5 Comments

  1. Pat said:

    The last words Jesus spoke on earth was ‘I am with you always’, now if that is true then it is the failing of us to see him, as you say ‘seek and you will find’ Jesus (GOD) said I am with you always and you should know that he who eats of my flesh will have life, God is life, he who follows me will do greater things than i (GOD). Jesus prayed that we be one in him as he is one in the Father, now not seeing yourself is a personal choice and we do it every day, we lie cheat and steal and seem oblivious to our own nature. Just to keep this very short, God (JESUS) told us we are his body and he the head and the body can not be separated from us, of course he was talking about his church and that’s where God reveals himself to everyone every day and every minute of the day. Granted some don’t see God there but like everything it requires a little effort a little humbleness and a little confession mingled with prayer and sincerity and hey presto GOD is with you in full view of your soul.

    No one who seeks and knocks is turned away, that is honest confession and the Eucharist.
    God Bless all on the road.

    February 2, 2016
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  2. Fr. Shroff said:

    Just stumbled upon your blog via FB. Good stuff. Thanks! Here you write Aquinas believed the world was eternal. He was a Christian, so he didn’t. Did you mean that Aristotle did? Or that creatio ex nihilo wasn’t something that one could arrive at through reason alone, and Aquinas held that?

    February 2, 2016
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    • Matt Nelson said:

      Yep good point – that was a hasty choice of words on my part. Of course Aquinas believed in a beginning of the universe out of faith. But his arguments were meant to be compatible – as you know – with an eternally existing universe (as Aristotle posited). Thanks for the clarification – I’ll fix that part up on the post.

      February 2, 2016
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  3. Gerald said:

    I’ve never bought into the argument from evil. The argument from evil argues against a specific god wherein we know or assert his nature. One must first establish the existence of god before pondering whether he is good, evil or a mixture of both. To me, the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the Abrahamic god is a mixture of good and evil, but that just negates any claims that the Abrahamic god is all good. It doesn’t negate all possible gods.

    Objection 2 does seem reasonable. I’m of the opinion that the time to believe something is after sufficient evidence is presented. Evidence of nature abounds, both sides agree. Why is the Problem of Divine Hiddenness even a problem that Christian apologetics struggle with? Why is this “hiddenness” acknowledged and addressed using convoluted justifications and claims surrounding why god wants to remain hidden?

    Asserting “everything popped into existence” isn’t some kind of atheist dogma. It’s not even asserted as a remotely scientific fact by cosmologists and physicists. Humans don’t know, nor do we have a means of knowing conditions prior to the “Big Bang.” Requiring non-believers in the supernatural to describe the physics and cosmology of the universe is a subtile attempt at burden shifting. The positive claim being made here is that a god popped everything into existence from nothing. What I hear is atheists claiming not to know and sometimes deferring to whatever the current state of scientific knowledge might be. This shouldn’t be brought up because it tells atheists that Christians lack an understanding of what disbelief entails. Disbelief isn’t a claim to a contrary position where evidence for that position would be required.

    We can’t assume all atheists are necessarily 100% naturalists, but if they are naturalists, it shouldn’t be up to them to prove that there are natural forces at work producing natural, testable, and repeatable events, that’s obvious. It should be up to supernaturalists to provide clear and convincing evidence that there are supernatural beings or forces producing supernatural events.

    February 15, 2016
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  4. carlos harb said:

    RE. GOD’S HIDDENNES
    dear Matt, I’m a new reader, not a new converse — yet. Some points on your article — “1st impresion”, superficial ones. (1) labelling MYSTERY does not solve the hiddenness objection nor make it more “palatable” and/or easier to understand. (2) Even more, it may be seen as offensive by some readers. (3rd) “Mystery” has a 2000-year history of been used, by religious people, not very intelliently. (4th) Ditto (1 to 3) with using “God does/may want it”; better saying that He wants to be hidden etc.– by saying so, all explanation are irrelevant. Thanks, C.H. GUAYAQUIL/CUADOR

    February 25, 2016
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