Well, when I was a child I had some sense of the world, but there was plenty I needed to be taught and learn to develop any foundation to exercise free will at any level. If I have children, I would not want to create any environment that stifles their free will. But I also know I would have the deep responsibility to teach them wisdom and the pursuit of virtue, as well as the necessary tools of logic, reason, and the ability to think effectively to give them the best possibility of choosing the best life. Now they may exercise their free will to reject those lessons and that structure, and that is their right as human beings endowed with a will. The same would be true of the existence of God and the truth of Jesus of Nazareth and Christianity assuming I had of course gone on that journey myself to find out if I truly believed and therefore decided to live my whole life on the basis of the Gospel. Ultimately, we learn what we see in action from our parents more so than what we hear. This of course doesn't answer all of your question or even any of it, possibly, but its what came to me.

God says you have "free will," but he also tells fathers and mothers to raise their children in Gods word and show them the way.
Thus, interfering with a child's free will and many Christians hold an odd belief that children cant think for themselves.
I grew up in this sort of family. Absolutely hated every second of it.
So what i get from this is that someone doesn't get free will until they become of legal age to think for themselves.
no wonder why organized religion is disliked by nearly half the world population, because its a double standard.
God tells you to love and, "who among you can cast the first stone" yet religion often casts the first stone???
How? by categorizing the population into believers and non believers.
Doesn't make any sense.
oh wait! it's not suppose to. Why? Because its Faith

It's not a matter of being comfortable with what you say; it's a matter of why should your remarks demand respect when you use hand gestures as a "turn-off" which excuses you from commenting without having watched the full presentation of ideas?

Like you, Father Barron is not under any obligation, in this case to stay within the boundaries of the terminology of the Bright Movement. Father Barron's use of the term "Dull" is merely the natural conclusion that "dull" is exactly the inference of applying "bright" to atheists, despite the superficial intent behind the term "super."

I've purchased AGAINST METHOD and have begun reading it. How about you?

Sorry for the late reply.

Before getting into the proofs for God's existence, we need to disprove materialism. Otherwise Aristotle's and St Thomas's arguments won't make sense (as I think I said earlier).

Therefore what I'm writing doesn't lead directly to a proof of God's existence, but it sets the necessary groundwork.

As we've established, we agree that the material universe is reality, not something whose existence our minds posit or imagine. Our disagreement is over whether it makes the sum total of reality. So we might think of material reality as a circle on a piece of paper; we both agree that the contents of the circle exists and is real; the difference is over whether there's anything outside that circle (and, crucially, whether this can be rationally known). Or to put it another way: are there any component parts of reality other than the material (and can these be rationally known)?

(Just to be quite clear: we need to draw a distinction between 'that which is known rationally' and 'that which can be known through experiment'. They might be the same thing, but this needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. No experiment will ever prove the existence of God. However, scientific experiments only look within the 'circle', telling us about it with greater and greater accuracy. God doesn't exist as a fact or an object within the circle, so it isn't surprising that no experiment will ever prove His existence. That belief in Him is therefore irrational follows only if one assumes materialism. This is why the claim that scientific progress has disproved God's existence is so laughable: not only has it not done so, but it cannot do so, unless one begins by assuming that the material is the sum total of rationally-knowable reality -- a first-year textbook example of question-begging.)

Anyway, back to the point. Consider mathematics -- think of something simple and axiomatic, like the statement 'x + x = 2x'. My proposal is that this statement, along with all true mathematical statements, is every bit as much a 'component part' of reality as the material. I further propose that it's impossible to reduce mathematics to something material, or to argue that it's merely an extrapolation or generalisation of observations of the material.

And I don't think this is too difficult to show. Firstly, although mathematics appears again and again in material reality, the statements it lays down are true ('obeyed' by material reality) regardless of any given material state. Indeed, it couldn't be any other way. 2 bananas and 2 bananas will always make four bananas. 10 stars each having mass of 10^1000 kg will have a total mass of 10^1001 kg. Etc. By the nature of what numbers are, and by the nature of what addition (or multiplication, or whatever) is, the answers follow necessarily from the premises.

