Bishop Barron at Amazon HQ on “Arguing Religion” Book

hello and welcome everyone to this exciting fish ball I'm Doug anter and I'm with Amazon Web Services I've been with the company about four years and I handle analyst relations for certain slices of AWS I'm happy to moderate this discussion with Bishop Robert Barron he's the number one best-selling author is the founder of word on fire Catholic ministries in his day job he's the auxilary Bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles he's also the host of Catholicism which is an award-winning documentary about the Catholic faith with more than 30 million YouTube viewing zin 1.5 million Facebook fans he is the second most followed Catholic official in social media behind only the Pope Bishop Baron is also a religion correspondent for NBC and has appeared on Fox News CNN and EWTN Bishop Baron is here today to share his insight on his latest book arguing religion a bishop speaks at Facebook and Google helping those committed to dialoguing do so in a productive and fruitful way please help me give me a warm Amazonian welcome to Bishop Robert Barron who The Wall Street Journal calls the Bishop of Catholic social media Amazon you like that yeah what's that song what's the name of that song there's every grain of sand I think which is I think his greatest religious song I'm a big Bob Dylan fan so they wanted to have a song with Bob's like came up she walk up music yeah well let's get right into it for those who don't know what does it really mean to be the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles well the really big archdiocese is like you go to York Chicago LA the bishop can't do all the work himself so we have five million Catholics in LA so in the big dioceses they'll often give what they call auxiliary or helper bishops so I'm in charge of one of the five of pastoral regions of LA I'm in charge of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties so I'm a helper Bishop I do the work of you know governing and teaching and sanctifying that a bishop does but under the aegis of the Arts well so one does not grow up I'm assuming wrong wanting to be the auxiliary bishop and floss it how does that that's why I always wanted what I was how does that happen give me kind of walk us through that process please well it's funny thinking about becoming a bishop in the church is the person becoming the bishop knows absolutely nothing about it there's a long process of kind of screening that goes on names are surfaced they go to a guy called the Apostolic Nuncio who's the Pope's representative in Washington that he brings the names to the bishops congregation in Rome who then forward their suggestion to the Pope who makes the appointment but this whole time the person in question knows nothing about it so if you would talk to me three and a half years ago and said you're gonna be the auxilary Bishop of Los Angeles I'm from Chicago it would have been the furthest thing from my mind believe me you've uh spoken to other major tech orgs it's in the title of your book right so what what was the genesis the catalyst to make you write this book on this topic well yeah the topic you know arguing religion that's really my whole point I think when it comes to religion very often in our society there's sort of a binary option that's not helpful namely either you blandly tolerate all religious points of view or you privatize them or in the other hand you you violently impose them so we're so legitimately afraid of violent imposition that most of us opt for bland toleration or privatization let's not talk about it what I'm saying is in between those two extremes are beyond them is this very healthy space called arguing about religion it's not violent imposition nor is it bland toleration it's a real intellectual engagement of religious ideas and see I've done a lot of work for the past about 20 years in social media so doing videos and so on about the faith and then hearing from people and I know that folks are very interested in religion but very few of them I would say know how to argue about it they know how to shout about it they know how to express their strong feelings about it but very few know how to argue and I think that's the space we ought to move into it's a much healthier space than either bland toleration or in position well let's talk about that word argue right that's it it's it's a potent word yeah it's not discuss it's not debate its argue Rankin fill us in why you chose that word I did see for this reason that on the one hand argument is a non-violent thing you know if you're willing to argue with someone make an intellectual case it means you're not trying to impose you're not trying to to throw them in prison you're not trying to use the secular arm to discipline them you're saying no I I want to engage you there's something nonviolent about it at the same time as opposed for example to really discussing argument assumes there's something at stake but I think something is true and I think you should find it true as well so I'm not just gonna discuss my private conviction and listen to your private conviction I'm gonna say no I think this is the right way to think about it so it's both a non-violent term but also a little edgy term that tells you something's at stake I said and so recovering the ability to argue about religion I think is key years ago one of my theological Heroes is a Methodist theologian called Stanley Hauer was he said one of the most important needs in the churches today is to learn again how to have an argument about religion in public okay no and his point was we've so privatized the operation we we whisper our religious convictions among ourselves or our fellow Adams or we privatize it no arguments of public reality if I'm arguing I'm making a case