I found this interview on the Website of Brandon Vogt, a Catholic blogger and speaker who’s the Content Director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Allow me to quote from Vogt’s introduction:
A few months ago, a man named Dave Rubin reached out to us at Word on Fire to ask if Bishop Barron would be open to an interview. (Apparently lots of Dave’s Twitter followers suggested the idea.)
To be honest, we didn’t know much about Dave at the time. But after some Googling, we discovered he’s a well-known comedian and host of the super popular “Rubin Report”, a show that airs directly through YouTube. “The Rubin Report” has over 350,000 subscribers and 100 million views. It’s one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world…
Dave is an interesting guy. One website describes him as a “rising media star” and “the voice of liberals who were mugged by progressives.” It says he’s “a 39-year-old pro-choice, pro-pot, recently gay-married atheist with a strong allergy to organized religion.”
In other words, the anti-Bishop Barron…I encourage you to watch both parts of the interview. Bishop Barron did such a marvelous job. He was smart and eloquent, even when Dave pushed the discussion toward hot-button issues…
So, what do viewers think of this interview? Does anyone feel that the bishop made an interesting case for belief in God?
Stealth Evangelism! No serious “skeptic” here is going to watch these videos.
17 minutes in to the first video and I actually really like this interviewer. He’s respectful, asks interesting questions, and lets the Bishop respond.
ETA: Completed the first video. It was really good. Thanks VJT for bringing it to our attention.
24 minutes in here.
Molestation being debated. The catholic priest says it’s been sorted out and there’s now a zero tolerance policy.
Problem with the catholic church is that it’s become a franchise of sorts. Depending on where you’re looking, they may follow the official guidelines or they may be more inclined to just pretend molestation never happened:
This is a very recent news here in Spain:
“Homage paid to priest who molested kids”
http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2017/01/31/actualidad/1485884546_160298.html
Spanish bishops, in charge of the local franchise, are most definitely not willing to conform to this new “zero tolerance policy”
I believe that in context he was talking specifically about the US.
But for good measure, and to be fair, I want to make sure nobody thinks I’m making a blank statement here.
The priest in my local church, where I grew up, is an exemplary man that I will forever love and respect. When I figured out religion didn’t make any sense to me my devote mother didn’t take it very well at all. I was a young teen who attended church every sunday and also a member of the church’s kids club, where my older brother was a monitor.
My mom went to talk to the priest, and lo and behold, he told her to respect my decisions, and what really matters is whether I was a good person
I never knew about that conversation until years later, but soon after my deconversion was “official” I started to miss the church kids club activities(not the kids, I kept in contact with them outside of the club), so I went to talk to the priest in case he would let me stay. And he did, no questions asked, he didn’t even ask me to not comment the reasons for my deconversion with the rest of the kids. All he wanted is to make sure we stayed out of trouble and he told me he knew I was a
good kid and he was glad to have me back even if I didn’t attend church or even believe in god.
The catholic church is a very diverse group with a huge variety of motivations. Usually the higher in the ranks you go, the more sinister and intolerant they are, but what really impacts people’s lives are their local priest. Sometimes those are great, in some cases they’re child molesters, but for sure no one in the higher levels of the hierarchy gives a flying fuck for morality in the lower levels.
Pope Francis seems to be trying to change that, but the franchises are far too powerful at this point.
I agree with Bishop Barron that atheists don’t understand what theists mean by “God”. This is obvious in the sophistic “we don’t believe in God just as you don’t believe in Thor or Apollo” argument regrettably popularized by Dawkins et al.
However, I think that the path from “head” to “heart” is nowhere as straightforward as Barron takes it to be. I also don’t think that Aquinas thought it was straightforward.
For one thing, the argument from causation is taken right out of Aristotle, even if Aquinas (thanks to medieval logic) sharpens it up nicely. (Aristotle is not nearly as clear about the necessity/contingency distinction as Aquinas is!) But in Aristotle it’s not an argument for the God who is revealed in history as depicted by Scripture — it’s an argument for the unmoved mover, thought thinking itself, which organizes the world into a harmonious totality by virtue of being pure activity.
