Ishango Bones

Some therefore think religion is unreasonable, but is this true? Religious knowledge cannot be imparted like other information, simply by scanning the sacred page. And so it is said that religious experience transcends reason, not in the sense of being unreasonable, but that such experience is not a product of reason. Just as reason does [more …]

Fire, the source of being: we cling so tenaciously to the illusion that fire comes forth from the depths of the earth and that its flames grow progressively brighter as it pours along the radiant furrows of life’s tillage. Lord, in your mercy you gave me to see that this idea is false, and that I must overthrow it if I were ever to have sight of you.

In the beginning was Power, intelligent, loving, energizing. In the beginning was the Word, supremely capable of mastering and moulding whatever might come into being in the world of matter. In the beginning there were not coldness and darkness: there was the Fire. This is the truth.

After a few perfunctory questions, the crew asks Fr. Carron a question that most modern-day professional philosophers will never deign to ask: “What is the relationship between faith and reason?” This being television, the answer had to be expressed in ten seconds or less. Fr. Carron didn’t need that much time. He said: “It’s an encounter.”

“The desire for God,” the Catechism also affirms, “is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God” (No. 27). The image of the Creator is imprinted in his being and he feels the need to find a light to give an answer to the questions that have to do with the profound meaning of reality; an answer that he cannot find in himself, in progress, in empirical science. Homo religiosus does not emerge only from the ancient world, but he crosses the whole history of humanity.

The technical and scientific attitude has produced a particular kind of certitude – namely, that which can be corroborated by way of experiment and mathematical formula. This has given humankind a certain freedom from anxiety and superstition, a certain power over the world. But now there is a temptation to view as reasonable and therefore as serious only what can be corroborated through experiment and computation. This means that the moral and the holy no longer count for anything. They are considered to belong to the domain of what must be transcended, of the irrational. But whenever the human being does this, whenever we base our ethics on physics, we extinguish what is particularly human, and we no longer liberate the human being but crush him or her.

Video: God is dead?

Faith is not merely an intellection decision, it is a gift from God received at Baptism, and the soul has to have the disposition (continuity of sanctifying grace) to allow the gift to give certainty to the intellect. This is contrary to Protestant theology which calls for a personal decision to accept Jesus as your [more …]

–snip– When we have understood about free will, we shall see how silly it is to ask, as someone once asked me: “why did God make a creature of such rotten stuff that it went wrong?” The better stuff a creature is made of – the cleverer and stronger and freer it is – then [more …]