PART I - ENGAGING AND UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
The largest category of religious affiliation now is “None.” Pew Research and similar polls have consistently revealed this catastrophe. It is most pronounced among younger demographics and is accelerating. This group includes atheists, agnostics, disaffected Catholics, secular humanists, and the list goes on.
As these findings continue, we see society slide into catastrophe. Broken families, loneliness, suicide, depression, increasing anxiety, drug abuse, porn addiction, etc. etc. It is a society-wide tragedy and one that requires Catholics, in true compassion, to address. The question is: how?
Our next series of meetings will equip you with the tools to approach these conversations and avoid common traps that will send your conversations off the rails.
If you had to convince someone about the existence of God, the mercy of Christ and the necessity of following Christ but you could NOT use the Bible, Sacred Tradition or “God said so”, how would you do it?
This meeting will show you how…
Secondly—perhaps you are someone who does not believe in God. Or, you don’t believe that God exists or there is no evidence of God. This meeting will test that belief. Have you engaged in an honest, rational assessment and rejection or have you assessed and rejected a caricature of “God”?
RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTAL/PREPARATORY READING:
Part One — Natural Law and the Failure of Atheism -
Foundational Aquinas
Summa Theologiae I, q. 2, art. 3 — the Five Ways themselves; the shortest, most load-bearing text
Summa Theologiae I-II, qq. 90–97 — the treatise on law (eternal law, natural law, human law); this is where "natural law" gets its technical meaning rather than its casual one.
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, chs. 13–22 — a more discursive version of the Five Ways with fuller argumentation.
Maimonides
Guide for the Perplexed, Book II, Introduction and chs. 1–2 — the twenty-five Aristotelian premises and Maimonides's own proofs for the existence of a First Cause, argued independently of Christian sources.
Hume — objections that have to be met honestly
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part I, sec. 1 — the original statement of the is-ought problem; a few pages, essential.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, sec. X, "Of Miracles" — relevant preparation for later, but worth reading since it shapes how skeptics preemptively dismiss the historical argument [which we’ll address in Part II].
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion — Hume's own engagement with the design/causal arguments; Philo's objections are the strongest version of the atheist's counter-case and should be read in full rather than summarized.
Prominent atheists — This is the strongest version of the other side
J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong — the clearest statement of moral error theory.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals (selections) — morality as will-to-power rather than discovered order; useful because Nietzsche, unlike many popular atheists, understood exactly what was at stake in losing God and didn't flinch from the consequences.
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, ch. 3 (arguments for God's existence) — worth reading because this founder of the “New Atheists” of the late 90’s affected a whole generation and became prominent during the abuse crisis. It includes a popular-level dismissal of the Five Ways and you can evaluate whether it actually engages the argument or a caricature of it.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism — "existence precedes essence" as the explicit rejection of Aristotelian teleology; short and directly relevant.
Natural law theologians and philosophers
Edward Feser, The Last Superstition — a contemporary, polemical, highly readable defense of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics against the New Atheists specifically; probably the single best on-ramp for a modern reader before tackling Aquinas directly.
Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide — a clear modern walk-through of the Five Ways and the metaphysics behind them.
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights — the standard contemporary secular-facing statement of natural law theory, useful for showing the tradition still operates credibly in academic philosophy.
J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know — an accessible contemporary case for natural law aimed at general readers, good for those who might find Feser or Finnis too dense.
Francisco Suárez, De Legibus, selections (Book II) — for advanced reading. The Second Scholastic's refinement of Aquinas on natural and eternal law.