Someone sent me this and thought I would enjoy it. They were right. It’s actually quite hilarious. Fast forward to 11:50 and make sure you are not drinking anything for the next minute.
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In PZ’s defense he may have been drunk.
Here is an important aspect of the problem when confronting atheists–aside from the fact that it is rarely possible, by dint of reason alone, to convince someone of something he does not wish to believe, just as it is very easy with even the flimsiest “reasoning” to convince someone of something he wishes to believe.
Reason cannot operate in a void: it necessarily requires data, which furnish its premises. The premises are everything. Now religion claims data that transcend the purely phenomenal sphere; but this transcendence is precisely what scientific materialists deny. It goes without saying that this denial is not a properly scientific position, for the ability to deny it scientifically is out of the question: there is nothing there for science to observe and measure, for science to operate on with scientific methodology.
A religious person has three sources of more than phenomenal origin:
1. Revelation. In the case of Christianity, this Revelation is not the bible primarily, but rather Christ Himself. The problem is that Christ, having departed this world as an earthly human, is a purely interior reality, accessible only by the other two supernatural sources of premises.
2. Faith. Faith is a light that is still a kind of obscurity, otherwise, we would be “seeing face to face.” However, the Word of God, which is the Logos, is a Light that “shineth in every man.” This light is sufficiently revealing for men, in the sense that we can understand what God is, what transcendence is. This capacity to conceive transcendence and absoluteness is furnished by that inward Light; and it is this same light that triggers an intuition of the Divine when a person is confronted with what is beautiful, good, majestic, holy in the world and in men. And that is why “they have no excuse,” and why “the Kingdom of God is within you.” This light is neither the reflected and discursive light of reasoning, nor is it an emotion of any kind (although it causes the most profound emotions). In itself it is just Light, which is pure Love and pure Certitude, and also Peace and Mercy, of which the sun’s warmth and light are signs or symbols of the Divine Qualities of which St. Paul speaks. For just as without the sun we should have no life at all in this world, so without the light of the inward and transcendent Sun we would not be able to live for even an instant.
But obviously, neither biology nor physics can furnish us with a demonstration of this Light or of its presence in the soul. And yet, all argument from nature or from Scripture depend on the light of Faith.
3. This last source is not accepted by all, but is nonetheless affirmed by any number of saints, and it is the spiritual intellect. It is not really different from the Light of faith, but only that in some privileged souls this light is so accessible and so clear to them, and–very importantly–works in such great harmony and force with their reason and their senses and their character that we call them “men of God.”
“In Him we live, and we move, and we have our being.”