, the director of regional operations for American Atheists who designed the monument.
 
The new structure will feature quotes related to secularism from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair…It will stand in a small square in front of the courthouse, opposite the 5-foot, 6-ton Ten Commandments monument sponsored by a Christian group.
...
American Atheists sued Bradford County last July, saying the Christian monument in front of the county courthouse was a public endorsement of religion. In response, the county asked Community Men’s Fellowship, the organization that sponsored the display, to take it down. But the fellowship replied by saying it had “prayerfully considered” the request and would not comply. The county and American Atheists went to a court-ordered mediation in March and settled upon the atheists getting their own monument.

I think this is a good idea, and I think the Christians interviewed made a good response to it:

…the [Community Men's Fellowship] posted a statement on its Facebook page after the settlement was reached saying that “God worked this out.”
 
“On the very first day we were informed of the lawsuit, [member] Dan spoke up and said he believed the Lord had given him a word on how to deal fight this thing. He was right. Praise God,” the statement read. “We want you all to remember that this issue was won on the basis of this being a free speech issue, so don’t be alarmed when the American Atheists want to erect their own sign or monument. It’s their right. As for us, we will continue to honor the Lord and that’s what matters.”

Well done, Christians! Tolerance, rightly reasoned and practiced. Some of our secular leadership could take a lesson.

And the monument is also a bench. As a woman with arthritis in the knees and spine, I appreciate such things, perhaps, more than most. The design is nice. I’m wondering about the quotes being planned for inscription, though. None of them are awful, but if the atheists are meaning purely to represent their celebration of reason I wonder why they would choose quotes that mention religion at all.

For instance, this one:

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion”
– 1796 Treaty of Tripoli

Aside from sounding defensive, in this context, why single out the Christians? What is this rebutting, exactly? What about the Jews and the Muslims, those wily monotheists? What about the Hindus and their multi-gods, or the Pagans? Shouldn’t an atheist bench either take issue with all faith traditions, or simply not mention them?

I’m not complaining; it is a free country and the atheists can inscribe what they like, but I’m wondering why they felt a need to specifically mention Christianity?

But then, that leaves me to wonder — given the news that the DOJ is pondering ersatz “blasphemy laws” — is this quote meant to be a dig at Muslims?

“When religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
– Benjamin Franklin

If the quote is not meant to reference Muslims, I can nevertheless see why some, given the headlines, would take it that way.

Again, I’m not complaining about the quote. I’m just critically thinking it through, and wondering.

Then there's this:

“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [writing the Constitution] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of Heaven.”
– John Adams

Again, it seems like a non-sequitur. I read it and think, “well…yeah…so?” Including this quote seems defensive, but what is it rebutting? The Ten Commandments? If it is meant to rebut those Christians who tread near to idolatry of the Constitution, I guess I can see that, except, again, if you’re declaring yourself — your beliefs, your organization, your credo — shouldn’t the quotes be about the reason and secularism you are promoting, rather than turning attention elsewhere?

“An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.”
– American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair

Finally, I actually like that this quote; it is entirely secular in scope and doesn’t really discuss religion at all. I still don’t know if I would use it, though, simply because it ends up prompting questions of the reader, that could ultimately defeat the monument’s purpose:

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.

But…don’t churches build a lot of hospitals? Are there hospitals built specifically by atheists? Should only government build hospitals?

An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said.

I understand that people who do not pray still do things, but does prayer exclude action? Do people who pray not do things that must be done? Why must it be an either/or? Is it not possible to be a both/and? What about people like this, and this, and this and this?

An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.

What does this even mean?

He wants disease conquered, poverty banished, war eliminated.

Putting the exclusionary pronoun aside — no gender-warrior, here — is this line suggesting that only the atheist wants disease conquered, poverty banished and war eliminated? But…haven’t non-atheists worked for centuries and millenia toward those goals?

I’m sorry, I read that line and I simply want to paraphrase my cousin the Capuchin: “you want to conquer disease, banish poverty and eliminate war? Well, lah-di-fecking-dah, so do I!” I tend to agree with the psalmist, though, in thinking of all three as elements of the human condition, and hostages to human knowledge and (more treacherously) the vagaries of the human heart.

I’m all for the atheist monument, but I think they could find better, more constructive quotes to mark in granite, like:

“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”
– Sandra Day O’Connor

Oh, wait, no. Sorry. Just teasing. Seriously — why not these?