Likewise the argument from design is originally due to Socrates (as recounted by Xenophon), and there are better versions of it in Timaeus and also in Stoic metaphysics. (The well-known objection to Darwinism, that mere chance and necessity cannot give rise to biological organization, is also to be found in Stoic criticisms of Epicureanism. I found them once in an excerpt of Epictetus, though I can’t recall the passage.)
In short, there’s still a ‘leap of faith’ between ‘the God of the philosophers’ (of ‘the head’) and ‘the God of the Bible’ (‘the heart’). In that regard I don’t think that philosophical reflection is sufficient to establish the reasonableness of revealed religion.
Whether is irrational to reject ‘the God of the philosophers’ is a distinct issue that turns on assessment of the arguments. Above all, it turns on how one interprets the principle of sufficient reason — as itself a metaphysical doctrine about the fundamental structure of reality or as regulative principle of successful inquiry.
Even if one takes it to be the former, the PSR could be understood in terms of causal explanations rather than in terms of reasons (which is one way of seeing the opposition between Spinoza and Leibniz, with Hegel somehow straddling that opposition, as he always does). If the PSR means only that there is always a causal explanation for some phenomenon, that’s not going to generate an argument for the God of the philosophers.
That said, I also think that the best sustained reflection for the God of the Bible is to be found not by doing metaphysics and epistemology but by reflecting on ethics and politics.
Here I think that Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution is quite superb. By putting the emphasis on the universality suffering, rather than on any deductive arguments, Eagleton addresses what is really crucial to a way of life informed by Christ, and thereby what makes Christianity as a practice really distinct from the intellectual and moral practices of Greco-Roman philosophy.
Build a wall and have the Vatican pay for it. Problem solved for US catholics
“I agree with Bishop Barron that atheists don’t understand what theists mean by “God”.”
I’m naming that The Teenager Defense: “You just don’t understand me!”
One of these days I am going to have to finish reading that book, though I should probably start over from the beginning.
Thank you for your thoughts.
God is a catch all word, a Humpty Dumpty word that means whatever it’s utterer wishes it to mean at any moment.
In the hands of atheists, any word at all is a catch all word, a Humpty Dumpty word that means whatever it’s utterer wishes it to mean at any moment, including the word word. petrushka’s words are no exception, and mean whatever petrishka wishes for them to mean.
The idea that words ought to have definite meanings is of course ludicrous in the extreme.
I don’t agree with Barron’s argument. He has not made a convincing case that you could not have everything contingent on everything.
Apart from that, he seems a reasonable guy. As for the claim that atheists don’t understand what theists mean by “God”, I think the problem is more complex. Theists don’t agree with other theists on what they mean by “God”. What Ken Ham means by God is very different from what Barron means by “God”.
That hardly seems exclusive to atheists
So you find infinite regress logically acceptable?
That is one reason why I think that the whole concept of atheism is incoherent. Folks can have ideas of God that are hugely diverse and contradictory.
I just don’t see how anyone can categorically say that there is no God when there is so much disagreement as to what God is.
How can you possibly rule all of the possibilities even those that have not been thought of yet?
I can understand rejecting the Christian God or Allah.
But to affirm that there is no God while not claiming any sort of omniscience or infallibility just seems to be highly arrogant and foolish to me.
peace
What does logic have to do with it?
There’s the saying “it’s turtles all the way down.” And you would probably consider that infinite regress.
Seeing it as infinite regress is artificial. It depends on the assumption that things occur in sequence. But if everything is a contributing cause for everything, then there is no sequence. There’s just a messy reality as we find it.
If that is the case then everything is God——–Pantheism
One problem with pantheism is it does not offer a cause for “cause” itself
peace
You tell me. Atheists are supposed to be rational. Not like those silly theists. I assume that means atheists are supposed to be logical. Is infinite regress logically rational?
All the way down to what?
There’s logical sequence and there’s temporal sequence and they are not the same. If you are doing away with logical sequence just say so. I have no desire to try to debate someone who embraces irrationality.
