Jorge Ledezma thank you! We will!!

@@CatholicCentralVideos finally some videos that take a holistic approach to faith and reason! And don't just adopt a siege mentality against the world.

@@LedezVid Thank you so much for noticing what we're trying to do over here!

Thank you Mary Victor, we can always use prayers!

Sweetcupcake 114 THANK YOU!!!

Thank you so much!

God bless YOU!

We agree!

dnlorbe we don’t consider it to be a substitute for church, but so happy to hear that you found it useful!

@@CatholicCentralVideos just wish my priest had the passion to teach that you guys do. Good to see Catholics who aren't so weak.

When a priest (or deacon) preaches a homily, his goal is not necessarily to teach, but to open up an aspect of the readings that pertains to your life today. That is why, as Catholics, we are urged to do some "outside reading" and to seek out those who can expand our knowledge of the faith.

me too, kelly! soooo many think you leave brains at the church door

Thank you so much for this very thoughtful comment, Griffin! We're so grateful you took the time to watch with an open mind and share these questions with us. As to your first question, it's important to note that even most non-religious people arrive at specific answers about many important things that lie outside falsifiable science. For example, it is impossible -even in principle-for science to ever prove that another human being has subjective consciousness (philosopher David Chalmers calls this the "hard problem of consciousness"). Yet most atheists don't say there's no reason to believe anything particular about that question-they still firmly believe that people around them have the same kind of subjective internal experience that they do. Likewise, science can describe love as a purely electrochemical interaction of brain cells and neurotransmitters. That's all science can ever see from the outside. But actually feeling love gives us a powerful conviction that there's *something* happening there beyond what can be empirically observed. To Catholics, this isn't merely a bias or delusion, but a perception of something real and mysterious. To your second question, we'd like to clarify that we don't think that faith is the only source of awe and wonder. Indeed, some of the most eloquent articulators of these feelings, like Carl Sagan, have been non-religious. We at Catholic Central affirm and admire those expressions, whoever they come from. The difference, though, between a non-religious worldview and the Catholic worldview hinges on the idea of transcendence. If we may generalize a bit, the most common physicalist worldview sees our remarkable existence as something like a winning lottery ticket. It's genuinely amazing if those randomly spinning balls happen to match the number on your ticket, but the motion of the balls fully explains the result. That is, physical laws are sufficient to explain all the things that produce awe and wonder. Does that feel like a fair approximation of your own view, Griffin? By contrast, Catholics see human life, relationships, and purpose as having value that transcends the physical laws that they work through. In other words, we say that the lottery analogy can't completely describe our humanity-that there's something about us that goes beyond what even a staggeringly large cosmic coincidence can describe. This leads to your third question. We strongly respect your view and agree that empathy is a powerful motivator for virtue and right action. From a Catholic perspective, though, there is a dimension of morality that goes beyond what biological or social factors may dictate. For example, we believe that making an innocent person suffer has a quality of wrongness that transcends description by the attitudes or behavior of people in their society. Even if a society collectively decides that cruelty is good, we believe-as you might as well-that there's an important sense in which it is still wrong. In a sense, we see this kind of moral truth as similar to physical laws. Even if all scientists on Earth mistakenly thought that E=MC^3, or even if the Earth had never formed at all, the truth would still be E=MC^2. To Catholics, both moral and physical truths come from the divine. Thank you again for engaging with us, Griffin, and we hope you'll keep watching Catholic Central!

Thank you for the comprehensive review. Karl Rahner called this idea the "Anonymous Christian."

another person here writing alot without reason......geez apologetics to this guys is soo hard thanks alot to catholic central....i know what catholic apologetics go through talking to people who dont reason much at all...this is the same bible that the church gave u but u want to interpret it better than the church mehn am soo tired of hearing all this guys

We are not sure how to reply to that.

Hi Gelian, thanks for the question. Probably the best answer is that it's part of what Jesus preached as the first and greatest commandment! “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matt 22:37). All dimensions of our humanity are wired to seek and know God, and our intellect is no exception. In our journey of faith, we use the reasoning power of our mind to interrogate the world without and within, we use it to learn about our place in history and how God reveals himself in human events, we use it to learn about the great accomplishments of art and science that help us discover the gifts God gave us, we use it to understand how reason can help us order our virtues and spiritual disciplines, we use it to help unpack God’s word in sacred scripture, we use it to learn about the faith (or lack of faith) of others so we can fulfill our calling as active messengers of the Good News of Jesus, we use our minds to understand how our own faith "makes sense" and isn't just a whim of mindless emotion. As Kai says at the end of the episode, “Rather than check our brains at the door, Catholics believe that asking questions of all perceived truth is actually a good thing, because it's a sign of a healthy, active, curious faith.” In other words, reason nourishes our faith, and our faith in Jesus calls us to that nourishment. You may be interested in watching our episode called "Being Human."

We presented two definitions of faith. First, Libby gives us a widely encompassing one: “When reason and philosophy come up just a little short, it takes a certain leap of faith, realizing that we can't know something fully, coming to accept that uncertainty, and eventually embracing it.” Kai’s definition is more specific: “Catholics recognize that some things remain mysteries beyond our ability to fully understand, and we trust in God to guide us, through scripture and the Church.”

Thank you! 🙏🏼😉

Hi MrXmager, thanks for your comments here and in your other entry. You may have misunderstood Libby when she said: “Catholics believe in objective truth, meaning that truth is a reality that exists independently of whether anyone believes it.” All morality is based on truth, however one defines and understands truth. Since we believe that truth is objective, we believe that morality, or moral truth, is likewise objective. Kai goes on to clarify: “This is the opposite of moral relativism, the view that multiple contradictory views of right and wrong can be true at the same time.” So, rather than creating a dichotomy between truth and morals, we have emphasized how they exist hand in hand, joined in one and the same objective reality.

Dear Francesco, Thanks for your extensive reflections on faith and reason. What we note is that you in fact have a very strong faith … in reason and science. Remember that in the episode Kai quotes G.K. Chesterton as saying: “Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." Chesterton is making an interesting point. Fact is, Catholics have enough faith in science and reason to use them as major signposts in their search for truth. But when you claim science and reason as the only “natural purpose of our consciousness,” setting limits on what consciousness can or cannot know, you have made a faith statement that neither reason nor science can prove. We respect that faith, Francesco, but our own consciousness - with the help of reason and science, to be sure - has stumbled on mysteries that call us to something more.

@@CatholicCentralVideos you're wrong. Science is based on evidence not on faith. Open a book pleaaase!!! 😂

Sorry for the confusion. Our point is you have faith that science can provide the evidence for everything. But the laws of physics can’t prove that life has meaning or is empty of meaning. Chemistry can’t prove why a life of virtue is better than living without principle. Love can’t be proved under a microscope. We have opened the books of science often, Francesco, with awe and admiration, but without your faith that science is all we need to know. Remember too that while science is evidence-based, historically the same evidence has produced dramatically shifting paradigms: Newton, Einstein and Niels Bohr all observed the same empirical evidence but came up with wildly different models to explain it, models which have yet to be entirely reconciled. Likewise, Ptolemy’s universe held the world captive until Copernicus arrived, as did the self-evident predictability of dynamic systems until chaos theory crashed the party a few decades ago. No scientist we know of today, you included we’re sure, would claim that science has exhausted all the facts of the evidence available to us, and there’s no guarantee that it ever will. So all we’re saying is that it's an act of faith to embrace science as our only hope for attaining the ultimate truth of things. That’s okay, because we are people of faith too, just of a different kind.

Even if you don't believe in god. God loves everyone including non-believers such as you :)