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
– Thomas Jefferson

Better, right? Or this?

"The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression."
– Thomas Jefferson

C’mon, give the Catholic girl credit; she’s two-for-two!

"The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion."
– Christopher Hitchens

That’s not bad. It not only suggests a dutiful broadness that is essential to society, it does it without mentioning religion at all.

“But the philosophical and scientific process which I call ‘secularization’ necessarily involves the divesting of spiritual meaning from the world of nature; the desacralization of politics from human affairs; and the deconsecration of values from the human mind and conduct.”
– Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

That’s pretty good, right? Or…

“Whether we “spiritualize” our life or “secularize” our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp.”
– Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy

In terms of brilliant thinkers, they don’t come much more brilliant than Schmemann.

"The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade."
–Hannah Arendt

I like that, too, except it does encourage a defiance of all authority, and if secularists want to be the authorities, that might get dicey.

"So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world."
– E. O. Wilson

Speaks to a common experience, yes? And finally, for the materialist side of things:

"From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism."
– Vidal Sassoon

Anyway, good luck to the atheists on their upcoming unveiling. I have no expectation that any of them will take my genuine congratulations and kindly meant suggestions in the good faith they’re offered, but I do hope to visit the monument one day, and when I rest my weary arthritic bones upon it, I will be grateful and I will say, “thank you, atheists, for beginning your long road and heavy task of healing the world, banishing poverty and eliminating war, with the single step of building a bench.”

Be encouraged. Of such small beginnings, greatness has followed. Ask these folks.
 
 
Originally posted at The Anchoress. Used with author's permission.
(Image credit: Friendly Atheist)

EDITOR'S NOTE: Today's guest post is from popular atheist blogger Chana Messinger, who writes at The Merely Real, and it's in response to Jimmy Akin's article, Why We Should Be Cautious Using the Big Bang Argument. Jimmy has since written another piece in response.

Jimmy Akin’s piece warning Catholics not to put too much stock in any given scientific explanation of the Big Bang is very interesting. For most atheists, the first and perhaps only question about religious claims is, “How do you know?” It is a request for evidence only satisfiable within the epistemological framework of modern rationality, which in a case like this means scientific, empirical findings.

Empirical Religion?

 
Religious people have a number of philosophical responses to such a request. They may claim that they share standards of evidence with their atheist interlocutor, and that the science is simply on the religious side. This is frequently the purview of creationists, who are often very well informed about the intricacies of radioactive dating and the weaknesses of paleontology. That’s a dangerous business, though, since a rationalist epistemological framework demands that one is only as sure of a result as the evidence allows, and that one be willing to change one’s mind if the evidence doesn’t turn out as expected. As far as I have been led to believe, such a way of thinking is not particularly compatible with sincere religious faith.

In addition, this approach comes off to atheists as intellectually dishonest. There is something crass about claiming that there is a religious realm of knowledge entirely distinct from empiricism which truth can be found and yet that all empirical evidence lines up distinctly and without exception in your favor as well. It’s similar to political partisans whose interpretation of the Constitution just happens to line up extraordinarily well with their beliefs about ideal public policy. Mike Adams, in his recent piece on Mormonism, criticizes Mormonism both for its inconsistency with the Holy Bible and for its inconsistency with archeological fact (implying, of course, that his religious beliefs were perfectly consistent with both, and that both are legitimate avenues to truth). To claim both standards of truth at once is mildly suspicious.

Non-Overlapping Magisteria?

 
But only mildly, because in fact this difficulty is trivially simple to dispose of. Many, many people have thought of the solution before. If you have two standards of truth that you’d like to keep intact, never let them answer the same questions. From here we get Stephen Gould’s Nonoverlapping Magisteria and who knows how many religious folks’ conception of the same idea, and, all within the same intellectual tradition, Jimmy Akin.

If Akin successfully makes his point, and no one thinks that the Bible makes scientific claims, then there’s never any conflict, no double-truth. Science answers the what and religion answers the why, as a common saying goes.

But it can’t be that simple. It can’t be, because Christianity does answer certain empirical questions. For instance: Did Jesus really live? Did he really die and resurrect 3 days later? My understanding is, if the answer to these questions is no, then Christianity is a false religion.

