Father Spitzer’s Universe - 2018-08-29 - Five Transcendental Desires Pt. 2

[Music] [Music] hi I'm Doug Keck and welcome to father Spitzer's universe where no man has gone before each week we go to the intersection of faith and reason coming to live from the mother ship EWTN studios Irondale Alabama and Mother Angelica way that's part of the intersection of faith and reason and just remember you can email us questions for the show very important or get in touch with us at Facebook tweet us on Twitter and for all things father Spitzer you can always go right to the source the magic Center website magic center one word.com and of course remember father's newest website the incredible and this one's called credible Catholic dot-com it's an incredible website and we're talking about five transcendental desires part one because we got carried away last week and we never got the part one so we figured we we should actually a part one before you start doing part two and of course one of the things we need to discuss as well as to mention to everybody you know EWTN publishes a wonderful book each month someday we hopefully publish one of father Spitzer's books as well but this one this month is by dr. ray guarendi pictured on your screen thinking like Jesus the psychology of a faithful disciple the one and only dr. ray of course wonderful TV show and on every day on our EWTN radio network exclusively on EWTN and check that out it's through the ewtn religious catalogue EWTN our c-calm for thinking like jesus and talking about thinking like jesus and talking about Jesus and how he might think about many issues in the universe we have father Robert Spitzer from our studios live on the west coast in Orange County California at Christ Cathedral and we wave back to you Father great to see you as always and as we kick things off how about a prayer sure in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen Heavenly Father we give you thanks for the blessings that you have given us the blessings especially through your son and through your church we ask you to send your Holy Spirit down upon us this day all those who are speaking those who are listening inspire us and and protect us so that everything that we say and do will be brought to fruition in your will and build your kingdom build your church and your people through Jesus Christ our Lord amen and Mary seat of wisdom pray for us the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen very good and before we get into our topic five transcendental desires from the credible Catholic website you can check that out while you're watching the program as well as a great reference point and as a follow up place as well and also don't forget about all the father Spitzer's wonderful books and videos available certainly through EWTN religious catalogue as well but here's a question and came in to us dear father Spitzer the Blessed Mother was purported to say many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them if this is true that avoiding hell would seem to be a matter of popularity the more people that liked you the more prayers you receive but what if you are from a small family in a small circle of friends friend interesting tape yeah Fred you know first of all you know I don't know how to interpret that saying and it is a saying of private revelation which means that we are free to sort of you know accept or or you know interpret it the way we want it's it's not you know you know a poet certainly salvation is not a popularity contest right and that would be contrary to the teaching of the church and to Jesus so that interpretation can't be right so the main thing then is how do we interpret that statement you know I I'm not sure right but I do know that our salvation the very much depends on us we are free and our salvation primarily depends on us yes of course that you know our parents are going to affect us at cetera but you see if we're not responsible let's suppose our parents didn't teach us anything or let's suppose it you know we grew up in a condition that was absolutely cruel or let's suppose we have a terrible psychological impediment remember that the Lord factors all of this into the equation of whether we can be responsible and free for what we do in light of that so remember the definition of a mortal sin right objective or grievous matter a sufficient reflection and full consent of the will if somebody doesn't know any better or someone can't do any better I mean they just simply are incapacitated maybe by a psychological this or maybe by a horrible upbringing maybe by some other thing you know again that person cannot be committing a mortal sin as the church has defined it in not only in the Catholic catechism but its own councils so essentially you know God's gonna factor that in but the primary people responsible for our salvation of course besides Jesus who won our salvation for us if we want it is us right it is literally us we're going to you know accept his gift and try to live according to his teaching and the churches teach or we're going to reject his gift and and we're going to intentionally you know put ourselves on a road that is contrary to his teaching whatever that may be a narcissistic domineering Road but of course if we can't be responsible then you know the Lord certainly factors this into his judgment he's not going to judge us for what we cannot help but do right so the key thing though is I don't know how to interpret that statement well I know it can't be contrary to Jesus's I wonder I wonder whether the message is more for not for relating so much to the people who are in question about going to hell but more about us and the fact of realizing the power of prayer and that it's embolden us to pray for those people who are suffering pray for people we know we're sinners pray for people maybe you've you know