<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- generator="FeedCreator 1.7.3" -->
<rss version="2.0">
	<channel>
		<title>The Dawkins Challenge, Challenged</title>
		<description>Comments for The Dawkins Challenge, Challenged at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 49 out of 20 comments</description>
		<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org</link>
		<lastBuildDate>Sat, 25 May 2013 21:17:18 +0100</lastBuildDate>
        <generator>FeedCreator 1.7.3</generator>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12135</link>
			<description>Dear William,

Excellent post. It’s refreshing to “hear” Catholic Teaching correctly explained, nowadays. 

I wanted to point out that it is incomplete to simply post that “Faith in the real presence has its source in an interpretation of Biblical accounts of the Last Supper: an interpretation made official, as it were, in the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Council of Trent (1545-63)” without the third pillar of Fatith. After all, the “Deposit of Faith”, depends on Holy Scripture,  Apostolic Tradition, and The Magisterium (Church Authority). Your statement refers to Holy Scripture and the Magesterium (the Councils) but leaves out TRADITION. Yet, we know that the Real Presence is also confirmed by Tradition...

The Didache: 14 [A.D. 70]. 
  
Pope Clement I: Letter to the Corinthians 44:4–5 [A.D. 80]. 

Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Philadelphians 4 [A.D. 110]. 
  
Justin Martyr: First Apology 66:1-20 [A.D. 148] and the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew 41 [A.D. 155]. 

Irenaeus: Against Heresies 4:17:5 [A.D. 189]. 

Cyprian of Carthage: Letters 63:14 [A.D. 253]. 
  
Serapion: Prayer of the Eucharistic Sacrifice 13:12–16 [A.D. 350]. 

Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures 23:7–8 [A.D. 350]. 

Gregory Nazianzen: Letter to Amphilochius 171 [A.D. 383]. 
  
Ambrose of Milan: Commentaries on Twelve Psalms of David 38:25 [A.D. 389]. 

John Chrysostom: The Priesthood 3:4:177 [A.D. 387]; Homilies on Romans 8:8 [A.D. 391]; Homilies on First Corinthians 24:1(3) [A.D. 392]; (ibid., 24:2); and Homilies on Hebrews 17:3(6) [A.D. 403]. 
  
Augustine: Letters 98:9 [A.D. 412] and The City of God 17:20 [A.D. 419].

...to name just a few.

In Jesu.
 - Filipe V de Melo</description>
			<pubDate>Sun, 24 Jun 2012 09:35:54 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12110</link>
			<description>Grump: What is your basis for deciding that dating the Earth is impossible?  Have you studied cosmology, cosmic background radiation, the rate of the expansion of the Universe, Geology and Radiometric dating methods, and the evolution of the solar system? Or do you reject acquairing such knowledge on principle in case it upsets your Faith?--you will never find Truth that way.
O come on; you are not still using that &quot; A million (billion, trillion) years is but a day in God's sight&quot; ploy?--you disappoint me again. Anyway the aritmetic does not work.  Try dividing 13.72 billion years (age of the Universe) by 6 (God working days); you will get a very messy figure;--no Aristotelian perfect numbers or circles there. I have already mentioned that &quot;beginnings&quot; are human constructs; anyway where are you measuring from?-beginning of our Universe, a total meagaverse,-or what? As I have explained, this is on the boundary of knowledge so none of us , scientists and theologians,know the answer-yet; and making up &quot;Creators&quot; does not help one bit. Where did he come from?
If you claim he is &quot;eternal&quot; and uncaused, then if one thing can be eternal and uncaused, then why not the Universe itself?--at least we know for sure that that exists.
Of course there was time before our Sun. The Sun is about 4.66 billion years old, and therefore there was about 9 billion years of time before that,-in our Universe alone.
Instead of closing your mind to the very possibility of progress of knowledge, why not actually srudy some real science,? read something, google something,-but don't for God's sake think you can learn anything but anti-materialist propaganda from priests. - Reginald le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:43:18 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12108</link>
			<description>Reg, to answer your question, I am not &quot;youth earth,&quot; &quot;old earth,&quot; &quot;gap,&quot; or whatever, creationist. I believe it's scientifically impossible to determine how old the earth or universe is. 

