Is evidence relevant to people of faith?

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"Can God be known by reason alone?

"The answer is “Yes”. God can be known to exist by the use of reason alone even though many will deny such a claim. The Church teaches that the answer is clearly “yes”.

"Canon 2 §1:

“If anyone says that the one, true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.”
Hebrews 11:1

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Peace,
Ed
 
JDaniel said:
Wm:

You are certainly correct about one thing: “such a proposition makes no sense.” The question that then should be asked is, Why must it make sense to us? Think, for a moment: physical things make no sense either. How can that which consists of pure space, delineated by point particles that are dimensionless, possess actual mass and weight? That makes no sense either. Yet most of us - save for some bright physicist-minded people - believe that things actually possess mass and weight. And, to be honest, I live my life as if it is true.

How about “time?” By consensus, it is the measure of the motion of mobile being, measured usually in seconds, etc. Which “seconds?” The seconds on my watch? Or, the seconds on your watch? Or, the rate of decay of some radioactive substance? The only consensus one can draw is that there are many, many differing views of what a second is, and, therefore, what “time” is. Plus, many, many views that “time” is imaginary.

I refer you back to my statement above. But let’s go a bit further. If matter is nothing more than different configurations of s-points (the dimensionless points I mentioned earlier) - yet to our eyes, each configuration of s-points appears to us as a separate species of matter, how is that plausible?

Can the universe create itself? Or, is that just something you say?

Yes. All of these last statements are really far-fetched.

By the way, what’s your purpose here? Are you seeking argument for argument’s sake? Or, are you here, in charity, to run ideas back and forth between us?

God bless,
jd
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I am here because I am intrigued by how devout RC’s think. It seems to be such an extreme departure from everything I know as rational and based in sound logic. I guess I would call it curiosity. Is that not Okay with you?
 
WmJackP said:
Pick one of your choice and I’ll discuss it with you. three persons-one god? transubstantiation? virgin birth? Which one do you like?
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There was a time I asked a priest some of the same questions you pose. He told me that sometimes we just have to have faith. I found that to be an entirely unsatisfactory answer. That was part of the reason I left the church for many years. I have returned now, older and (I hope) wiser.

It IS about faith, but, also by my conclusions based on life experiences. I have too many anecdotes to relate in this e-mail, but, will say that when I attend mass I am often overwhelmed to tears to be in the presence of God, the Holy Eucharist. In fact, it was that Real Presence, not felt in protestant churches, that led me to the Catholic Church in the first place. I still doubt…St Thomas The Apostle is my favorite saint, but my “proof” is purely visceral. And because of that, I believe I am inspired to be a better person, despite my repeated failings. That doesn’t simply mean believing and worshiping God. It also means to endeavor to reflect the Grace of God by acts of kindness and charity. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that the world would be a much darker place without the belief in God.

I know that you will be just as unsatisfied with my response as I was those many years ago. I know that atheists think we believers are ignorant fools, but, consider me a blessed and happy one.

Blessings
 
WmJackP said:
Are there standards by which a factual proposition is worthy of belief? And, if the answer to that is “yes”, then how can people of faith justify belief in several of your doctrines? What are your standards for belief? Do any of your standards disregard evidence or render evidence irrelevant?
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Simple answer. 🙂

For the Catholic Church the standard is Divine Revelation. Not believing that standard will not change the Catholic Church doctrines based on Divine Revelation.
 
If you don’t open up your heart and mind to God, you cannot see the evidence.
 
Does anyone know how the email notices work?

I keep getting emailes for replies which are not replies to my post. It makes it pretty difficult to use the website.

thanks.

blessings.
 