are in purgatory and realized that these prayers are powerful and efficacious and that by praying for people we may actually change how those people live their lives well I think that's a great interpretation of it because that's not contrary to the teaching of Jesus and you know but if you view it as you know popularity kindness that would be but no that's a great thing I mean that maybe this was an urgent for people you know so it's done you know in the same way that Jesus for example urges the Pharisees by calling him blind guides and fools right you know he is trying to get them off of there right he's not trying to condemn them government at least trying to say no you need to realize you're going down the wrong path here that's right and it's you know he's doing it with a pretty urgent statement and and maybe that's the way our Blessed Mother meant it so I think that's a great interpretation right and there remind us all of that prayer is important as I think you said lastly in Delia state Terez the issues in the church and saying the number one thing for the first thing we need to do is pray for the victims and pray for anyone involved in this and and and pray for the church absolutely and and you know again st. Therese of Lisieux you know she says well what's gonna matter more you know what are our words are are what our prayers are and she says definitively it's our prayers so and I agree with that wholeheartedly the power of prayer is vastly underestimated and we need to pray for everyone particularly people in most need of God's of the Lord's help right and the fact that some out in the secular world poopoo prayer tells you how important it actually is I believe yeah absolutely right you know I mean good point that's the litmus test right right here's another question for us hi father love your show I have a question about beauty if it's supposed to point us to God why are some things considered beautiful when they actually are not for example pornography and gay marriage are considered beautiful by some what I see in them as manifestations as evil or of evil and this is Christopher so I guess you know how do we think of God Christopher it's it's really how we view beauty beauty was intended by God for the good and you know we can use beautiful objects to do terribly evil things so you can use the beauty of one's embodiment to to do terrible things like pornography to to set people on a wrong road you could use you know the the beauty of art to manipulate people or for just terribly greedy purposes right you could sow beauty absolutely can be misused right for by people and for evil in intentions and beauty itself though we say is ontologically good that means it's good in itself it's good in its being however every beautiful thing except for something that's spiritually beautiful of course every beautiful thing can in fact spiritually beautiful things can be misused the devil can quote scripture to tempt somebody like Jesus right you know in in in the temptations so the key thing is yes even the beauty of Scripture can be misused and and spiritual things can be misused for terribly evil intentions so we say beauty is ontologically good but it can be used for morally evil purposes and so I think that probably is the answer to your question you'll find that also in st. Thomas Aquinas right and also just the idea just because a corrupt society sees something that's actually ugly as beautiful does it make it so so yeah that's right absolute truth there's another question for his father dear father Spitzer I'm struggling with the fine line between temptation and actual sin I struggle with impure thoughts and I'd like to better understand the difference for my own well-being please differentiate between those two and this is John from Palm Coast Florida okay hey John I'll you know to make a hard and fast line you know is very very difficult to do the main thing though is that when you experience the temptations before you're letting this thing get out of control you are trying to stop it you're trying to control it and that's the main thing it's not so much did I entertain this for one minute or two minutes but when it you know when I saw that this was taking me over am i trying to stop it and obviously John it sounds like you are you're trying to stop it before you know it goes any further and and there was a line by CS Lewis but I think quoted by many a saint and that is sometimes when we think because we're being terribly tempted when we think we're the most unvirtuous were the most virtuous in other words we're trying to fight this thing off and we're we're being absolutely virtuous in our desire to and our actions toward fighting this temptation and in trying to keep it under control and and there's almost a virtue in fighting the temptation and he said the converse he said sometimes when we think were the most virtuous were the most unvirtuous because of course we're sitting there in a sea of pride the point that you know I I don't want to make the whole problem more ambiguous for you but the main thing to see is if you are really you know when you start noticing that this thing is is almost taking you over and you start fighting it and you fight it ardently you're in great shape you're not succumbing you're fighting it and that's where you want to be don't worry whether you entertained it for one minute 30 second you know you fight it when you see that it's getting to you fight it and you're you haven't stepped over the line you're doing great right right do the best you can and soon as you realize you can that's there's something may be wrong with what you're thinking you're doing and that's the opportunity then to to change that but fight right okay all right here's another question father Spitzer mm-hmm how do Marian the Saints receive millions of intercessory prayers if only God