In arguing the case for the divinity of Jesus, scholar Brant Pitre attacks the foundations of modern Biblical scholarship, challenging the late dating of the gospels and their subsequent anonymous authorship. Attending Bob Jones University made me skeptical of fundamentalists. Attending Oxford University made me skeptical of liberals. I came to question the Bob Jonesers’ [...]
Broadly speaking there are two types of atheism. One is, or can be, truly noble; the other is, and always will be, truly ignoble. The noble sort of atheism is that which is genuinely interested in the quest for truth and pursues it in a disinterested way, as something that is worth doing because it [...]
It is said that Oscar Wilde was once asked whether it was true that he had walked down the Strand with a lily in his hand. “To have done it was nothing,” he replied, “but to have made people believe one had done it was everything.” Wilde’s point was that the truth was less important [...]
Many atheists are assured of the truth of their position, arguing that religious beliefs are merely blind faith at best and stupidity at worst. As Richard Dawkins writes, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, [...]
In June I had the joy to spend a week in Italy. One reason for my pilgrimage was to venerate the Shroud of Turin. I had been intrigued by the supposed burial cloth of Christ since I was in college, and as I was in England leading a pilgrimage with Joseph Pearce, I did not [...]
Many months ago I wrote an essay for The Imaginative Conservative entitled “The Mysteries of Atheism” in which I highlighted the mysterious trinity which all atheists acknowledge, albeit without knowing it; or, to be precise, the two trinities that they unknowingly acknowledge, namely, the trinity of space and the trinity of time. I pointed out that [...]
From American Atheistic Materialism…Good Lord Deliver Us. And the plea is appropriate because prayers for deliverance are a kind of exorcism, and if any society needs exorcism it is the American Atheistic Materialistic society. Pope St. John Paul II said there were two atheistic materialistic societies: Communist Russia and the Unrestrained Capitalism of America. The [...]
Famously, Oscar Wilde said “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Fair enough, while others of us are gazing hungrily at the McDonalds across the street, or peering up the skirt of a passer-by. Scientists look at science at least most of the time, we hope, because [...]
You have opened this page on your web browser. Now you’ve got to close it. Find your shoelaces and start untying. I want you to take off your shoes. Moses approached the burning bush, the bush ablaze with God, and he took off his sandals. For St. Francis, the whole world was a burning bush ablaze [...]
Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today… Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace… – John Lennon (Imagine) [...]
Does God underwrite our freedom, or undermine it? There are thousands of self-styled “libertarians” who would argue the latter. They actively oppose the religious commitments of most social conservatives, many of them convinced that materialism is the best metaphysical home for what we might call “libertarian values”—individual rights, freedom and personal responsibility, reason, and moral [...]
“I have left behind illusion,” I said to myself. “Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions – with the aid of my five senses.” I have since learned that there is no such world; but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but [...]
Religion for Atheists: A Nonbeliever’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton. When I learned that Alain de Botton had written a book with the title, Religion for Atheists: A Nonbeliever’s Guide to the Uses of Religion I thought, why of course he has. I was introduced to de Botton through, The Architecture [...]