In &quot;day-age&quot; parlance, a &quot;day&quot; in the beginning before there was a sun or earth could have been thousands, millions, billions or trillions of years. 

Some scientists (Kurt Wise, i.e.) are in rough agreement with Bishop Usherr's 4,004 B.C. &quot;start,&quot; but that is absurd to me as well. It seems science has at least proven that the earth is more than 6,000 years old.

The age of the universe is secondary to the main question: Who or what or why or how did the universe and all that is in it come into being? Go back as many &quot;years&quot; as you want and put down a stake and Someone or Something was there at the &quot;beginning.&quot;

Before 13th century monks invented the clock, people told time by sundial, hourglass or wax candles. Before there   was a sun, maybe there was no measurable &quot;time&quot; as we know it. God, it is said, lives in an &quot;eternal present.&quot; 

Conjecture all we want. We will never fully know how it all began. Some theories are more appealing than others, but they are still theories. Meanwhile science and faith continue to war on.
 - Grump</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 12:19:27 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12107</link>
			<description>I lost you all for a while, but I'm back! Yes I do tend to rise to the bait.
I realize the BB has its critics, not least Stephen Hawking who says that a prior Universe may have collapsed to a &quot;small&quot; dense object, but cannot have become a singularity. Maybe infinite density is impossible or the Pauli Exclusion Principle forbids it. But singularity or heavy ball of matter, it seems that there likely was something prior to our Universe, or co-existent with it , or both. And if one prior Universe why stop there?--maybe an infinity of Universes,-without reason or cause; just another &quot;brute fact&quot;. The Megaverse does not have to conform to human notions of &quot;beginnings&quot; and &quot;endings&quot;.
We are all agnostics, in the sense tht none of us (obviously ) knows everything (except maybe the Pope!)--but don't believe people who claim that &quot;it has been revealed to them by God&quot;. Who do they think they are?-so important that God tells them individually everything he gets up to from day to day (or Universe to Univese)?  What arrogance.  Yes atheists can also be agnstics. I am not qualified to dream up explanations; I will rely on the scientists to try and put something together. Put not your trust in revelations (or Revelations). - Reginald le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:22:32 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12106</link>
			<description>Reg, I enjoy yanking your chain and getting a rise out of you. Still, my non-believing friend, be assured I have not thrown in the towel yet. I remain squarely in the uncomfortable position of not knowing which side is right, which is why agnosticism makes the most sense. 

At least I admit it, while most everyone else here including you appear to have it all pretty much figured out.

Concede at least, Reg, that the Big Bang is a bit stale and can't really be taken seriously. If you don't like Genesis, then let's hear something better than the BB, which is amusing at best when taken literally. As a man who puts science and reason above faith, you ought to be able to come up with a better theory of how we all got here.  - Grump</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 09:23:11 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12103</link>
			<description>Paul; thanks for drawing my attention to Lanciano,-of which I had never heard, but assumed from your description that it was something to do with St Januarius; (a similar &quot;miracle&quot;).
In the interests of Truth (and aren't we all interested?)--I googled Lanciano, and discovered among all the uncritical acceptances of it, one atheist commentary, which I am sure you would be interested in, from the point of view of a balanced account.
Here is an analogy from one of the commentators:

&quot;I’ve analyzed (in a particularly stringent and methodical way) a piece of wood I found in my garage and it’s real wood. This wood is rather old, not sure just how old but it was already there when I moved in, so it’s obviously part of original cross on which Jesus was crucified and therefore Jesus was the son of god, died for own sins and god exists – so anyone convinced?&quot;
=-obviously he is not. - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 06:45:12 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12102</link>
			<description>Paul, I don't think I said &quot;0nly&quot; knowledge is Truth did I?-maybe I did. But even so, to deny that knowledge is Truth requires us to know what precisely is Truth,-if it isn't some kind of knowledge of something; any ideas?

I won't reply for Renegade, he is a friend of mine, but I rather doubt if he is monitoring this discussion as much as I am; he has work to do, and I am retired with time on my hands. So if he does not reply, do not assume that he is stumped by your rather involved reply to him.

