Apologia

“The difficulty explaining why I am Catholic is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” (—G.K. Chesterton, Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds, 1926)

The Best Arguments for God’s Existence

Aquinas’ Argument from Motion. (a.k.a. Argument of the Unmoved Mover). Each change has a cause, but an infinite regress is impossible, and so there must be a first mover.

The Finely-tuned Universe. The heavens declare the glory of God. “The Penrose Number”¹, The Cosmological Constant², and the overall intelligibility and knowability of the universe…or as Eugene Wigner puts (right in the title of his article): the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences”³. And not just the universe, but the earth being so anomalous⁴.

Argument from Desire. “If there is a desire in my heart which corresponds to nothing in this world, perhaps I am made for another world?” Best musically formulated by U2.

Argument from Morality. We intuit moral laws⁵, and laws require a lawgiver.

The Best Arguments for the Christian God / Jesus Christ

C.S. Lewis’ “Liar, Lunatic, Lord” Paradigm. People like the idea of saying that Jesus was “good moral teacher who was bringing a message of peace and forgiveness to the world yadda yadda” but Lewis makes the case that He didn’t leave open that possibility as His claims and assertions (about being God)—remember that’s why he was crucified?—were either true or else blasphemous whether knowingly (liar) or unknowingly (lunatic).

The longevity of the Church. The idea that the Church, run by broken, sinful, misguided humans has outlasted the Roman Empire by one and a half millenia is incredible. It should’ve been run aground long ago. It’s almost as if it’s being guided by an invisible hand.

Miracles / Apparitions / Near-death Experiences. There are certainly bogus accounts, people suffering psychoses or delusions, or disingenuous characters in search of attention/fame⁶; but in my estimation it’s a small percentage and doesn’t explain away all accounts…that have, by the way, remarkable consistencies.

Best/Most Popular Arguments Against God / Faith

Theodicy. a.k.a. “The Problem of Evil” (e.g., “How could a good God allow bone cancer in a two-year-old child?”). One of the most difficult counterarguments—in fact, I believe Aquinas admitted that—as it is emotionally gripping, but can be convincingly argued theologically (perhaps best with the Book of Job).

Hypocriticism. This one grabs me: if Christianity is true, it should make its adherents good, and the world should recognize the veracity of the Faith by the good works produced by these people. And yet, to quote Fr. Lupe from my friend Fr. Jeremy’s article⁷, “I’ve had a deep conviction that most middle-class Catholics are phony Christians, just as materialistic and self-seeking, and as liable to go along with others, as any non-Christian, and often more so.” So true. But as Frank Turek says, “when someone plays Beethoven poorly you don’t blame Beethoven; you blame the player.” Ergo, the Church (in the words of Pope Francis) is a “hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints.”

Faith vs. Reason / Faith vs. Science. This one is ubiquitous and cited nowadays as a top reason—if not the top reason—for disaffiliation. Which is somewhat surprising since a) it’s a falsely-aporetic conflict, and b) looking to the scientific method to prove or disprove the existence of God is self-refuting.

The Hiddenness Argument. If God exists and desires a relationship with humans, He would make His existence more evident and accessible to everyone. The fact that God seems hidden or that people are only likely to follow a particular religion based on their cultural and familial context seems to contradict the existence of an all-loving, omnipotent deity. But the x factor here is free will, necessary for agape.

Geographic/Cultural Hypothesis of Religious Adherence. The “born into it” principle (e.g., if you’re born in Saudi Arabia, you’re statistically unlikely to become Christian). Of course this is less true today than it was years ago (in our globalizing, secularizing world); but ultimately, this as a genetic fallacy.

The odds of the universe coming into existence in a way that would develop and support life (i.e. of our universe’s exceedingly low entropy [high order]) was calculated to be 1 / (10^10^123). ↩
The universe expanding at precisely the right rate (and not go into a black hole and collapse nor expand too fast so that everything becomes too dispersed to allow for the creation of protons, neutrons, Hydrogen, and any element heavier the Hydrogen) = 1 / (10^10^120) ↩
Wigner, Eugene P. “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Physical Sciences.” Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13, no. 1 (1960): 1-14. ↩
Enrichment and depletion in the “right elements in the right amounts” (low sulfur; abundant light, high-strength metals; Goldilocks levels of vital poisons [Molybdenum, Iron, Arsenic], etc.). (Luminosity) stability of the sun.- Of the 92 elements in the periodic table all but two of them (manganese and iron) are extremely anomalous in terms of what we see in the crust of the Earth relative to rocky material elsewhere in the universe. ↩
Jer 31:33 ↩
Although I’d argue most people don’t have the Broadway-level acting ability to fool the masses. ↩
Fr. Jeremy Zipple, S.J., “Remembering ‘Father Lupe’: A radical Jesuit, rebel armies, the CIA and a mysterious disappearance,” America Magazine, September 20, 2023. ↩