(phone beeps) LIBBY: Wow.
These videos ...
Atheist destroys belief in God with foolproof logic?
And Christian annihilates atheism with one simple question?
KAI: Welcome to YouTube, Libby.
LIBBY: They should know it's not that simple.
I'll just go to the comments and show them their mistake.
KAI: Wait, no, Libby, don't--
(phone beeps)
(small explosion)
(upbeat music)
LIBBY: Welcome to Catholic Central, I'm Libby.
KAI: And I'm Kai.
LIBBY: Since you're watching an online video about religion,
you've probably seen some people say that believing in God
is just as irrational as believing in unicorns,
Flying Spaghetti Monsters,
or licorice that doesn't taste horrible.
KAI: You may have also heard some Christians claim
that there is irrefutable proof that God does exist.
LIBBY: So what's the Catholic view on this?
Can you use fact, logic, and reason
to talk about God's existence,
or is it all just a bunch of spiritual woo-hoo?
KAI: Ever since the dawn of history,
human beings have wondered
what our place is in the universe,
and most have had a sense deep down
that there is some higher power.
LIBBY: Even though there's been a lot of disagreement
over what that higher power might be like.
KAI: Starting with Greeks like Aristotle,
philosophers realized that using reason,
humans could gain greater insight in to this mystery.
LIBBY: Our episode on "Faith and Reason" goes in to more depth,
but basically, reason is our ability to think,
interpret, understand, and make judgements.
KAI: To Catholics, Jesus shared the deepest truths
about existence, as recorded in the Bible.
LIBBY: But these revelations in Scripture
aren't the only way of knowing.
KAI: Reason is an essential tool for getting fuller insight
into ourselves and the universe.
LIBBY: So let's break out of the stereotypes about blind faith,
and look at a few key ways that reason can support
belief in God.
The logic of causation, the laws of physics,
and human experience.
KAI: One, causation.
In the 13th Century, Catholic thinker
Saint Thomas Aquinas created an intellectual revolution
by applying the philosophical tools of ancient Greece
to Christian spirituality.
He proposed five ways of arguing for the existence of God.
LIBBY: They're sometimes called proofs,
but they're not like mathematical proofs;
they're just different lines of reasoning.
KAI: Right, these arguments are a little too deep
to cover properly here, but their most influential ideas
are in the logical arguments from motion and causation,
which basically boil down to this:
LIBBY: Everything in the universe has a cause,
like a toddler asking, "Okay, but why?"
"OK, but why?"
The point is you can always go back one more step.
You exist because of your parents.
They exist because of their ancestors.
KAI: Science traces this chain all the way back
to evolution, the formation of the Earth,
and the forging of chemical elements
in the hearts of exploding stars.
Ah, the first love story.
(romantic music)
A love story between hydrogen
and everything else born of hydrogen.
Right, wasn't it, it was hydrogen was the only thing,
and then something like that.
LIBBY: Moving on, most physicists believe
that all matter in our physical universe
exploded outward from a single point during the Big Bang.
KAI: But, what caused the Big Bang?
LIBBY: Eventually, there needs to be something
that wasn't caused by something else,
that set everything else in motion.
KAI: This, as Aquinas says, we understand as God.
LIBBY: Second, in order for us to exist at all,
not only did evolution need to follow a very precise path,
but the laws of physics themselves
couldn't be much different from what they are.
Professor Johnson?
SCIENTIST KAI: Current science says that are 38 kinds
of elementary particles which interact
according to four fundamental forces.
Even very slight changes to these
would prevent our solar system
from forming in the first place.
SCIENTIST LIBBY: For example, one second after the big bang,
if the gravitational pull hadn't been balanced
to within one part in a quadrillion,
the known universe would have quickly collapsed
back on to itself.
SCIENTIST KAI: If the pull had been just a tiny bit weaker,
matter would have never clumped together
to form stars and planets.
SCIENTIST LIBBY: The same problems would have happened
if the density
one instant after the Big Bang
hadn't been tuned within 60 decimal places.
According to physicist Roger Penrose,
for the universe to produce orderly matter
instead of chaotic soup, it would have needed very low
entropy, or disorderliness, just after the Big Bang.
Only one in 10 to the 10 to 123 possible universes
would have had low enough initial entropy.
That's 10 followed by vastly more zeroes
than there are atoms in the known universe.
KAI: And any one of these factors being out of place
would prevent life.
LIBBY: None of this irrefutably proves the existence of God,
but these discoveries through our scientific reason
show that a life-supporting universe coming into being
by pure chance would be a mind-boggling coincidence.
KAI: Astronomer Hugh Ross compared it to the possibility
of a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled
as the result of a tornado striking a junkyard.
LIBBY: Catholics see an intelligence behind all of this,
and that, to quote Aquinas again, we understand as God.
KAI: Third, human experience.
Reason also allows us to reflect on our own experiences
of the world in search of truth.
LIBBY: When we experience beauty, feel love,
or ponder our own existence,
most people would say we're transcending
a purely physical understanding of the world.
KAI: But let's say you don't believe that.
Maybe you believe that 100% of the experience of love
is just an illusion explained by hormones
and electricity in our brain, you cynic.
LIBBY: Neuroscientists can describe the electricity in our brains
and analyze our hormones, but they can't explain
why human have the capacity and desire for the transcendent.
KAI: And the non-material part of ourselves
that connects us to the transcendent
is what Catholics would call the soul
which has its source in God.
LIBBY: Ultimately, a certain leap of faith is still required.
Reason can point our minds toward God
but the heart must also seek Him.
KAI: The Catholic view of God is a sort of tension
between two understandings.
LIBBY: On the one hand, we are humbled by the vast
and transcendent mystery of it all, and that's OK,
because on the other hand, we believe that God made us
in His image, and knows us,
and loves us more personally than we can imagine.
KAI: And Psalm 139 says to God,
"You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb."
And "your eyes saw me unformed;
in your book, all are written down;
my days were shaped before one came to be."
LIBBY: You know, God did not really need to create a universe,
let alone us ridiculous humans.
Like, we litter; we make licorice;
we can't even, like, care about each other.
KAI: But the fact that God did create us
and created the universe reveals God's desire
to share Himself with us.
LIBBY: So practically speaking,
what does it mean to believe in God?
In the Catholic worldview, it means living with gratitude
that everything you are and have comes from God.
KAI: And it means recognizing the inherent dignity
of all human beings, made in God's image.
LIBBY: Today, we looked at three ways
that reason can lead us toward belief in God,
the logic of causation, the laws of physics,
and human experience.
KAI: They don't settle the debate,
but they can bring us closer to understanding,
despite whatever you see online.
LIBBY: Except for this.
KAI: Obviously.
From Catholic Central, I'm Kai.
LIBBY: And I'm Libby.
If you liked this, be sure to hit like and subscribe.
KAI: And leave us lots of pleasant,
non-combative comments below.
(phone beeps) LIBBY: Thanks in advance.
(upbeat music)
KAI: So let's build more junk yards in Tornado Alley, to just see.
LIBBY: And see if we can get a 747.
KAI: A 747, that's my business plan,
is I'm gonna start an airplane company.
LIBBY: It is foolproof.
KAI: Foolproof, I'll be printing my own money basically.
LIBBY: It's gonna be so easy. KAI: You want a plane?
We're just waiting, just waiting,
tornado season's ... LIBBY: So easy.
KAI: ... right around the corner.