Thomas Aquinas – Madison Catholic Herald

One of the unintended but happy consequences of the emergence of the new atheism is a renewed interest in classical arguments for God’s existence.

Eager to defend the faith that is so vigorously attacked today, Catholic apologists and evangelists have been recovering these rational demonstrations of the truth of God; and the atheists, just as eager to defend their position, have entered into the fray.

In the process, these ancient arguments, long thought by many to be obsolete, have found a new relevance and have been brought to greater clarity through the give and take of both critics and advocates.

On October 9, 2014

Fr. Robert Barron

The sciences and God

Given the ruminations of Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, one might have thought that the absolute limit of scientistic arrogance had been reached. But think again.

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, has asserted that “science” is on the verge of providing a complete understanding of the universe — an explication that precludes the antiquated notion of God altogether.

Limitations of the sciences

Before addressing the God issue, let me make a simple observation. Though the sciences might be able to explain the chemical make-up of pages and ink, they will never be able to reveal the meaning of a book; and though they might make sense of the biology of the human body, they will never tell us why a human act is moral or immoral; and though they might disclose the cellular structure of oil and canvas, they will never determine why a painting is beautiful.