--other than to say that physicists would refer to a change of &quot;state&quot; rather than &quot;kind&quot;, (that sounds like YE Creationism again when referring to &quot;species&quot;.
What you appear to be saying is that it is alleged and assumed that Transubstantiation is a divine revelation and therefore immune to scientific testing,-and that we must not even try; whereas superstring theory, ike other theories, is open to continued research and investigation. This is the difference between Science and religion.
As for &quot;consistency&quot;, Remember Galileo, who debunked the geocentric view of the solar system, which had been consistently wrong ever since Aristotle and Claudius Ptolemy fior about 2300 years?. - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 05:15:42 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12100</link>
			<description>Reginald,
as was pointed out by Grump, your premises don't work the way you gave them unless you want to claim (2) _Only_ knowledge is truth.  Which is really two premises (2a) All knowledge is truth and (2b) all truth is knowledge; which is where we'd start to disagree (with 2b).  Otherwise, (3) does not follow from just (2a) - which is what you stated, as other things can also be truth.

Renegade,
(Firstly) - transubstantiation is a change in &quot;kind&quot; not &quot;matter&quot; - so it can be tested and it is expected to be baked-wheat matter and fermented grape matter (at least in normal cases).  There are several cases of physical transformation as well, such as Lanciano in 1574, which was put to the laboratory test and was found to still be fresh human heart flesh and fresh human blood some 400 years later.  The normal change in &quot;kind&quot; is more analogous a like most of the cells of your body are recycled every few years (2? 20? something on that order) but we still say you're the same person, you're &quot;kind&quot; has not changed.  Transubstantiation is the opposite claim, that the matter (usually) stays, and the &quot;kind&quot; changes.
The scientific method, by its very construction, cannot test for &quot;kind,&quot; any more than it can test historical events - it can only analyse physical processes that repeat.

(Second) is basically a point about revealed vs. invented - which goes back to a question of credibility - transubstantiation was claimed to be revealed and Catholics believe the people making that claim are credible, and thus believe in their revelation.  The existence of other groups that only give partial (or no) credibility to the same people is only relevant in so far as they can provide reasons why they don’t think the people are credible.  For instance, claiming something completely inconsistent is a good reason to lack credibility - which ties back to reason and philosophy - transubstantiation, for example, is not necessary (implied) based on what we can rationally know, but it is also not inconsistent with what we know.  Based on what we know today in physics, it's kind of like super string theory - it might be the way things work, as it's consistent with what we know, but we don't have any evidence to suggest it's the way things actually work.  Except in super string theory's case, we hope to eventually know enough to decide that point (or formulate a version that we can decide), while transubstantiation outside of what we can ever expect to know for sure - and it's believed for the singular reason that it was revealed - Someone else told us how it actually works.
 - Paul</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 04:13:15 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12099</link>
			<description>Grump, you disappoint me. So are you a Young Earth Creationist now?--or are you just playing rhetorical games again, being Devil's Advocate?  I try to argue consistently for one side; that is our only hope for discovering &quot;Truth&quot;; all you are doing is sowing confusion.

Charles Allan:  I am not going to get bogged down in showing you the massive evidence for evolution. You can read it for yourself; Dawkins would be a good start, but he does not own Evolution, it is accepted by virtually all biological scientists ( and even your own Church, after a fashion), whereas your apparent antipathy to it is religious and ideological. say no more. You appear to be ignorant of nuclear science as well. Consider Plutonium: an artificial element that does not exist in Nature; where did it come from?-answer: man made it by nuclear fusion-synthesis.
 It is only one of several artificial man -made heavy atoms. 
Next, you claim that matter cannot come from &quot;Nothing&quot;; well we have already discussed &quot;Nothing&quot;, and pointed out to you that the empirical evidence that you despise, has demonstrated, in the Large Hadron Collider and other particle accelerator machines, that virtual particles appear spontaneously out of the void, ie &quot;Nothing&quot;; so there you are; check the literature for yourselves.
This implies, if you had not noticed, tht the Big Bang could indeed have come out of &quot;Nothing&quot; spontaneously.
As for Ockams' Razor: I, along with most scientists and philosophers, regard this as a far simpler explanation than that there existed/exists, a superman who is both 1 and 3 beings, who loves us all indescrimately, no matter what we do; but at the same time casts us into Eternal Hellfire at the drop of a hat,-and who has a &quot;Purpose&quot; for us, but does not know what it is,-and who plays games with us by making the world look as though it evolved naturalistically, but in fact he made it himself in less than one week, by the same sort of process, ie &quot;ex Nihilo&quot; (from nothing),--which nevertheless you are strenulously denying is possible if profane scientists try to imitate it. Call that simple? - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 03:05:33 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12098</link>
			<description>Other Joe-continued:
&quot;One has to put one's faith in some fundamental proposition.Is there intelligence in creation, or is it some steady state involving infinite multiverses, or black holes within black holes, or pick your favorite un-testable mechanism? I repeat; the choice is up to the individual. Empirical data are not applicable&quot;. 