is omnipresent or I guess maybe omniscient as well thanks to you and Doug for a very helpful show and this is from will yeah you know that's a you know it's obviously a good question but God can impart the gift of knowledge beyond what we would call ordinary human knowledge he can impart that gift of himself to anyone he wants in any partial condition the term Nishant really means all-knowing and so Mary will not become all-knowing as as a creature or none of the saints will become all-knowing as a creature as creatures now here's the thing though if God wants to say okay there were 1 trillion petitions to Mary today I can I give her the power to you know have a sense of that 1 trillion and the answer is yes he can he can impart any gift any spiritual gift any a cognition I'll gift he wants to us and there's no limit to what we can take a finite limit although there is an intrinsic limit namely we can't be an infinitely knowing being an unrestricted Li knowing being so so long as you know there's a a trillion petitions yes God can impart it to the Blessed Virgin to her care or to a saint to their care to pray for every single one of those petitions in a knowing way so that's not going to exceed our creaturely capacity but if you say unrestricted then that belongs to God alone I hope that answers the question ok very good here's a question to go back and kind of relates to what our topic is going to be today talking about the five transcendental desires dear father I have a sister who has severe mental disabilities how can she possibly know to desire the transcendental we take her to church with us on Sundays but she cannot even speak to us and this is Dave from Ohio so how does one know and David's it's a great question the first thing I want to do is go back to something I said last week and that was um I was talking about those near-death experiences and how consciousness is really a a manifestation of our soul right so that we see that when a person leaves their body and and survives actually their bodily death notice that the consciousness and even self consciousness the ability to see and hear etc is still there so first of all does your sister have her own separate soul which is the location of her consciousness and her transcendental desires does she have that even in a body which can't mediate in and the answer is definitively yes if you go to my little chapter there if you just go to credible Catholic calm and you type and just click on module 2 and there he will say to you do you want the big book the little book or one of the seven essential modules choose the big book and then go into that and just go down to section number one which is called you know the soul and medicine and in that section you'll see the studies of terminal lucidity and that the terminal lucidity in you know these are where you have people who had not just severe mental disabilities I mean ultra ultra severe mental disabilities not just the in really to talk but I mean just you know honestly reduced to a vegetative state every single aspect of them you know looks you know like they're incapacitated yet as all these researchers say and I have the quotes from those researchers in the text what those researchers say is that like an hour before their death all of a sudden they come out and they are speaking as lucidly as you and me they are as clear about their thoughts as you and I are they have all kinds of spiritual you know sensitivities clearly manifesting the transcendental desires and and those spiritual sensitivities come out in poems and hymns and you thought the whole time well they couldn't possibly understand this their IQ is less than 50 how's this possible you know and and and no their IQs not less than 50 their soul and self reflective consciousness and transcendental desires are just perfectly fine what's going on is they cannot mediate it through the body that they have so is bringing your sister to church a good thing absolutely and just ask her in the kingdom of heaven what she was able to process even though she couldn't talk about it what she was able to hear even though she wasn't able to talk about it and by the way you can even read these things incredible Catholic calm just click on you know module 2 click on the big book and go right down the terminal lucidity I think you will see I mean there's every reason to believe right your sister is processing just fine even though she can't communicate to you my guess is she'll be a lot up closer to God than most of us and the fact that our Lord has a special place for the most vulnerable and and for the most childlike so absolutely absolutely right as we see in Scripture okay here's another question on a different topic dear father Spitzer in 2014 my husband died after a long years battle with cancer and my daughter had a mastectomy only days ago my son was diagnosed with prostate cancer I attend Mass pray the rosary and offer my suffering to God but it seems that my family keeps getting hit what does God want from us please pray for us Sara so you always hear that sometimes people sit there saying I'm doing everything I can and you know I keep getting knocked down one thing after the other I'm trying to hold on to my faith and belief in the Lord why do we have to suffer like this yeah Sara it's it is the the really perennial question and what I ask you to do is go back to that same website credible Catholic dot-com and what I like you to do is go to volume 19 and hit the big book again so go to volume 19 and hit the big book and when you're looking at that just go down to the place that's called why doesn't all loving God allow suffering but right now I'm just going to say you know three things suffering of course is a huge mystery but there is a lot of good that can come from for our salvation and the salvation of others from it and I elucidate a