and I'm submitting myself to to your judgment and analysis good we should learn again how to do that and that's why I wrote the book well it must be working because I've heard it's the number one new release on both the Catholic and atheism category isn't it yes no I'm happy about that because see I'd be happy to argue and I've been doing it for a long time arguing with the atheists I don't like just reacting emotionally you know and one of my problems is so much of the new atheist critique amounted to a lot of that and they just kind of an emotional expression and then those who are trying to respond did the same thing can we have a real argument about these matters and I think we can and should well there's a there's a it's a contentious world right it's yeah it's it seems to be as hard to do that right you write that I know that people are quite adept when it comes to shouting about religion but very few know how to constructively rationally and I think this is where that really caught my eye hopefully enter into it is a conversation about religious matters and so you know help us give us the tools if we want to do that in in public yeah and that's what the book really is about that's the substance of it you know one thing I'd say one of my great heroes intellectually is the Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan Lonnegan was a priest philosopher but he was also a mathematician and scientist at a pre high level and wrote on epistemology so the whole philosophy of how we know right Lonnegan said any rational person on any subject if he or she submits to these four criteria will do okay namely he said be attentive be intelligent be reasonable and be responsible and here's what he meant so there's any one you're talking about about physics about psychology about a botany around religion be attentive what's there to be seen don't selectively perceive see what's there to be seen open your eyes in your ears what's out there what are the data right second level be intelligent and see for lonergan that meant seeing the form looking for patterns of intelligibility think of a scientist here forming hypotheses right so here's a phenomenon well what is that what causes that what might that be well it could be this could be that you form hypotheses that's called intelligence an awful lot of people at every area of life they might be attentive to the data but they're not very intelligent about it they don't form hypotheses but then a third level and here's where argument really comes in water again says the third level is what he calls reason ability be reasonable that means make a judgment which of your bright ideas so all kinds of possibilities all kinds of hypotheses which of your bright ideas is in fact the right eye this is the moment of judgment and sea judgment think of our word decision I make a decision this related to a Latin word meaning it's a constant rain right because it means you're cutting off cutting out certain possibilities saying no this is the way to understand it be reasonable and then finally he says once you've made that judgment of what's the truth be responsible live in accord with that judgment you know if those four imperatives are in place and I agree with him here any reasonable person should be able to talk about any subject including religion that's that that gets touchy sometimes on certain topics you mentioned some of the challenges of the church that are sensitive and that you know that that cause a wide range of emotions how do you navigate a conversation about a very public concerns such as for example abuse by leaders of the church yeah well cause that's a huge issue and you know you're right that it gets in the way very often of doing what I am suggesting yeah to have a real religious argument when we're going through a time of of corruption in the church to a degree you know the sex abuse crisis has hovered over the whole of my priesthood basically I was ordained a priest in 1986 and in Chicago where I'm from the first wave of the crisis hit in the early 90s I mean so most of my priest has been under the cloud of the sex abuse scandal and I get people's frustration and anger about it I'm frustrated and angry about it what what should the church do be as transparent and clear and honest as possible address the issue as forthrightly as we possibly can at all levels the perpetration the cover-up all of it so i magnin that's what I want that's what I want and I think that's what the vast majority of bishops and priests in the country want but sure it can obfuscate the possibility of having a real discussion about religion of people's understandable feelings are in place about it so we have to we have to deal with it because something else I would say Doug is Paul's famous distinction you know it when Paul says we hold this treasure in earthen vessels and this is the ancient church now this Paul's Church founded me on the mid first century what's the treasure it is Christ you know I'd say the eternal life and and and the great truths about God that's the treasure but it's held in these very fragile and very flawed vessels called human beings and human institutions and so I would urge people to keep that Paul line distinction in mind yeah the treasure remains the treasure even when it's being held in very imperfect vessel you know but I I get it I get people's frustration and anger certainly you mentioned that faith and reason are not opposed can you help us a part of this expression to unpack that well how can we benefit from that statement yeah you know it's something that's not speaking out of the Catholic intellectual tradition we have always felt that faith and reason go together we do not want to drive a wedge between faith and reason there was a very early figure in the church called Tertullian and