Yes but you are assuming too much. I agree we need some fundamental axioms; eg Euclids Postulates which make the most minimal assumptions, eg he restricts himself to defining points and lines mostly, in order to have some rules for doing Geometry.
But to assume without evidence that there is a kind of complex Person, a superman, in the sky with ready-made intelligence that just exists uncreated and not evolved is an Argumentative Leap (Logical Fallacy).
You say that we can choose our favourite untestable mechanisms;-well the way science operates is that some of these hypotheses are now becoming testable, then we will have greater choice to decide which is most probable, based on the empirical data which you seem to want to deny. 
You can call that &quot;faith&quot; if you like,-but it is the kind of faith that has historically produced results; ie faith in reason, logic and observation, and the possibility of continued progress through the scientific method.
If as so many Christians do, you want to say we are criticising an unsophisticated kind of God, and that &quot;Sophisticated Theology&quot; has moved on, and God is now removed to some other region of space/time where nasty atheist scientisrs can't attack him,-then this is pure guesswork, and such a God is unknowable, and speculation about Him/Her/It is entirely pointless.Better to regard it as a fable and move on. - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 02:01:41 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12094</link>
			<description>Why does Richard Dawkins believe in a theory with no evidence.  All the scientific apparatus in the world cannot
create one single atom and can provide no evidence that
things created themselves either from nothing or from something else. - charles allan </description>
			<pubDate>Fri, 22 Jun 2012 00:29:27 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12092</link>
			<description>Atheist scientists tend to have strong feelings about John Polkinghorne! One can be both a scientist and a theologiasn but only in strictly segregated compartmemts. Of course , waering his theology hat he will claim that this motivates him to &quot;discover God's creation&quot;, though atheist- scientists seem to have equal motivation for doing science for non- religious reasons. The point is, what has theology done for his physics? Has he played a leading role in discovering the Higgs Boson for instance? (Its actual discovery now seems imminent). Can you change or influence the outcome of a chemical reaction by praying over a test-tube?-I don't think so, so why bother and kid yourself? Francis Collins is notorious for having come across a frozen waterfall during a forest walk, which happened to be in the shape of a Cross,-whereupon he fell to his kness in worship!  Very quaint, but how did it help his science (as one-time managerial leader of the Human Genome Project , and now of the National Institute for Health)?
Theologians can do science up to a point,-but then the crunch comes at the frontiers of science, like Origin of the Universe, naturalistic Darwinian Evolution, Population control using contraception and maybe controlled abortion (and you know the Catholic views on that!); condemnation of maybe a quarter of humanity for preferring their own sex to the opposite. These are all scientific and demographic problems at which Catholic scientists may cause confusion by trying to put God into the mix, just to keep him going in case we all forget about him because he is redundant,-certainly in science, and now also in ethics, and epistemology generally.
In other words we have better reasons for getting on with each other than the threat of Divine sanction if we don't; that attitude belongs to a byegone age.
Polkinghorne has been roundly savaged by scientific colleagues, and likewise Teilhard de Chardin,--he of the &quot;Omega Point&quot; in the &quot;Phenomenon of Man&quot;.  You should read the deconstruction of it by Sir Peter Medawar (a serious biologist). - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:55:32 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12091</link>
			<description>Atheists often make fun of the Genesis account of creation, which starts so simply: &quot;In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth.&quot; Rather, they prefer the &quot;scientific&quot; much more complicated version:

About 14 billion years ago, give or take, there was nothing but a lot of hot air in the universe. (where the &quot;universe&quot; came from no one explains). Then for some unexplained reason things got real hot and expanded and suddenly there was a big explosion. Boom! Then things got cool, baby. Actually things cooled down so much over time that soon particles began appearing out of nowhere. To make a long story short (which otherwise could fill several scientific tomes), these little bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam formed the building blocks of life --  tiny squiggly things came into existence, which soon became bigger squiggly things and so forth. It wasn't long -- maybe a couple or two billion years, give or take --  that the creepy-crawlers began developing legs and fins and brains and organs and muscles and wings and all sorts of appendages. This would result eventually in all sorts of plants and animals including land mammals, one of which was our ancestor, the ape. The ape became a sort of man at first, and then later, man as we know him today. It was quite a blast, all in all.

Ockham was right: The simplest explanation is likely the correct one.  - Grump</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 16:00:27 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12090</link>
			<description>Reg, John Polkinghorn has written well on the subject of the development of ideas over time in both physics and in theology. In each case, a breakthrough leads to a paradigm revision, which following generations develop using reason to tease out new implications. We are always approaching truth, but we never quite get to the whole truth. This is as true in physics as it is in theology. Both disciplines find faith indispensable. I think that a believer and non-believer are not so different, but rather profound differences in the definitions of terms used bifurcates the conversation to the extent that in effect each talks past the other. One might attempt to agree on definitions, but the list is long and as you have noted, life is short. Faith is a worldview. It illuminates the great questions and provides a template for a coherent definition of terms. One has to put one's faith in some fundamental proposition. Is there intelligence in creation, or is it some steady state involving infinite multiverses, or black holes within black holes, or pick your favorite un-testable mechanism? I repeat; the choice is up to the individual. Empirical data are not applicable.      - Other Joe</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:51:23 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12089</link>
			<description>OK Louise, nice talking to you.

Other Joe:  Now you are retreating into mysticism and preaching and are unassailable by reason. You claim to have revelation of the Trinity? Is that personal?--too subjective and not evidence. Is it scriptural?--a late invention, and I believe not official until the Council of Nicea around 325,--but I would have to research it, and life is too short.  That just leaves the &quot;Catholic Tradition&quot; , which to our minds is making it up as you go along. I wonder why I have never had a personal revelation of the Trinity or any hint at all of the Divine? But as we all know, and as &quot;Renegade&quot; pointed out above,-there is no real possibilty of meaningful communication between believers and unbelievers; we just talk past each other; we are two different species, or as if from different planets,-though don't get me wrong, I am enjoying the discussion and am happy to continue if you think it worthwhile.
 - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:01:14 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12087</link>
			<description>Reginald, I’m not going to continue the discussion here on this post because TCT doesn't really seem to be designed to have long lasting conversations on a particular post.  However, surely we will meet again on future articles!    - Louise</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 09:28:18 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12086</link>
			<description>Reg, small point if I may. The Creator would have existence prior to matter in a condition of eternal is. Time does not exist without matter. In a condition without time, there are no prior conditions. All relationship is without tense. We know through revelation that there are three persons in the Trinity, and while this is in essence a mystery to those of us in these dimensions of time and space, the revelation indicates that God is in eternal relationship and love. While God can do everything (create all that is), He cannot do any thing - such as indulge in absurdity. Terms such as “nature” have no meaning in the context. Similarly, it is meaningless to speak of constraints. God is not constrained by love, He is love. He is in the language of math a singularity, wherein values are infinite. There cannot be love without other. Our modest (and yet miraculous) gift of some free will is enough to allow us our otherness, and to have the last word on whether we choose to see life as having meaning or to see it as a crap shoot down a dark and dead-end alley.  It is our choice. 