lot of those goods in that chapter now you might say well I don't see any good that my brother's cancer caused me but we can't enter into the heart of your brother maybe this is somehow engendering you know an increased faith or this vulnerability is enabling him to allow the Lord more and more into his life or maybe it's going to do something good where he's able to serve others into the future I mean there could be all these reasons that are behind this suffering and I'm not saying that God caused the suffering but the cancer comes from natural causes but God can use those natural causes you know he of course could perform a miracle but he doesn't ordinarily do it because there's goods that can come from suffering that sometimes I agree with you I don't want to be letting you know um a cavalier I know how much you're suffering and I can't even imagine you know this is the third go-round right and it's like oh my gosh you're kidding me how come our family all I know is that those sufferings all have these salvific goods that are embedded in them if we but look for them and we begin to try and seize upon them but we don't lose hope and so what I ask you to do is also look at those prayers that are there in volume 19 that are first specifically for helping you through suffering and so I'll just leave it at that but I do want to say is there I know how hard it is I will absolutely pray for you don't lose hope but just know this God has a plan for each and every one of those aspects of suffering and he is going to redeem them and if we seize upon those things the opportunities to grow in virtue to grow in humility as st. Paul tells us to grow in in compassion for others to make our faith much more important in our lives etc if we do these things if we seize upon and it could take us years to do it I mean you know but suddenly we reflect one day after we wake up from you know a horrible year and and then all of a sudden you know you know pain is no fun I totally admit it and you know blindness is no fun but I will tell you there is good in it and it is good for the heart good for the soul good for salvation good for love good for faith vulnerability is not an evil and for me it's been nothing but a blessing when I seized upon the the grace in it but I have to say at the very moment the pain hits you know the very minute the new you know instance of blindness hits is you know I mean I have the same thing you know it's Lord please not another go-around you know but at the same time have hope seize upon the grace in it and the opportunity I'm telling you you will inherit the kingdom of God and when you get to heaven and your family gets to heaven you're going to look back upon all those moments of suffering and go thank God they happen because here we all are together and and in the end that's the only thing that matters well do you think part of it also is there's been to some degree such either a downplaying of the whole sense of eternity and so we kind of look at what we're going through here as being the end in itself so why do I need to go through this rather than realizing like you said going into eternity and realizing that it it's these sufferings that in many ways brought us to this positive end result but what have we say to the society says well father you know all about rational thought and really what you do is just rationalizing these problems by spiritualizing them and trying to make somebody feel better about it well you know you could absolutely say that that's my motive but also I could be giving rash rational reasons for this because they're true and I could be giving irrational reasons for him because they're spiritual that is to say they're commensurate with the teaching of Jesus so I could be doing this you know for rational and spiritual reasons for a good motive namely the truth the good and commence your ability with Jesus and and you could attribute a bad motive right you could say ha you're doing this just to make people feel better when in reality you know you duplicitous guy that in point of fact there is no better reality there's really no excuse I mean that's just it's just point-blank wrong there is a reason and the reason is embedded in eternity and God's unconditional love in it and we can accept this and and move toward it or we can say that Spitzer's got bad motives and and he knows better and he's just nothing more than a skeptic dressed in sheep's clothing though you know button pointed actually dressed in black clothing or whatever it may be but in point of fact I must tell you that my motives are a little bit better and I think more of our audience think it was a shepherd like than sheep like so we appreciate that thank you so much father Spitzer we're going to take a break of course and once more we will return we'll talk about the five transcendental desires this is a part one episode much more head right at the heart of father Spitzer's universe keep it here [Music] and thank you so much for staying with us right here in the heart of father Spitzer's universe as we voyage each week in search of knowledge and understanding our faith in light of the world we live in today and with that being said we go to father Spitzer's universe and we have some questions we want to get into but we want to move ahead into our topic which is the five transcendental desires part one and so it's always easy to start off on questions because they say well why are there five and what are the five and what's a transcendental desire to begin with that's a darn good question first of all transcendental desire is these are five desires that were isolated really by Plato but of course but were picked up by the whole Christian Church particularly st. Agustin and boëthius and then of course it goes right into the tradition with st. Thomas Aquinas and they're written about extensively today