God is a “fiction” created by the human person, a delusion. At least, this is the narrative proclaimed by the new atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, to any and all who will lend them an ear. Dawkins considers belief in God to be a delusion: a persistent...
In previous posts, we investigated our consciousness of God. In this post, we now we bring our third topic of “God’s Presence to Our Consciousness” to a close. We have seen three ways in which the transcendent reality touches us: The numinous experience – in which...
Continuing our discussion of Newman’s argument from conscience, we may summarize Newman’s thought on this matter. First, he claims that he does not believe in conscience any more than he believes in his consciousness; he is directly aware of them, for...
In earlier posts, we discussed other versions of the argument from conscience. John Henry Newman brought this line of thought to a new level about eighty years later. Though he borrows the general structure of “existential inference” from Kant, he shifts the emphasis...
The thinkers from our last post presume the existence of God, and attempt to show that the good we know in our conscience comes from God. In the 18th Century, Immanuel Kant looked at the reverse contention in his moral argument for the existence of God. Instead of...
The transcendent reality has frequently been identified as the source of the good – the good in itself and the good in human consciousness. Otto’s research indicates that the numinous is perceived to be good while Eliade’s research indicates that hierophanies concern...