 - Other Joe</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 08:08:10 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12085</link>
			<description>I would add to the above that when Catholics say they accept &quot;Evolution&quot;, they don't mean naturalistic Darwinian evolution, but a strange chimera called &quot;Theistic Evolution&quot;; (Grump,-you will find a long rant by me on that subject, in my book). So if Catholics accept evolution but claim that God guided it so that Homo sapiens emerged from its predecessors, Homo habilis, or H.ergaster or whoever,--then he did not in fact manufacture Adam in the way described in Genesis.  Therefore the Genesis story is lie, error or metaphor; (with apologies to C.S. Lewis). - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 07:47:15 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12084</link>
			<description>In any case the Columnist is right in a sense that before any reason based thinking person can have a conversation with a religious one, they must accept that said person is party to specialist knowledge. Knowledge may I add that they didn’t acquire from personal experience per se or vicariously from observable data but by personal revelation.

To criticise this chain of thinking according to the Columnist is to dismiss the schools of philosophy and theology in one stroke. This is utter nonsense. 

If a Doctor were to claim that they’d invented a cure for AIDS for instance and then when asked to prove it tried to point out the merits of medical research without substantiating their claim, would you believe them? Moreover wouldn’t the onus be upon them to prove that they had indeed invented said cure?

You might feel this is an unfair analogy. After all it is Atheists who give ideas merit on how closely the match reality but let’s examine the alternative when a religious person decides that bread and wine consumed under certain circumstances literally become the body and blood of Christ.

Firstly – does the fact that you do not want this claim to be tested using scientific methods mean it cannot? I think we all know what the results would be if “transubstantiated” bread were compared to the regular sort in a Laboratory!

Second –does the argument from personal revelation stand up on its own terms? There are millions of people who accept Jesus as their Saviour for instance who believe that the bread and wine are merely symbolic for exactly the same reason that Catholics believe they are in some way divine. It’s for this reason that Atheists invented such constructs as the Invisible Pink Unicorn and (my personal favourite), the Flying Spaghetti Monster as there is no way to disprove such claims using faith based reasoning. What does this say for the doctrine of Transubstantiation?

For the logicians out there I would also say that the doctrine is based on a false premise. Jesus ostensibly died to account for man’s original sin i.e. the fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. It follows logically that if we can prove that there was in fact no “first man” and “first woman” in the way the Bible describes (which we can!) then no original sin was committed. If that is the case then Jesus either died for nothing which begs the question why we venerate his so-called sacrifice or that transubstantiation is true and it is the Bible which is incorrect – you can’t have it both ways!
 - Renegade</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 04:44:00 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
		<item>
			<title>...</title>
			<link>http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/the-dawkins-challenge-challenged.html#comment-12082</link>
			<description>Hi Louise,
Some concepts cannot be analysed ad infinitum but must be accepted as a &quot;brute fact&quot;, and I do not think it surprising that intelligent Humans (and other lesser primates) can experience wonder in aspects of Nature etc. I study Paleoanthropology as a basic science, not second hand from a religious leader who is presumably neither an anthropologist or an ethologist, and necessarily is seeking confirmation bias for Christian ideology.
Having said that, the Pope does not say that only Christians can experience wonder; he speaks of human beings generally, including atheists.
I sing in two local choral groups; (I dont say &quot;choirs&quot;,-that would be too &quot;churchy&quot; for an atheist). We are doing a repeat of Karls Jenkins version of Stabat Mater (a very Catholic work);--and I love the music, the words blend in nicely and poetically,(though some critics disagree), and i get an emotional lump in my throat whenI sing &quot;stabat mater dolorosa, iuxta crucem lacrymosa&quot;,--&quot;or &quot;vidit Jesum in tormentis&quot;. So why is that, seeing that I am an atheist?
It's not because the story is necessarily true;it could apply equally well to Varina weeping at the foot of the cross upon which the rebel gladiator-slave Spartacus had been crucified, (according to Hollywood); or it could be complete fiction;(othewise why do people read novels and get emotional about them (perhaps)?  
In other words I am a normal emotional human being doing what humans do and in no way deprived by not believing Jesus was divine. - Reginald Le Sueur</description>
			<pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 03:46:59 +0100</pubDate>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>