WmJackP said:
Faith is a substitute for evidence? Is that essentially what your position is?
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what i mean is, that there are various kinds of evidence. The evidence of reason points to God consistently and powerfully. But to really ‘know’ God you have to give up the position of an “objective spectator,” a Judge. Because if there is a God he is greater than your or my ability to conceive of him; we do not even have possession of the category for the evidence which we might like to gather on God! A God who could be scientifically demonstrated would not be God but an idol. A God who could be disproved would not be God but an idol. To meet God, you have to accept mystery. And the etymological root of mystery, means “to close the eyes and the lips.” without silencing and darkening our minds in prayer (with reverence for someone, not something, greater) we cannot meet God.

Try it.
Prayer may very well provide the evidence.
 
WmJackP said:
Are there standards by which a factual proposition is worthy of belief? And, if the answer to that is “yes”, then how can people of faith justify belief in several of your doctrines? What are your standards for belief? Do any of your standards disregard evidence or render evidence irrelevant?
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We just have different premises. Once we accept that this Jesus fellow died and rose from the dead in human history everything else is acceptable. If this is indeed true, all the stupendous claims of His followers can be accepted. If you disbelieve in the resurrection, nothing will be acceptable.
 
shoe said:
The early pioneers of modern science such as Isaac Newton (modern calculus); Louis Pasteur (bacteriology); Charles Babbage (computer science); Robert Boyle (chemistry) et al. created modern science based on the evidence of their Christian faith and doctrines. They had faith in the evidence that “The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands. Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night sheweth knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2). These founding fathers of modern science believed that the universe was created by the will of One God and not by the will of man-made theories. Before Christianity directed science into the analysis of experimentation, verification, falsification, and quantitative data, much of the scientific world believed that the earth was immovable, the sun was without blemish, and air fell upward. Just a cursory glance at history shows that almost every relevant branch of science can be traced back to those scientists who operated within the framework of their Christian faith and that the standards of modern scientific research are rooted in Christian theism’s belief in One God.
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Also I would like to point out that the University and the Hospital were “invented” by the Catholic Church.
 
WmJackP said:
I am here because I am intrigued by how devout RC’s think. It seems to be such an extreme departure from everything I know as rational and based in sound logic. I guess I would call it curiosity. Is that not Okay with you?
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Uhmm I would posit to you that logic or mathematics do not exclude God on the contrary they are a proof of his reality.
You do not need to switch off your intellect to love God and find Him. He gave you your intellegence and enough grace that you can recognize Him in his Creation. He also gave you free will, i.e. you are free to accept and love Him or Reject Him.
 
rscanl01 said:
Does anyone know how the email notices work?

I keep getting emailes for replies which are not replies to my post. It makes it pretty difficult to use the website.

thanks.

blessings.
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Off topic, but go to the top of page, under “Profile” → “Control Panel” → “Edit Options”
Search for “Default Thread Subscription Mode” and change the dropdown to either “No Subscriptions” or “No email notification” and you won’t get those emails for any new topics you post in. For the one’s you’ve already posted in go to “Profile” → “Subscribed Threads” and select all the topics by clicking the check box in the table header, then in the dropdown at the bottom of the table choose “Delete subscription” or “No email notification” and click “Go”.
 
JerryZ said:
Uhmm I would posit to you that logic or mathematics do not exclude God on the contrary they are a proof of his reality.
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I don’t see it that way. The way I see it is that science cannot disprove, for instance, that big foot exists, that UFO encounters have resulted in abductions, or, any other bizarre belief system. Simply stated one cannot disprove a negative.

Science operate from a premise of verification. Religion operates from a position of–forgive me, but, I have no other way to express this–wishful thinking. For example someone posited in response to this dialog that once one accepts the truth of the resurrection, everything else follows. Perhaps, and perhaps, if one accepts the theology that may be culled from John’s gospel, this is so------- but, to accept such fanciful notions asks quite a lot, don’t you think, of the honest intellect? Is it not more credible to believe, for instance, that a group of people in the 1st century came to believe that Jesus resurrected in much the same way as folks in that era came to believe tenants of the various pagan cults, but, it was only the conversion of Constantine and the later decrees of Theodosious which made the RC church what it became? Which is more plausable, therefore, that one of multiple competiting faiths “caught on” or that men walk on water, virgin women give births to divine beings and that the wronful acts and omissions of mankind are expunged by means of a god’s death?
 
