Comments on: God is Not a Being: A Response to Lawrence Krauss

By: Prof. Sorem

Prof. Sorem — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:37:48 +0000

It looks like a failure to understand what Fr. Robert Barron has said. Nowhere did he say God is the universe. You must be quite confused to think that what Fr. Barron said equates to pantheism. I would say, take some time to read and study Thomas Aquinas’ third way, which Fr. Barron referred to and you will understand that God is not being used as a “gap filler.” We don’t posit God for things that we don’t understand; rather, we accept God as the conclusion and what necessary follows from valid arguments. Take time to study them!

Another thing to think about: a lot of people are making claims to know this and that; however, what is your justification for the existence of knowledge? The atheist may say, “you have no reason to believe in God” but the theist will respond, “you have no God to believe in reason.”

Believing in science myself, I must say that it cannot, however, explain the existence of knowledge; it cannot it demonstrate whether we know anything at all (although it assumes it); it cannot show that we are not being radically deceived about the world we think we know. In short, science depends on the existence of knowledge but it cannot establish that it exists. Science depends on the existence of God; for God is the necessary condition for the possibility of human knowledge; He is the logos. To deny Him, you must assume Him in the very act of reasoning your denial. Good luck and may His grace be upon you all.

By: Wonderist

Wonderist — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:25:51 +0000

Fr. Robert Barron,
So, basically, you’re a pantheist then? God is the universe. But we already have a word for the universe, and that is ‘universe’. Why do we need ‘God’? What extra bit of information does it add? Isn’t it true that it does not add any information, but only adds confusion?

In my worldview, there is the universe. We don’t know everything about it, and we don’t know everything about how it came to be. But plopping ‘God’ into that gap of knowledge does not solve anything. Instead of being unafraid to say “I don’t know”, you fearfully say, “Well, I can’t handle not knowing, so I must fill the gap with a comforting idea… Aha! God did it!” Sorry, but that is entirely unconvincing, and worse, it commits what I consider to be the ultimate ‘sin’: Pretending to know what you do not know. Once you commit that sin, all others are possible.

By: Ron

Ron — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:30:02 +0000

Brilliant, Fr. Barron, for those willing, intelligent, open-minded and coherent enough to understand! Well said.

Atheism is a blind faith, based on hatred, lack of personal evidence, and really quite unscientific. Most famous atheists, such as Hitchens, have never studied or really understood philosophy, Christian or otherwise. The real question we should ask them is, “When did you start hating your father?”

By: Fr. Robert Barron

Fr. Robert Barron — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:04:35 +0000

What I am defending is about as far from Deism as one can get! The Deist claims that God is a distant and essentially uninvolved supreme being. I’m claiming (with Thomas Aquinas)that God is the sheer energy of existence itself (ipsum esse). This means that God radically transcends the world, inasmuch as he is not a being within it; and he is radically immanent to the world as its creative ground. Augustine caught this paradox when he said that God is simultaneously “closer to me than I am to myself and higher than anything I could possibly imagine.” To your follow-up questions, I have time and space to say only this: a radically contingent world (one that does not contain within itself the reason for its own existence) requires, finally, a non-contingent cause. God is none other than this “necessary” reality, that in which essence and existence coincide.

By: John Powers

John Powers — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:19:32 +0000

Prof. Krauss,

Thanks for stopping by. In response to you three very good questions

(a) what does it mean?(b) why should I believe it?, and (c) why is such a concept necessary?

may I suggest a course or two at the Liturgical Institute. Fr. Barron is one of the instructors there, and as with most Theologians, has been through these questions as many times as you have been through the corresponding questions in your field of physics.

JBP

By: Lawrence krauss

Lawrence krauss — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:08:40 +0000

I am always amazed at theologians\\\\\\\’ abilities to obfuscate.. what about the God people pray to, the god who performs miracles, the god who tells people what they are and are not supposed to do, the god who banishes people for all eternity if they simply choose not to believe in her.?. moreover, while I recognize the subtlety of the notion:
\\\\"God is instead the reason why there is something rather than nothing. Precisely as sustaining creator of the whole, God is why there are cherries, water, salt, the heat of the oven, the Gulf of Mexico and the Jet Stream at all.\\\\".. and this is one of the Deist concepts I was referring to as marginally compatible with science.. but while it sounds nice, (a) what does it mean?(b) why should I believe it?, and (c) why is such a concept necessary?

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:18:05 +0000

All who do not agree that God is as he is defined to be in the man-made dictionary are out of touch. Got it. Thanks for clearing that up.

By: benjdm

benjdm — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:32:17 +0000

Sheesh, this gets annoying. The word ‘God’ is not some technical word that normal people don’t use. It’s on every piece of U.S. currency, used in thousands of churches, and used millions of times every day. The dictionary lists as the first definition:

“the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe”

That’s what the majority of English speaking people mean when they use the word ‘God.’ That’s what Sunday schools teach. That’s what the National Motto and the Pledge of Allegiance refer to.

If Fr. Barron is talking about a concept that is not “the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe”, and does not wish to be mis-understood, he should use a different word.

As soon as religion, as defined by its own practitioners, stops being a primitive science we can all change our definitions. Until then Fr. Barron is simply out of touch.

By: John Hetman

John Hetman — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:46:51 +0000

Thank you, Father Barron, you succinctly summarize God in contrast to existence (time, space and matter). Your quote from Aquinas and from the Book of Exodus sum up so well the totality of God. I am afraid that much of the confusion comes from our ubiquitous materialism of which scientism is just another manifestation. No one ever accused Carl Sagan of humility.