Tertullian said what has Athens to do with Jerusalem and what he meant was what does philosophy and science have to do with faith and he was saying that in favor of Jerusalem like why are we bothering with Athens the great Catholic tradition though has sent note or trattoria consistently over the centuries it says no to that option we think the two of them belong together and here's that here's the reason why go back to page 1 of John's Gospel in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us right the prologue of John's Gospel well the word their law Goss in Greek in the beginning was the law cause it means God's mind that means the mind by which the world is made which is the ground of the intelligibility of the world so think of think about every single science is predicated upon the assumption that the world is fundamentally intelligible it has certain patterns of meaning right if I'm a psychologist or a biologist or a chemist or a physicist I have to operate on the finely mystical assumption that the world I'm going to meet is an intelligible world see I would argue that comes from the Christian matrix out of which the universities in the West emerged this conviction that the world in fact is made through the law goes now here's my point how could faith and reason be opposed if you talk about Christian faith at the heart of it is the incarnation of God's law goes then how could you possibly be opposed to any of the log Oy any of the the smaller logos is that you see in chemistry physics biology astronomy etc and so that's the ground for the claim that the two of them belong together I am opposed to fundamentalism fundamentalism obviates argument right if I'm if I'm a Christian or biblical fundamentalism I'm not gonna argue about religion I might be able to shout about it or impose it or say believe it or not but I'm not gonna argue about it but if I accept log-off's as a basic principle then I can and should argue about it and I can also include all the forms of intelligence that are grounded in this intelligibility that's the Catholic approach to it no better exemplified than in st. Thomas Aquinas if they give him a lot of the book and reason he's my great touchstone and these things you know mm-hmm okay great I'm gonna shift gears a little bit here in in the book you mentioned a statistic that the rising generation is by far the least religious in American history yeah both non-religious in non spiritual and and I saw that there's a 2015 Pew survey that concluding that Catholicism is losing members faster than any other denomination you know some use that as a banner to say it's hopeless to argue for religion you know that sort of thing so how can you help us understand that yeah I mean no it's it's the moment to argue for religion it's it's the clarion call to make better religious arguments I think what you're citing there the Pew survey but also gene Twinkies book called ijen if you've read that it's a good sociological study of the rising generation so people like I think sixteen through or like twelve through you know twenty bait and ijen because of iPhone iPad and people have grown up you know with the technology and she looks at that phenomenon from a lot of different angles very interesting but she has a chapter on religion in which she says just that for a long time like when I was coming of age a lot of people said well yeah I know young people don't go to church anymore but they're still religious or spiritual meaning they believe in God they believe in life after death they believe in fundamental moral principles you know grounded in the scriptures are and that was that was held for a long time by a lot of sociologists she's arguing that that's increasingly not the case that this youngest generation is no longer either institutionally religious or spiritual and see that makes sense to me in light of the cut flowers theory oh that that old theory that if you cut flowers from there from the ground and you put them in a in a vaz right they'll be okay for a while they'll look fine for a while but in pretty short compass those flowers are gonna fade because they're cut off from their proper route and I think that it's gonna happen I mean these these great beliefs in God and immortality and certain fundamental moral principles if cut off from their religious source are gonna fade away and I think we're seeing that therefore it's the moment to make religious arguments especially it's a young people the other thing too and now this is kind of autobiographical since the Vatican Council so in the Catholic Church back in the early 60s there was this great Vatican Council that initiated lots of changes and most of them I think were really good but one of the effect not the effect of the council itself but something that happened in the wake of a council was a dumbing down of Catholicism as I was insinuating a few minutes ago we are a very smart tradition you know one of the marks of Catholicism is that it thinks deeply about the faith and figures as diverses you know Irenaeus and and origin and agustin and Abelard and Thomas Aquinas and you know John Henry Newman witnessed to that but in the years I was coming of age we presented a very dumbed down version religion was largely about feelings it was largely about kind of expressing you know what's what's in you we put a great stress on social justice which is good but we stopped thinking deeply about some of the other issues and and I I do think in some of those surveys you cite we're seeing the bitter fruit of them if you keep dumbing down the faith and now we've had a couple generations we've done it you're gonna get a lot of young people who don't don't know much about religion don't think about it deeply so this is the moment to argue you know not the moment to retreat well you bet some