That Religious Guy: Faith and Reason

 *Who's in the picture? : Fr. Georges Lemaitre, the man who laid the groundwork for the Big Bang Theory (surprise surprise!) and Albert Einstein, the man who said to the former, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened."


..... Sooner or later, I would've had to break out an actual post about religion! For the past months, I've simply been generating posts on secular topics, placing more emphasis on languages then the divine. Fortunately, I was inspired by a quotation from St. Augustine of Hippo which reads: "Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand." Herein lies the problem of those who deny religion as mere superstition.

..... Recently, I've been entering into debates with atheists, deists, and all manners of "-eists" to the point that I was losing many of the battles since they wanted physical proof of the existence of God. To try to appease them, I attempted to utilize St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Proofs for the existence of God. Sadly, they would still not open their eyes. So I argued using the First Law of Thermodynamics and then the Big Bang Theory. All of these  attempts hit rock solid walls because we all knew we weren't going to convince anyone.

..... I guess one cannot really prove the existence of God to an unbeliever who tries to logically approach this problem. One must first believe before he can understand. In my view, there really is physical proof of God's existence. Just look around you. But in order to take this opinion, one must first believe in God in order to credit Him for creation.

..... I myself don't see a total conflict between my science classes and religion. Whether it be chemistry or biology, all seem to be explaining the way God works. It's only when my teachers profess science to be an end in itself that I digress from their teachings. Science shouldn't be treated as an unofficial religion by the educational system. Let's stick to the hard facts of metabolic equilibrium and move away from songs that relegate angels along with unicorns as myth. But I digress [again]...


..... The Roman Catholic Catechism states that there is no conflict between faith and reason, that revelation can coincide with logic. Still, precedence is given to faith because through it, one can accept religion for what it is: a system of proofs for the existence of that which we do not see. Surely the mystery of faith is that there isn't one. One just needs a little time, effort, and some divine intervention to receive it. 


- Jeremy Dela Cruz