Nor is this mere extrapolation from observed facts. We know what will happen in material reality when we apply mathematical principles to it. Combining a barrel of 2349 apples with another of 8891 apples, provided nothing interferes with the process, will give us 11240 apples. This is an absolutely certain fact. That nothing will interfere with the process is not a certain fact; it's technically possible that some quantum fluctuation or magic trick will make 10 apples appear as if from nowhere; but this will not break any of the statements laid down by mathematics. It would just be an example of 2349+8891+10=11250. The laws of arithmetic will always hold, because they cannot be broken; they're necessarily true. And what is true for arithmetic is true for mathematics as a whole.

(Physics, by contrast, is contingent on the situation of the object being observed. That's why we test in a lab -- to remove external influences as far as possible, and investigate a particular phenomenon in isolation. There's a great deal more that could be said here on Aristotle's final cause, and on why sociology isn't a real science, but not now.)

Further, mathematical statements are true even when they have no appearance in material reality, or when they have no appearance that we know of. It might be that nothing in material reality is instantiating 234233424+86789, and it might be that this has never been instantiated, but 234320213 is the result nonetheless. Again, this is a certain fact, and it applies to everything from the most basic mathematics to the most advanced. The mathematician G.H. Hardy famously boasted that none of his work would ever be useful, but it was none the less true for that.

Even more so, any reasonable experiment depends on mathematics' being true. If I want to measure the speed of sound, I depend on dividing my distance from the source of the sound by the time it takes to reach me. I can't prove division, and still less can I disprove it! It just is. It's a statement about how the universe is - just as much as 'objects with mass attract' or 'light is affected by gravity' are. And the same is true for any aspect of physics that uses mathematics -- virtually all of it, in other words. Changing physics is only intelligible through unchanging mathematics. Going deeper into physics means having to go deeper into mathematics first.

Mathematics is a component part of reality -- we don't make it up, in the way atheists claim we make God up -- but it isn't material. It exists outside our 'material circle', because it isn't an extrapolation from observation: it exists in and of itself. I will happily admit that this is difficult to conceive or imagine. But it's still real. And because of this, materialism must be false.

Thank you Fr. Sean. I found it.

Hi Loreen,
The story was from Daniel ch. 13. from what i can recollect i think in biblical times women were much more seen as property or temptrists, naturally Jesus tried to offest that by pointing out the sin was in the man not the woman and the fact that he had mary at his feet listening to him speak. Moreover he spoke to the woman at the well, which violated social norms of the day. Jesus didn't have problems violating social norms when they went against what he felt his father wanted of him. in biblical times i think a woman's witness or account was considered half of a man, so susanna was down by 75%. you almost get a sense from the story that the people suspected she was innocent but no one had the courage to speak up. i often think Daniel took a risk, but his confidence in God assured him things would work out. that is one of my favorite books in the old testament.

Hi Ben,
I understand your concern but i think perhaps the difference isn't all that stark. if you were to meet someone with whom you had to ask them to do something for you and you didn't know very much else about them you would have to make a choice, to take a risk and ask them to do something, or to take a different type of risk and not ask them because you don't know them well enough. if you chose to make a leap of faith and ask them to do something for you and they followed through your trust in them would grow. I suppose faith in God isn't all that much different, except that your knowledge of him would be based on scripture and how he had reacted to people in history. if you chose to make a leap of faith in various ways and you saw that it worked out, or you saw evidence that he affected circumstances in life then your trust in him would grow. repeated occurences would strengthen your faith even more unto the point that you had confidence in his presence even though you could not produce empirical evidence.
we all make decisions based on probability and not certainty, making decisions according to one's faith does built that confidence and trust.