even some spiritual leaders right have I think been well I think I've shown examples were that maybe they could have done a better job in in the book you mentioned even you point this out you mentioned were when Bill Maher what he was interviewing Ralph Reed you know and Bill told Ralph that religious people accept all sorts of things based on no evidence whatsoever and Reid agreed with Maher right reflected in what Ralph redid was his approach to polite right and how does that politeness factor factor in right are we too polite yeah yeah people of faith to know I've seen you mention I I do discuss in the book because I it's a bit of a guilty pleasure for me I do watch Bill Maher's you know real time he's one of the fiercest critics of religion on the scene but I find him entertaining you know and I watched his show so this was night Ralph Reed you know the political commentator was on but he's also an evangelical Christian and that was exactly the exchange I'm watching it you know they have the I have the remote in my hand and Bill said well you're a man of faith which means you accept a lot of I think he said yeah a lot of nonsense based on no evidence it's a yes I wanted to enroll the boat at the screen I mean because that's precisely what faith is not in other words from now my Catholic perspective faith is not accepting things on the basis of no evidence as I was just arguing it's not opposed to reason it's not in for a rational right what's below reason that's superstitious or superstition or it's credulity or it's naive Tay or whatever I'm against that I mean I don't think any thoughtful religious person wants anything like that and to identify faith with the sub rational forget it I mean that's that's fundamentalism so what is faith the classical answer is something that's super irrational so push reason all the way to its limit go all the way with reason reason as much as you want and it's the limit what lies beyond reason is where faith comes in now just to make that that clearer because this has always helped me as an analogy this obtains in many areas of life perhaps most clearly when coming to know a person right so I mean I met you for the first time today right but knowing we're gonna have this conversation I had you know looked you up googled you and found out a bit about your background and and I talked to other people who knew something about you and I did a little bit of research using my reason was it all good it was all good it was all good and but using my reason to know something about you right now today for the first time I meet you in person and I'm taking in more information about you and getting a clearer idea of you seeing how it coheres with what I've already learned at cetera cetera now let's let's push this forward let's say you and I continue this relationship you and I become good friends and now it's it's even two years from now and I continue to use my mind to understand you as a person right but at one point in that relationship let's try they have any great friendship or a marriage or whatever partnership is it at one key moment you're gonna say something that reveals your heart to me that that I could never have figured out from a Google search or from talking to people or reading your blog or even even those two years of conversation until you decided to reveal something about your deepest heart I'd never have access to it and at that moment say at that moment I've got to make a decision do I believe you or not right do I do I accept that or not the leap way to a degree it is but see it's not an irrational move because let's say I do say yes I I believe that why no why because I've come to know you over such a long period of time what you've said goes beyond what my reason can reach but it's not out of line with what my reason has learned not inconsistent with it in fact the very consistency lends credence to it right I think that's a very exact analogy to religious faith can I know a lot of things about God based on reason yeah I say now coming out of a great Catholic intellectual tradition that argues about God's existence our use for it comes to conclusions about certain attributes of God etc etc can I as Paul says looking around the natural world learn a lot about God yes I would say let's see the the claim of biblical religion is that God has spoken now don't literal eyes that I mean the voice from the cloud is a symbol of what I'm talking about but that God has revealed his heart to us at that moment I've got to make a decision do I accept it or not and that's where faith functions it seems to me not on the near side of reason you know superstition stupidity naivete but on the far side of reason what lies in your right a kind of leap Kierkegaard language it kind of leap beyond reason but not out of step with it okay and I think that's key to clearing up a lot of confusion about about religion you've given us a lot of tips on how to is there a time that it's just the right thing to walk away and what would that be to walk away from the discussion about religion oh yeah from a conversation mode yeah we always get out of control yeah I got nothing the world against emotions I like emotions but you know in the context of an argument you know that moment when it happens when when emotion has so taken over yeah that the two parties are not really interested anymore in the truth of hearings right and and I'll confess it I mean the confession business right then when I'm on I'm you know YouTube I'm dialogue with somebody and and you were debating and in the beginning it might be you know pretty control but then those things are kind of heating up and people start saying provocative things and and I find myself either getting hurt or desiring to you know get back at that guy and say something a little more clever