We continue: Chronological Snobbery is the notion that, because we have blenders and microwaves we are just naturally hundreds of years smarter than our ancestors.  The appeals to astronomical knowledge and science fiction speculations as some kind of argument against the Incarnation presuppose that ancient Christians had no idea the universe was huge and never gave any thought to the question “Are there other intelligent forms of life and does God care about them?” Both are demonstrably false.  Ancients lived... Read more

This is another bit of my Creed book, this time addressing a question that has gained more prominence with the growth of our knowledge about the size of the universe and (just as much) with the imagination our culture branching out to wonder about Klingons and Vulcans and such like other critters: The next difficulty with the Church’s proclamation that God has become man is that many post-modern people have a surprisingly physicalist view of our place in the cosmos.... Read more

Here beginneth the third part: Now, you might think, because of Aristotle’s Prime Mover and his interest in natural science, that the key to inventing science was, therefore, monotheism or something like it. Not exactly. Islam is as intensely monotheistic as you can get but wound up persecuting those who might have founded an Islamic scientific tradition. Why? Because the winners in the Islamic philosophical struggle insisted that creatures had no delegated powers at all and that God acts upon... Read more

Yesterday we started talking about the current fad for “Intelligent Design”.  Let’s resume where we left off: Actually, there are several problems with that approach, though not with the basic instinct of intuiting a Designer. The first is this: St. Thomas himself never says “We cannot explain a natural phenomenon, so God did it”, and for good reason.  The problem with such “God of the Gaps” arguments (“I don’t know how this thing works or originated, so it must be... Read more

From the discussion of God the Creator: Last chapter we looked simply at the argument for God as First Cause.  Taken in isolation this sort of evidence for God gives a solid—but still pretty chilly and abstract—picture of a God who, at least, exists.  But a God who merely exists is not necessarily a personal God nor even a good one.  Indeed, based on the data we have looked at so far, many people can and do conclude that the... Read more