A Hierarchy of Sureness

 
So what are we to make of Akin’s argument? When Leah Libresco converted from atheism to Catholicism, every atheist I knew seemed to be asking what evidence she had seen that had convinced her. What did she know that we didn’t?

But that was the wrong approach. The reason, as far as I remember, that Leah Libresco converted is that she was more sure of objective moral facts than she was of the empirical evidence against God. That’s the key. She was more sure of her morality than of her epistemology. So she backslid and changed her epistemology. This is rare, but within her system, it makes perfect sense.

Akin is not merely more sure of God and Catholicism than of science. He is infinitely more sure. As he says,
 

“Losing scientific support from the Big Bang would not disprove the existence of God. It wouldn't even disprove the Kalaam cosmological argument. It would just mean that the premise in question would have to be supported some other way.
 
If it were to turn out that the Big Bang was not the beginning of the physical universe then this argument in apologetics would have to be revised.
 
That's nothing to be ashamed of, though. Apologetics, like the physical sciences, is subject to revision based on the evidence available at the time.”

 
There is simply no evidence that will change his mind about God.

Given this hierarchy of sureness, this theology, this epistemology, Akin’s piece is exactly right. In fact, what I find most interesting about it is that it resonates in part with the Less Wrong style of looking at the world. Everything adds up to normality, say the rationalists, and everything that is true is already the case, so we must let the evidence push us towards truth and keep ourselves unattached to beliefs we may not want. And so the theists say, everything adds up to God, and God is true, and God is the case. Any scientific truth will lead to God and no scientific finding can overturn God. Thus, theists may be light as a leaf regarding scientific truth, and let the evidence take them where it may. To imbue a model, whether the Big Bang Theory or Creationism, with religious truth, is to chain God’s truth status to that of a changeable fact. This is theologically unacceptable and argumentatively ill-advised.

Perhaps we are now saved from the horns of contradiction. To be that much more sure of religion than of empirical truth makes religion a trump card; any time there’s an overlap between religious epistemology and empirical epistemology, religion wins the trick. Apparent contradictions can be dissolved by a total faith in God and God’s truth.

What would that mean?

 
If this model is accurate, then I am tempted to say that we should throw our hands up and decide that Wittgenstein was right all along. The world consists perhaps less of people who have different predictions about what the world looks like, and more of people who have different orientations to the world, who take different axiomatic truths as obvious, who orient themselves to the world in different but individually unjustifiable ways. This takes us back, in some ways, to the general tradition that gave us non-overlapping magisteria. People just evaluate truth differently and there’s no objective way to decide which is best, at least from among the most reasonable options. There’s simply no discussion about the fundamental points to be had. The apparent contradiction disappears because the standards of truth are different.

But this just doesn’t hold up. Many religious people I know wouldn’t want the “out” that the first option provides; they are willing to make empirical claims and believe in them wholeheartedly. And Akin, as I argued above, does believe that the Bible requires making the empirical claim that Jesus lived as is recounted in the Gospels, died and was literally, empirically, resurrected. The intersection is inevitable. But no scientific fact will change his mind about the bible or God; his Bayesian priors for both are 1. This gives us the same contradiction and potential for intellectual dishonesty as above. If you agree on science as an epistemology, and you hold empirical facts to be true, you no longer get to retreat to Non-Overlapping Magisteria or anything similar.

Or...

 
The other option religious people and atheists and agnostics have is to agree on standards of truth so that they can engage within the same framework. After all, questions like who the Problem of Evil is more of a problem for, while fascinating, don’t answer the fundamental question; they are no one’s (or almost no one’s) True Rejection to either atheism or Catholicism.

But it is blatantly obvious that Catholics and atheists don’t have the same standards for truth, and to pretend to for the sake of dialogue would be a farce.

So we have a problem.

 
Atheist argumentation may have its flaws, but it is generally consistent on its epistemology: reason and empiricism. Perhaps the Catholic response is well documented in the literature, and I am simply insufficiently familiar with it. But as I currently see it, the onus is on Catholics to give a more thorough account of exactly how the epistemologies of faith, reason and empiricism interlock, what predictions they make, and which beliefs they feel are fundamental, versus which they would be willing, in the final analysis, to relinquish to the cleansing fire of truth.

I think Akin provides a useful and thought provoking model of how to deal with science and religion. But it is not enough.
 
 
(Image credit: Presentation Process)