okay it's now become dysfunctional it's no longer an argument it's now a you know shouting match yeah I think if that moments probably best to step away and sadly 95% of our comm boxes especially trust me when it comes to religion if that's the topic you've chosen ninety-five percent of the time that's what happens it's probably best to walk away I'll tell you one thing I do is just a it's it's designed to kind of warn myself is when I'm addressing somebody in a comm box I almost always say friend , and then respond just it's to remind myself that behind those words which are often very harsh or obscene or insulting somewhere out there in cyberspace there are behind so there's a person there's some human being and so it signals to my own brain okay I'm dealing with a person here not just you know an abstraction so that's a good caution but I think once that thing starts it's probably to step away you know you've used pop culture concepts you-you-you review movies that are current right that's one of things that caught my attention about you I didn't even know about you till about a year ago and that caught my attention you did Lord of the Rings that used / Lord of the Rings example to make your points and I think I think to draw people in how effective has this whole pop culture approach been for you you know impactful to you know to people who follow you yeah you know when I started doing YouTube YouTube I think it began in 2006 so I think in 2007 I started I just heard about YouTube and there's this new thing and you put your own videos up and you know people had like my cat jumps off the roof and they would have a million views and oh well that's interesting I wonder if we could do something about religion you know so my conviction was don't start with religion though start with the culture so the very first one I did was Scorsese's movie that departed I just seen and I thought I mean it's reflect a bit on the role of evil cuz like Nicholson's character remember he's kind of like a devil character than the way he influences so I just heard took that as a starting point and did it and in those early days I mean I know why we just put it up on YouTube and we were I remember thrilled when we got a hundred people watch the video I was thrilled you know my mother watched it I was delighted so I that became a conviction of mine to begin more with the culture than with the content of the faith but to draw people toward it now my inspiration there was from the church father so the ancient church they used a phrase I love the semi NAVAIR B which means seeds of the word so again remember Lagos right if Christ is the law Goss then any law Goss small-l is gonna reflect him or lead back to him or or be connected to him so the sciences that's true philosophy that's true but also the arts you know our form of logos that can lead us to the logos so the seeds of the word are everywhere and that's a deep conviction of mine that Christianity which has played such a huge role in the formation of Western culture even though in it's sort of integral form kind of blew up for different reasons but its pieces are all over the place and they pop up sometimes surprisingly in in the culture both high and low so part of my strategy has been to find those seeds of the word say hey look like you know for example you mentioned Lord of the Rings but um Gran Torino the the Clint Eastwood movie which I saw when it came out and you know I just do get off my law and this is but man alive there's no better in my judgment there's no better presentation of what they call the Christus Victor theory of salvation than that movie that's an ancient theory that that Christ has by his sacrifice exposed the powers and disempowered them watch that movie again with that in mind we're east Eastwood is clear this Christ figure who gives his life number II as he as he lies dying he's in the attitude of the crucified Jesus with the rosary in his hand having sacrificed himself and in that process exposing the wicked figures and thereby liberating this kid that he was trying to liberate that's precisely the logic behind the church fathers as they looked at the cross of Jesus so I watch the movie thinking why how about that and raced home to do a video on it because that's that's certainly a seat of the word he's made of my hometown d'etre that's right Detroit yeah he talked about Clint Eastwood and he wasn't very tolerant get off my lawn right let's talk about let's talk about tolerance right incident you've mentioned that in some way it's it's it's the word intolerance is today's biggest cultural sin yeah what does tolerance mean to you and how can people be tolerant while still holding strongly to their beliefs yeah I think that's right say that toleration probably most people today is the supreme value right that we should be tolerant of each other I much prefer the term love love is the great Christian or biblical value to love is to will the good of the right that's what it means it's not an emotion primarily it can be accompanied by emotion but love is an act of the will it means to will the good of the other that's what God is God is intolerance God is love right so too will the good of the other should be present in everything we ever do period period you know so what's best about toleration in the sort of secular modern framework what's best about it is it can be a face of love okay right so if I'm propagating a religious point of view that's my job I mean I'm a Catholic bishop I'm an evangelist but if in that process I'm not willing the good of the other I'm violent I'm I'm imposing I'm I'm brutal I'm using secular means to manipulate and dominate if I'm doing anything like that I'm not engaging in an act of love say so in the measure that toleration means of love in all that we do I'm