From here. 4.55s in.

Whilst it's true to say that faith is not founded in reason...what reason does is to assure the individual that faith is not unreasonable.

I'll give a little on this - it's not a direct contradiction. But it still seems very weak: akin to arguing that faith is a bit of intellectual glue that patches up the deficiencies in other arguments.

The question remains: why faith? If faith is a good way of supporting my rational aruments, why isn't standing on one leg singing Kylie Minogue an equally good method?

"Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."

From the Catechism. It sounds contrary to the Archbishop's words - I'll have to check carefully if still available.

Cormac, foot, mouth.

I'm not exactly the most religious person on the planet. There, I've said it, the cat's out. You can guess what's coming isn't going to be supportive of the Catholic faith.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor recently made a speech about atheism and secularism in the UK. Most of the media picked up on the message 'Respect atheists' (here); I want to focus on a couple of statements in particular.

First, from the speech:

God is not a fact in the world, as though God could be treated as one thing among other things to be empirically investigated, affirmed or denied on the basis of observation.

Second, from his interview on Radio 4 the same morning. I don't have the exact words (or link), but it's very close to

Reason can't prove the existence of God, but reason assures the individual that faith is not unreasonable.

It struck me how weak these two statements are when taken together. It seems that the head of the Church in England thinks that empiricism is useless, and reason is incomplete when determining whether God exists.

So that leaves faith as the third option. Well, what on earth makes anyone think that faith is a good guide to determining metaphysical statements that are true? I don't deny that faith could be a good way of finding truth, but given the plethora of conflicting religions out there, it hardly seems like a slam-dunk.

Most of the time, apologetics pulls no punches about claiming the validity of empirical or rational proofs of the existence of God. Now here comes the Cardinal trying to be nice to atheists, but he gives away all his ammunition in the process.

Intro

So, what's this all about? Well, I fully admit I'm woefully late to the blogging game. No doubt most of what I say has been said before, but I just can't stop myself from saying it again.

What will appear here? Science, religion, politics, philosophy and the overlap between them.

Enjoy!