and a transcendental desire is one is a desire for something unrestricted something that has no intrinsic limit to it and so Plato thought there were five of these things he thought one of them was being so that being had to be unrestricted and he had by the way a very good proof for this also one of them was truth another was love another was goodness and another was beauty so all of these things were there they're like unrestricted objects there's no intrinsic limit to them so once he and by the way if you want the arguments for that they are actually available and if you go to module 1 and just click on the big book and go down to section 3 you can get all the arguments there for why st. Agustin and Plato thought this but let's skip to the actual answer so God actually is the only one who can be perfect truth love goodness beauty and being he's the only one but what does God do a God is present to us in our soul so remember just a few minutes ago I was talking about the soul being the source of consciousness but also God the way that God communicates with us is not through our brain but through our soul the soul is the immediate avoid communicates with us and that's why for example the last questioners question about his sister right you know God can be absolutely present to her through her soul even though she's having some difficulties with a mapping in her brain now the the main thing that I want to get to is God is present to our souls and when he is he not only communicates his love and invitation to us toward the sacred and the mysterious what we called the numinous experience in a previous show but also God when he's present to us gives us a horizon for unrestricted truth unrestricted love unrestricted goodness unrestricted beauty and unrestricted being so he gives us this horizon within our consciousnesses now he doesn't give us the idea of perfect truth because only God can have that idea that would take an unrestricted thought in an unrestricted mind we don't have an unrestricted mind but what God can do is give us the horizon of unrestricted so we know you know that there is an that there is an unrestricted truth out there something to pursue and that gives us the desire for the your complete set of correct answers to the complete set of questions literally this is what causes our continuous process of questioning there's a philosopher named Bernhard lundergan who's devoted an entire huge book called insight a study of human understanding to this very desire for perfect truth this desire for unrestricted knowledge so when God is present to our souls we have this desire and he causes something in us that no other animal has he causes us to desire the complete set of correct answers to the complete set of question we have an unending curiosity to get to the absolute truth of course which is him but we'll never be able to understand him as him because we don't have an unrestricted intellect as he does however we will have that desire to know and learn more and more and more and more unceasingly and that's the first is our no chimpanzee has this I don't care if it's nim chimpsky or the highest train you know wash you or whatever the most you know highly trained chimpanzee in the world they just don't have it and so here is our first desire secondly we have a desire for unrestricted love now of course we're never going to be unrestrictedly loving in the same way that God is nevertheless when God the unrestricted loving being is present to our consciousness we have the horizon of perfect love and so we desire perfect love and we desire to give perfect love and in the same way that horizon keeps calling us and the same thing with unrestricted goodness or justice when God is present to our souls to our consciousness he gives us the horizon of perfect justice and good that this is why we're always discontent with the love we have this is why we're always discontent with the justice or goodness that we have in the world because we're always seeing more this is why we're always discontent with the truth that we've already arrived at we're always seeking more because the horizon within us is driving us to it and the same thing said Plato with respect to beauty you have a desire for unrestricted beauty that it is not enough right we always see the flaws in beauty and we see them continuously and the same thing holds true for being which Agustin calls almost like home right we have a desire for to be perfectly at home unrestricted being namely God so although we have these five transcendental desires and and Agustin says you know you can actually show that they exist because we have the capacity to unceasingly know you know the truth that we don't yet have so we have the the capacity to see the mistakes to see the limitations to the truth that we have we done ceasing ly have the capacity to see the limitations to the love that we've experienced and can give to unceasingly see the limitations to the justice and goodness and to the beauty and to the home that we seek and Agustin simply asks us the question how in the world do you have the capacity to unceasingly see imperfection in the five transcendentals unless you had some sense some notion some horizon within your soul that told you what perfect truth should look like you know what I'm saying what a horizon within your soul that that that informs you of what perfect love should look like what perfect goodness and justice should look like if you didn't have that horizon of perfect truth love goodness beauty and home honestly you would never have the ability to to say well I want to know more I want more love right we would be powerless we'd never recognize the mistakes the imperfections and the the goodness the love the justice the beauty and the truth that we have so the idea for a Gustin is there's got to be something in your soul you know