completely in favor of it here is my concern about it though is toleration can be a sort of bland way of talking about this reality I'm not interested in being tolerated I I want to be engaged you know we tolerate things that we don't really agree with you know I don't really like that but I'm willing to tolerate it I'll put up with it and I get that for other reasons I can put up with things I don't agree with but see I want to move beyond that I want to move to the level of real engagement and my fear is that the the rhetoric of toleration can lead to a sort of bland indifferent ism let's just tolerate other I know you got your point of view I got my point of view we mutually tolerate and that's the end of it and I would say no that's the beginning in some ways that's the beginning of it yeah I would say we should love each other in all things without exception but now hey I got something that I think is right and that that you'll benefit from and I want to share that with you and let's really engage around that question and not just settle a bland toleration that's my concern about it in that way it's the enemy of argument that's what I'm saying and that way it's the enemy of argument it doesn't allow us to rise to the level of a real argument you've equated our minds in the context of seeking God as as more like a stomach than a box oh that needs to be filled can you discuss what you mean by that yeah that's again the Lonergan and white as I mentioned I love that image lottery it says you know the mind is you come into life is empty we talk about the table Oloroso to change the image they the blank slate you know the mine the mines empty but he said not like a box it's empty like a stomach and what he meant was a box is just doubling empty it's just empty waiting for something to be put into it but see a stomach can be empty but it knows what it wants see the stomach is hungry for something it's thinking like this whole body is the stomach's way of finding what it wants right you know it's it's empty but it's not dumbly empty it's intentionally empty it knows what it's going for so in a similar way the human mind and the heart the human spirit is empty at the beginning of life but it knows what it wants it's wired for something now this is a broader discussion but what is the mind one it wants the truth so that's why we're here I hope you know that people are here because we're we're interested in the truth now when your mind finds the truth let's say you get some idea from me today say oh yeah I think that's true are you satisfied well I mean obviously not you want more truth if the more you find out the more questions emerge right the mind is is restless it moves upward and outward seeking seeking and finally not just any particular truth arena even a colic tivity a particular truth what the mind wants this is Lonnegan again what the mine was is to know everything about everything it's hungry for truth with a capital T if I can put it that way it wants the unconditioned truth what is the will want anything of our wills our wills want the good and said we seek for for justice or even like here I'm seeking something good I hope you are too and we achieve it but then is the will satisfying no is it just gets started and it wants greater good greater justice greater and on and on a go seeking seeking think of all the great figures moral figures you know because what is the will finally one it's hungry for the good itself the unconditioned good see well I would say that's precisely what the Catholic intellectual tradition means by God God is not one more true thing like there's you and me and there's there's Amazon headquarters and there's God and there's you know God isn't one being among many but God is is the truth itself God isn't one more good thing among good things God His goodness itself God is the lure of the human spirit right so that's why it's so important that our spirits are empty but like stomachs they know what they want and that's you know just talk for another day but my concern about ideological secularism is how it shuts us down you know Charles Taylor the great philosopher talks about the the buffered self as the self is put like into a little container and buffered from any contact with the transcendent and I'm speaking now out of the Catholic tradition to say that does great damage to us I think when we we close ourselves in to just the narrow world that we can take in with our senses and measure with our scientific instruments we're closing ourselves down when in fact the mind and we'll want to go upward upward outward outward see that's I think a very important route of access to what we mean by God and why religion really matters interesting you you right we are wired for God but that we hook our longing for the infinite good unto some finite object that can never satisfy that longing things like wealth power pleasure and honor those four things yeah but quite a bit today's American culture seems to be focused on material things how does one argue that happiness is rather a function of giving oneself away rather than filling oneself up you're not far from the kingdom of heaven as the Lord said I mean that because that principle there that's the heart of it it seems to me the first observation there about this is infinite longing right that we all have the fundamental spiritual problem that human beings have is that we frustrate that longing by orienting it to something finite see that's exactly the problem when you say I know I'm unhappy and you know I don't mean this is a psychological judgment it's a metaphysical statement everyone in this room is unhappy right now am i right and what I mean by that I mean you've psychologically depressed what I mean is you're you're not uh terally satisfied you know a dog it can be punched