Like a skilled artist, Feser draws lines around abstract thoughts! Nothing short of amazing. Probably one of the most important distinctions made in the book.
"Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom: but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."
Albert Einstein, quoted in Time Magazine December 23, 1940, http://eucharist-emc2.blogspot.com/2011/08/x-ray-vision.html
Source: eucharist-emc2.blogspot.com
Almost every atheist I've spoken to doesn't understand what we mean by "God". So, what an atheist is denying I would deny too. Most atheists deny that there is a 'supreme being' or an 'item' in or above the world, and I would deny that too. Or a distant object that wound things up and went into retirement -I would deny that too. Also, most atheists construe God as a 'competitor', he's in competition with us. Somehow, if God gets the glory, I get less glory. If God is in charge, I can't be in charge. [But according to] St. Thomas Aquinas if God is the ground of our being, the more we give glory to God, the more we are elevated. I tend to agree with most atheists. I think they are right in denying this 'false god'. But the 'true God' I think they just have as much hunger for.
Fr. Robert Barron, www.youtube.com/wordonfirevideo (main site) quote source http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRcpaFArz6Y
The humor is entirely consistent with a spiritual world view. The most humorless people I've ever known are ardent atheists. Many Catholic writers have been howlingly funny, not least of all Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene in books like TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, Dorothy Sayers, certainly the singular G.K. Chesterton. We once had a party, about sixty people, and half a dozen were friends who were monks. There was also an avowed atheist present. The evening was marked by much laughter and high good spirits. Near the end, the atheist said to me, in astonishment, "The monks are very funny. You must be playing a joke on us. They can't really be monks." When I assured him that monks--they were all priests as well--are usually highly accomplished, deeply educated, and nearly always amusing, he looked at me as if I were insane. He said, "But they're Catholics." At other functions, he had met and liked numerous other friends of ours, but he had no idea that many of them were Catholics--or that I was. When I noted this, his eyes widened even further. The Catholic view of the human condition is fundamentally tragic, but that does not mean that we are required to be glum. Indeed, quite the opposite. The human condition may be tragic, but we have been given a beautiful world to enjoy and the promise of eternity, and if we are open to the grace of God, we must be happy because faith and hope and happiness are the proper reaction to what we've been given. The fact that in many of my books--such as LIFE EXPECTANCY and ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN and THE FACE and TICKTOCK--comedy is as big an element as suspense...well, that seems to me to be the natural consequence of my Catholicism!
The suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the journey of the Divine light into our worst darkness. The point of it now is to Divinize us even in those 'places', even in those conditions. Sin is a 'turning away'; Death is this fearful place that seems alien to God. God 'invades' all those places in Christ and illumines them and thereby offers us the possibility of divinization - even if we wander as far as we possibly can from God.
Fr. Robert Barron, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSzNgyMF6DQ
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord But you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Bob Dylan, Gotta Serve Somebody, Joshua 24:15
When Chesterton became a Christian, and began to believe in God, that’s when he knew that he’s “not meant to find his ultimate happiness here in the goods of the world”. And in that moment, he said he “began to ‘enjoy’ the world.”
http://wordonfire.org/WOF-Radio/Sermons/2001/Sermon-11---2nd-Sunday-of-Lent---Resident-Aliens.aspx
If you look at early medical literature - even Planned Parenthood recognizes life begins at conception. There is in fact a book by Ashley Montagu an atheist, who wrote for Planned Parenthood in the 60s called "Life Before Birth". He gives the chronology of the life that unfolds from the moment of conception. This is what I call the "abortion distortion". It distorts law, philosophy, marriage, family, science; It's all distorted by trying to deny the personhood of the unborn child.
Dr. Paul Schenck, http://ewtn.edgeboss.net/download/ewtn/audiolibrary/jh_04252005.mp3
The holocaust reveals to us the capacity of human beings to commit evil, and at the same time it shows us the glory of human life. That every human being, from the unborn to the dying deserves to be cherished, protected and advocated.
Dr. Paul Schenck, Jewish convert former Reformed Episcopal minister, The Journey Home program
As we discuss in "The Godless Delusion," the atheist claim that there is no God entails the claim that there is no absolute standard of morality. And if there is no absolute standard of morality, then what is "right" and "wrong" is simply what the individual or groups of individuals decide is "right" or "wrong." In this scenario -- as countless doomed Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, and others discovered -- what is expedient, what promotes the consolidation of power and privilege, what facilitates the elimination of resistance and ideological competition (Christianity, for example) is "good."
Patrick Madrid, http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=113308, http://patrickmadrid.com/
Source: patrickmadrid.com
One cannot say Jesus is only a good moral teacher, because there is nothing moral about claiming to be God (unless he really is one).
At the end of the day - it all comes down to Jesus' claim "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" (along with the many other magnanimous assertions he made about himself). It's either transcending Truth or the most diabolical lie. Aut Deus aut malus homo. ("either God or a bad man").
One of the things I like about atheists is they do "care" about religion. It could either be the biggest truths of their lives or the biggest falsehood (in as much as they seek intellectual honesty, and not antagonistic just for the sake of it). Compared to the other group who are simply indifferent to the really important questions in life.
Atheism is the supreme example of faith... The truth is that the atmosphere of excitement by which the atheist lives, is an atmosphere of thrilled and shuttering theism, and not of atheism at all; it is an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord. After this first fuss about the merely aesthetic effect of blasphemy, the whole thing vanishes into its own void.
G. K. Chesterton, http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2011/05/grayling-is-unfamiliar-with-20th-century-history.html
For in our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation- it is convention. The curse against God is Exercise I. in the primer of minor poetry.
G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant (1901)
Isn't there enough irreverence in the world? Who would need more?
Bob Dylan, http://www.bobdylan.com/cith-conversation