that he proves by a very very astute argument right there's something in our soul that's leading us you know and to overcome all these imperfections we see in the truth love goodness beauty and home that surround us and that would of course be God manifest in those five ways and that's what differentiates us from our from the animals I mean not the only thing our souls differentiate us from the animals because it could survive bodily death they're self-reflective but one of the big things that differentiates us is the five transcendental desires so of course when when a dog for example even a highly trained chimpanzee when they run out of biological opportunities and dangers when you stop petting the dog stop feeding the dog your stop threatening the dog when there's no more biological opportunities and dangers dogs fall asleep so do chimpanzees not human beings know where our Altima ties errs so what do we do we go ahead and we think about I'm not getting enough love and this person isn't loving me the right way and I can't get the answer to this question and it's driving me nuts and and I want more justice and the justice in this world is lousy and the beauty that I just created is never good enough and I've got pimples on my face or whatever the case is and the point is we want it all we're thinking constantly when we run out of biological opportunities and dangers and that makes us transcendental and as agustin says it's one of the key indicators to our soul our hearts are restless until they rest in thee and thee the other thing though with that is so is it hot is it impossible for us to be content in this life yes yes it is if that's exactly the case our hearts will be restless until they rest in the source of our five transcendentally desires namely God but it's not just getting those transcendental desires fulfilled right it's also being in communion with God that's the spiritual thing that Plato the philosopher didn't discover so there's even a dimension above the five transcendentals which is God's spiritual invitation it's kind of covered by perfect home our desire for perfect home but it really is God's within us giving us this invitation within us to come and follow him ever more deeply into our hearts and when we have that sensitivity then you know that gives us an even higher level transcendent experience and being and that can't be satisfied either until we get to heaven and so we're all awaiting none of that but of course we can get deeper and deeper manifestations of it on this earth so we can we can know what the true source is and we can you know align ourselves to the true source namely God in Jesus Christ however we're not going to get there until we get to heaven okay let me know in the section you have here the basic argument from Plato to Lonnegan and you went through the list but now next to it you've got as you mentioned being in a home as being one in the same but you also have justice and goodness how do those two relate to each other yeah yeah exactly well again you know human beings don't just want some Justice said agustin I mean first of all said that God said we're different from the animals because we recognize goodness and justice this comes from the Faculty of conscience in our in our souls right this is a god-given gift of conscience another way through which God communicates to us but we recognize justice in conscience and already we're different from the animals just than that but Agustin says we do something much more we want unrestricted perfect unconditional justice and goodness this is what we're striving for that's why when we see unfairness in the world or injustice in the world we become frustrated and outrage even why by the way little kids do this too and by the way don't think for a moment that because somebody lacks IQ they don't have a human being lacks IQ that they don't have a sense of justice or fairness absolutely they do and so that's why a little kid maybe who's just you know a 5 years old or 6 years old can you know one day when the parents are the brothers sister does something which is not right they are just so blown away and they're screaming practically that's not fair with the lower lip extended right they just can't believe it you know that that that this has happened because what did they desire they expected perfect fairness and they've got to learn that perfect fairness isn't in there it isn't here in the in the war that human beings aren't going to do it only God is is is perfectly fair or chess and the same thing with perfect love I mean why do people you know you know they're - romantics and what why are people you know always thinking all your love is not perfect it's inauthentic you know you've got tired and stressed and boy you're not responding to me perfectly today let alone understanding me perfectly gir you know and of course why do we even have that expectation of perfect love from another person so much so that we drive one another crazy you know because we have that horizon within us that desire that's motivated by the horizon who is God Himself literally within our soils calling us to that personal love it will be satisfied with less than to make it work I know the struggle of our lives is to try and get to more and more to the best we can so if we are an artist of course we want to try and perfect the beauty that we're trying to produce as best we can you know I do philosophy and science and and so I'm trying to perfect that truth to the best extent that I can you know but I know I'm not going to get to you know perfect truth and you know and so forth I know there are improv it I know there are things I just can't understand right now I mean I can't even begin to understand some of the fine tuning of our universe you know let let alone understand some of the deeper mysteries you know behind you know of philosophy