About the Resurrection of Christ, a couple of points:

Firstly, if you read the NT accounts you will find people who were astounded and unbelieving, not people who were expecting it and comparing it to pagan cult beliefs. They were hard-headed men who worked with their hands for a living. They knew life and death as intimate realities. There were no fancy funeral homes to soften the blow of death for them. They knew Jesus had died. The Roman soldiers knew Jesus had died, the Jewish officials begged Pilate to put guards on the tomb to be sure Jesus stayed dead. It doesn’t read like a cultish belief in resurrection, but as people desperate NOT to believe in it.

Secondly, if everyone is descended from the same group of human beings, and science bears it out that we do, then everyone would have heard of the promises made to Adam and to Noah about a coming deliverer. As the human race broke up and family groups left one another to establish nations, they took those ideas with them, the ideas were distorted over time because the revelation was an ancient one that had not been recorded in writing for thousands of years. It wasn’t until Moses that the revelation was restored by God himself. The beliefs of the Egyptians bear little resemblence to the reality of the nativity accounts of the NT. Nor does the death and resurrection of Jesus look like the cult tales, rather the cult tales resemble the reality, but being warped remembrances of an ancient promise, they were myths rather than realities. The reality came about in real time to real people in a real place on planet earth. The birth of Jesus came about during the reign of a particular emperor and king, not in some clouded mythological past of the imagination based on a faulty remembrance, as myths mostly generally are.

We have already demonstrated that your narrow ideas about what is possible and what is not are based on flawed understanding of how things work. You might want to consider that you may not have all the answers but need to do a bit more research into these things from sources other than those who negate them, who themselves have done so without understanding them or looking for answers in the right places. If you want to know how to fix a car you ask a mechanic, not a baker and if you want to know about theolological matters you don’t ask a scientist but a theologian.
 
WmJackP said:
I am here because I am intrigued by how devout RC’s think. It seems to be such an extreme departure from everything I know as rational and based in sound logic. I guess I would call it curiosity. Is that not Okay with you?
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WmJack:

Well, I’m not an admin, so it really doesn’t matter whether or not it’s Okay with me. I guess I was curious too. Perhaps RC logic is not as narrow as some logics. I know, e.g., that some folks don’t like “inductive” logic, even if it is prefaced with an exemplary dialectic. I guess because that’s how the existence of God is proved.

If everything you know tells you that Christian dialectical induction is “an extreme departure,” then I might be tempted to expand my awareness of what I know. Did you have any specific problems with my logic?

God bless,
jd
 
Della said:
About the Resurrection of Christ,
If you want to know how to fix a car you ask a mechanic, not a baker and if you want to know about theolological matters you don’t ask a scientist but a theologian.
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It’s in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but, if you want to know about the stars do you also ask an astrologist?
 
WmJackP said:
It’s in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but, if you want to know about the stars do you also ask an astrologist?
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Only if you want to know how they are related to astrology. That’s my point entirely. You can’t ask a scientist to tell you about theology or a theologian to tell you about science. Theology doesn’t tell us how the heavens go but how to go to heaven. The evidence of that is in how God has related to man since man’s creation–what God put into man, and indeed his whole creation, that functions with such order instead of raw chaos. Truth does not contradict truth, rather, the truths of theology and nature compliment one another and inform one another.
 
WmJackP said:
I’m not sure that you got my point. Astrology is not astromomy.
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I fully understand. Astronomy is not Theology, and Theology is not superstition as is Astrology. Theology is revealed truth that is reasonable, tells us truths about ourselves and God, and is part of our history in which God has acted in and through and around man. Superstitions are not based on revelation or science or reason, but on wishful thinking and a desire for power/control.
 
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