How does that work out for logic and reason? How does it even work out for reality? Everything causes everything else. How does that work out for science?
Is set theory logically sound? Can you find a contradiction in the premises?
No? Okay, there’s your answer then
Mung,
If infinity is “logically irrational” you should be able to lay out premises that lead to your conclusion that infinity is illogical.
If you can’t do it, you’ll have to retract your accusations of irrationality
Or write a distracting OP based on a book he’s not read.
Hi everyone,
A few points about the meaning of “God”:
1./ I think most people (Hindus, Jews, Christians, Muslims and theists in general) would agree that the term “God” (with a capital G) is meant to denote an Ultimate Explanation of everything in the observable cosmos. That’s a fairly broad, non-controversial definition.
2./ Regarding infinite regresses: some are possible and some are not. An infinite regress of preceding conditions seems to be conceivable, and likewise an infinite regress of mathematical sets (A is a subset of B, which is a subset of C, etc.), but an infinite regress of explanations is not. Why? Because it would explain nothing. (If A needs to be explained by B, which needs to be explained by C, and so on ad infinitum then we don’t really have an explanation at all.) Ditto for an explanatory circle: it simply makes no sense to say that A presupposes B and that B presupposes A. Hence the need for some ultimate foundation of Reality, which is self-explanatory. When it comes to explanations, there simply cannot be “turtles all the way down.”
3./ Re pantheism: at first blush, it sounds like an attractive option. However, it founders on the awkward fact that there is absolutely nothing in our cosmos – neither its constituents (taken singly or together), nor its initial (or subsequent) conditions, nor its laws – which is self-explanatory. Not even the whole shebang is self-explanatory. We can easily conceive that there might have been no cosmos at all.
4./ One might ask what kind of activity or process could possibly qualify as self-explanatory. That’s a fair question. Bishop Barron prefers not to speculate, but I’ll have a go. Try as we might, we cannot conceive that there might have been no thought at all: that would be tantamount to conceiving of the absence of concepts. Thinking therefore seems to be an ineliminable feature of Reality. Thoughts can only come from a Mind. If there is a self-explanatory Reality, then, it would have to be a Mind of some sort.
5./ Someone is bound to ask: why not multiple Minds? But if thinking is the sole defining characteristic of the Ultimate Mind, then how could there be two?
I’ll stop there, and invite others to comment.
Or perhaps our understanding of reality is incomplete.
Or perhaps our understanding of reality is incomplete.
Most of the universe is empty space. Thinking therefore seems to be an afterthought, if a thought at all.
Or perhaps our understanding of reality is incomplete.
Proposing a “mind of some sort” as a solution to the infinite regress problem simply relabels the problem, except your solution includes the “no need to explain where the mind came from” tickbox. Which is handy for you, I guess, but somewhat unsatisfying.
How do you know it’s a mind and not an invisible pink unicorn that solves the infinite regress problem?
Perhaps reality has no ultimate foundation, and is turtles all the way down. Just because such a situation is rejected by you because of logic does not mean that is not how it is.
I disagree that if an infinite regress of explanations existed, nothing would be explained: if A is explained by B, and B is explained by C, you have explained A and B (even if C remains unexplained) which is still better than not having explained A or B.
Also I’m not going to argue that an infinite regress of explanations is possible, but I don’t think you successfully argued that it’s not possible.
If A explains B, B explains C, etc… then there’s nothing that goes unexplained if an actual infinity of explanations exists, which would mean it’s possible. So all you have done is beg the question for it’s impossibility.
I agree.Perhaps you should apply the same logic to the “whole concept of atheism”. Every atheist does not claim to know categorically there is no possible version of God that exists.
In that case the only prudent course would be withhold belief
Putting it that way, seems to me that explanation would need to be outside of reality, or else it would need an explanation too… but what does it mean for something to be outside of reality? Perhaps that it’s not real? That it does not exist?
I don’t know about two minds but as a Christian would argue that there are three minds in the godhead.
In the Trinity you have thinker, subject of thought and thought itself.
peace
Can we?