and certainly do I even approach knowing what a unique unconditioned unrestricted act of understanding who is the continuous creator of all else and that is do I have an understanding of God no I don't do I have a perfect understanding of the Trini well I got a start I know that the Trinity is love I understand that the the Trinitarian persons are like self-consciousness but my idea of self-consciousness is soda morphed by comparison to the reality of God like you know I'm not there yet I know that and so yes we in a way what paul ricoeur calls it is we have to be we have to consent consent to what we can really understand and do yet at that same time struggle to achieve a greater perfection so that you know we can leave a legacy if that's our calling from God you know to leave something for the world and in it I think God has called me to try and do that to try and achieve a better sense of love a better sense of of goodness and justice to the best I can do I'm no artist in fact many sisters called me aesthetically challenged but you know and this is before I became blind so you know I know there's maybe a deficiency there but God gave me a good truth Jean and so you know I've got that going and so I'm can pursue that relentlessly and try to leave a little legacy there so these are the things that God calls us to but we have to consent to the fact that we will always not be God we will always be in a state of imperfection and God will help us to make leaps and bounds toward that perfection when we get to heaven okay as we move ahead you have a section for step argument from transcendental desire to a soul then conclusion is if God is perfect truth love justice beauty and B then God is present to us when we are aware of imperfection in any of these transcendentals and we are therefore transcendent okay mm-hmm how do we become transcendent because we're aware that we're not totally transcendent oh yeah I know actually we were transcendent beforehand it's just that this indicates our transcendence I so in other words it's just like how do you know your transcend how do you know you have a soul well you could say well I'm going to appeal to something really kind of concrete like near-death experiences or terminal lucidity or you could say well no I'm actually going to appeal to these five transcendental desires because that's another huge indicator right how in the world can we unceasingly know the imperfections and truth love goodness beauty and being or home how can we know these unless we have some sense some notion some horizon of what perfect truth love goodness median home should be and so which of course is God God present to our souls and so hey we are transcendent God's present to our souls we have to have a soul in order to forgot to be present to it right we can't have just a chimpanzee brain to do this we're gonna have to have a soul to understand that those trans deltas are so a we are transcendent nice to know hey we do mathematics in a way that no computer can possibly do you know get all's theorem is almost definitively you know and shows that that we have some sort of transcendent knowledge of mathematics like understanding of what mathematical intelligibility itself is at its core and so again we can if that's the kind of argument that appeals to you can say hey we're transcending that you know I mean ghettoes proof I mean how am I gonna get out of it you know and and so hey I'm a transcendent being nice to know hey I'm self reflective so I'm looking right at you know some of the work by David Chalmers and others in philosophy mine currently at you know Oxford etc and of course I know physical process is ever gonna be able to explain human interior T subjectivity and self-consciousness it's just not going to happen cuz you physical processes are outward processes this is an inward process for which we have no correlate in the whole of physics to explain and Chalmers just states it out right there it's just not there so you can say hey I'm transcendent than nice to know so there's all kinds of reasons why we can know that we're transcend all it's trying to say in that passage was it's really nice to know there's all these wonderful signs and evidence that are confirmed in the 21st century through good mathematical analysis good self reflectivity arguments good transcendental desire arguments and and also of course near-death experiences and also you know a terminal lucidity and and some of the more concrete studies that have been done as well well I was wondering in reading just that section right ahead of there I was wondering were you a big fan of the I Love Lucy here I see that it looks like we have lots of explaining to do there Lucy effects you're doing your Ricky Ricardo remember we do have lots of splainin to do but it is overwhelming the evidence that we are transcendent beings which always baffles me you know when I look at it you know a scientific community that locks itself into physicalism and by the way that's not the whole scientific community right we know that 51 percent of the scientific community at least its theistic according to the last triple a US study that the American Association for the events when science study and so again you know what we have you know a lot of scientists are very very open to our transcendence soul to the existence of God etc some are not but the majority are and that's you know should be a telling venture that some of these arguments are really speaking to the scientific community but I don't get physicalism I just think there's just too much evidence to ignore I you know ignoring all the near-death experience studies all the studies of blindness in near-death experience inity studies all the trends l desired studies from all the best philosophers that we have the ghettoes proof for mathematics the self reflectivity and in intersubjectivity