the dogs on the beach in Santa Barbara where I go for a walk down there and then yeah it's wonderful to be a dog and somebody they have enough to eat and they're just they're ecstatically leaping after a ball and they're running into the water terrific that's wonderful but we're not like that because we're ordered toward an unconditioned truth and goodness and so when we hook it on to something less than that so we say okay I'm unhappy the way to get happy is I just have enough money I'll be happy does this sound familiar I mean we're all sinners in this room I just get enough pleasure I'll be happy I'll just get enough honor I'll be happy just give me enough power I'll be happy and those are the big four from Thomas Aquinas wealth power pleasure and honor he says are the four things we seek right so what happens and and every the form of addiction because anyone that knows about addiction understands this when i hook my infinite desire onto a finite object I am to overnight become addicted to it because I get it I get a little buzzed but then the buzz wears off I made my first million by 30 or whatever and that buzz wears off and so now I'm after more and more and more same with pleasure talk about the you know addictions to alcohol and the drugs and pornography and our culture if I just get enough pleasure I'll be happy and and I am for a short time but then it wears off and so now I need more and more and more of it that's the way the Bible in the Church Fathers and the great spiritual masters have diagnosed our basic problem is we hook our desire for God onto something less than God and it makes us addicted and unhappy now now that your last point which is it that's the key okay God is the supreme good or supreme truth that will make me happy okay but what who is God God is love we find out from the scripture that means God is willing the good of the other so how do you get God in you not by taking things in if I just get enough of this I'll be happy but rather like giving away there's the high high paradox that it's like the paradoxes of physics but this high spiritual paradox that I will become happy precisely in the measure that I give away right I give away and then the grace increases what did Jesus say increasing thirty sixty and a hundredfold that means you've hooked on to this spiritual source remember he says for the woman at the well you'll come here every day and you drink and you get thirsty again don't you see that's every one of us in this room the well is wealth pleasure honor power we come and we get we drink but we get thirsty Jesus says I want to give you water welling up in you to eternal life what does he want to give her grace now give it that away give that away give that away and you'll find happiness that's the great wager of Christianity everything else is a footnote seems to me that's the great wager the great principle in the measure that religion fades away see that's why it's not just a theoretical thing in the measure that religion fades away those truths are gonna fade away and that's really deity rias to the culture seems to me we have time for one more question before we open it up to questions from the audience you'll see microphones on either side please come up so that folks on the livestream can actually hear you act ask your question here in Amazon we live eat and breathe our 14 principles let's bring the concept of principles to arguing religion can you name a few principles that people should be girded by when they argue religion yeah you know in a way our whole conversation has been about that hasn't it but you know like avoid fidei ism which is the separation between faith and reason avoid that that will undermine argumentation avoid volunteerism it's an old philosophical term it means the overcoming of mind by will and we see that a lot in our culture that things are true cuz I want them to be true well in the measure that I say that I can't argue anymore you know hey I want this to be true and you want something else be true well then what do we do so volunteerism it should be avoided avoid scientism I say what's that it's not not science I love the sciences but scientism is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge when you do that you rule out the possibility of arguing about things that are not scientific I would say philosophy and art and literature and religion reveal truths they're not scientific but they're rational scientism gets in the way of argumentation I'll say one more I just learned this term by the way I really like it we all know a straw man right you make a straw man argument you make the weakest form of your opponent's argument then you knock it down right the opposite being steel man right to steel man someone's argument is to make it as strong as you can that's really good and it's right out of st. Thomas Aquinas when you read Aquinas great words he'll list the objections to his position first and the objections are articulated in a very pithy and very convincing way he steel man the opponent now then he responds to them but he doesn't engage in strong mating I find like on my internet stuff it can be very useful to gain someone's trust and to advance the argument to steal mana say you know what I hear you saying is and then make it as strong a case as you can I think that advances the thing and shows great respect for people so that's a principle to any people's guards go down when you feel you yeah you've heard them that's right yeah right

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

Views: 110,979

Rating: 4.8870497 out of 5

Keywords: Amazon, Bishop Barron, Word on Fire, Catholic, Books, Bishop, Pope Francis, Atheism, Faith, Religion, Social Media

Id: MAmPawKRtbg

Length: 44min 26sec (2666 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 21 2019