What does an ultimate foundation of reality even mean?
Sounds to me like word salad.
what? just because we cannot conceive anything in the absence of thought (well, of course) it doesn’t follow that reality requires thought to exist. What a self centric view of reality
This is all freshman dorm-room jibber-jabber.
The inability to distinguish words and their meanings isn’t a very good place to try to have a conversation from.
I think everyone here might even be able to agree that circular reasoning is illogical. Why are you opposed to circular reasoning yet not opposed to infinite regress in reasoning? What do you see as the defining characteristic of each that makes one ok and the other not ok?
Where did I defend an infinite regress in reasoning? The point flew right over your head once again. I explicitly said that I don’t know if an infinite regress of explanations exists or is even metaphysicaly possible
Atheism by definition is a denial that any god exists.
How can you possibly withhold belief in something you have not even conceived of.
As far as I can tell the only prudent course in such a case would be some sort of soft agnosticism.
Peace
Reason it out dazz.
If it isn’t possible then it would be illogical and irrational to appeal to it.
If it is possible then an appeal to it would be illogical and irrational or not.
And no one is appealing to it.
I would say it’s as useless as appealing to an entity that ends the regression and doesn’t need explaining
Again Mung or Vincent. If you think an infinite regression of explanations is irrational or illogical (in principle impossible), show your syllogism.
Saying that something is logically possible doesn’t amount to affirming it exists, or is metaphysically possible and certainly doesn’t amount to appealing to it to explain reality
Do you think an entity that does not need explaining is logically impossible for some reason?
peace
Fair enough.
For myself, I have resisted “atheist”. I disagree with a lot of what is said and done by people who call themselves atheists. For myself, I prefer “non-religious”.
Depends on what one means by explanation I guess. As Vilenkin put it, even if we found a well supported, self contained set of laws and theories that fully explained the cosmos, we would still be left without an explanation for the laws themselves. It’s not that they wouldn’t need explaining, it’s just that we must come to terms with the fact that there will always be something left to explain. Imagining an antity that doesn’t need explaining may not be a logical problem, but it’s useless and intellectually lazy to the extreme
That only follows if you are committed to theism.
As an agnostic and non-religious person, I just take the world as it comes. Pantheism doesn’t explain anything that is not already explained. It just attaches a label.
You won’t hear me saying that.
Humans are not rational, though I suppose that depends on how one defines “rational”.
Here’s my thought experiment on that. Design and employ a bunch of robots (or biological organism, if you can manage that) such as are perfectly rational in the sense in which epistemologists use “rational”. And I predict that humans will out-perform them. And it won’t be close.
I occasionally toy with the idea of a blog post using the title “Rationality is irrational; logic is illogical.” But then I conclude that too many people would find that confusing.
Please, do it Neil. Sounds fascinating
I’m not sure why you see that as a problem. It is pretty much what we have. I typically describe it as “explanations don’t actually explain.”
Yet it has long seemed to me that progress in science is, roughly speaking, a matter of finding the next turtle.
I’m not sure what difficulty you are having. I don’t any difficulty conceiving of the idea that there might have been no thought at all. And, as for the absence of concepts — well, that’s pretty much what we have. Concepts are unavoidably subjective. The world does not come furnished with concepts. We create our own concepts in order to help us navigate our world.
No it follows if you are committed to rationality and clarity
Pantheism is the proper label for the beliefs you describe. I understand not wanting to apply a label to what you affirm. But doing so just makes communication difficult. IMO.
peace
How is coming to terms with the fact that we will never be able to explain a particular necessary thing different than acknowledging that the thing in question does not require an explanation?
looking at it a different way
What does it even mean to say a particular necessary thing requires a explanation but at the same time one can never be given?
peace
It’s not that an explanation can never be given because it doesn’t exist. It might, but we simply can’t answer it. It means accepting our limitations… perhaps we’ll eventually evolve to overcome those, who knows!
There’s a huge difference. Not being able to explain something doesn’t imply that an explanation doesn’t exist, or isn’t required.