studies at Chalmers itself I don't get it I don't get it you know I mean of course we want to have methodological naturalism as a metaphysic when we do science because we want to you know exhaust all the natural explanations we can before we get to a transcendent or supernatural explanation but frankly I mean they are exhausted I just don't see how you can ignore all this evidence and be a physicalist or just a pure naturalist in in today's world it's just you really have to do a frontal lobotomy of the first order and you know I'm not saying that scientists are not authentic they are trying to be authentic to their natural you know their methodological naturalism but on this at the same time you really have to look at this evidence for transcendence and try and square it with the evidence of methodological naturalism so at least you can discover that you're a transcendent being that there's a god out there and in that frankly there might be a great deal of veracity to Jesus Christ himself amen I can say that on this show anyway let me ask you this question because we're rapping down them rather than continuing on with some of these higher-end topics when we say 51% of scientists how do we define that category of scientists is that is that some level of hard science or is it yeah yeah okay it's hard time so it's these would be like bench scientists research scientists but also theoretical scientists you know the vast majority of them probably have a PhD in a scientific discipline or at least a master's degree in a scientific discipline and work in that field and understand methodological naturalism very very well so that's that's basically what's meant by you know a scientist and so they have the capacity to either be a very fine theoretician or a research bench scientist and in that's I'm sure where the triple a yes is is talking about okay because a lot of the self sciences tend to be many time very secular and a lot of things and you know like sociology and those kinds of things certainly you know and sometimes you end up with people who have nothing to do with anything that knows any more about the universe than you do you know because they've got a PhD or a doctorate they're pontificating about it so well yeah well you know that's the thing is you don't want someone who is a scientist pontificate pontificating about something which is transcendent or supernatural because by definition that's outside of his or her discipline immediately so of course when Stephen Hawking would say that you know for example science has replaced philosophy you know I nearly had to you know pick myself up off the ground after I fell off my chair because what he didn't know Phil's encyclopedic volumes what he obviously didn't know was that science covers the empirical world but that of course there's this huge world outside of that the world of transcendence the world of you know unrestricted you know ontology Xand and of course there's very good logical reason to believe in these world the world of love the world of morality and conscience all these things that you know even the transcendental desires themselves the world not just a perfect truth love goodness beauty in home but the world of love goodness beauty and home and and and and truth itself beyond the scientific empirical truth those things are not the domain of science and they never will be because scientific evidence must be grounded in empirical data and so to make a long story short those kinds of statements are just like they're so appallingly ignorant of the world beyond science you just got to say to yourself well I respect these men for and women for what they know but you know good grief what you don't know Phil's encyclopedic volumes have some humility to investigate the evidence Poly's and and and that's you know what anybody any person can ask of a scientist who's pontificating about the non-existence of the supernatural or a creator you know just say oh I'm begging you please look beyond science to the evidence that you haven't yet investigated there's lots of concrete evidence lots of logical evidence you know start with a nice little tome like burner lawn organs insight that'll help you to see what science can't do as well as what science can do right and that might be a great starting point and can't create time as we know it because we're out of time thank you so much father Spitzer as always give us your blessing on the way out the door if you would wrote a dissertation about that subject okay bow your heads and pray for God's blessing may the Lord of all wisdom the Lord who is transcendent desire within our souls the Lord who is love itself truth itself beauty itself goodness itself home and being itself may that Lord bless you with eternal knowledge and wisdom in the horizon that calls you ever more deeply into himself so that as you follow it you may find him and find him present in the fullness of salvation in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen thank you so much father spitzer as always we shall see you next time when we journey back into universe god bless you see you next week god bless you too and for all of our audience out there don't forget that EWTN family celebration is coming up as you can see November 3rd in Jacksonville Florida father Mitch will be there Jenna bank of ik and a whole cast of characters from EWTN and we'll also have a Spanish track so for people in Jacksonville in the greater area try that out and next time more on the five transcendental desires part 2 as we again venture into father Spitzer's universe we shall see you waiting for you at the intersection of faith and reason it's a busy intersection but we'll look for you anyway see you next time [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 56min 55sec (3415 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 29 2018