Why I Believe in God

Anthony here. I was in a debate with an atheist not long ago, and he seemed astonished that I believed in God. I tried to explain the cosmological argument to him, but he wouldn’t look at it. He instead repeatedly insisted that I only believe in God because I was indoctrinated as a child, or because I am afraid. He urged me to set myself free.

This got me thinking. Why do I, personally, believe in God? Is it as simple as “the cosmological argument proves it?” Human beings are complex creatures, and unfortunately we aren’t usually swayed purely by reason, especially in big, important, emotionally-fraught decisions like whether or not God exists. But on the other hand, I certainly don’t believe in God because of indoctrination or fear. I would have to say that I believe in God because the idea of God, specifically as Thomas Aquinas demonstrates, is the only thing that satisfies both my reason and my heart. It is the only thing that makes sense of the entirety of my experience as a human being. 

http://xkcd.com/1153/

It started with philosophy classes in college. My idea of philosophy before those classes was of a lot of mind games with zero practicality. I’d heard of some of the famous philosophical conundrums, like Zeno’s Paradox and Hume’s denial of cause and effect, and I wondered how anyone could actually want to twist their brain up in knots like that until they held beliefs against all common sense. Of course, what I didn't realize was that there is bad philosophy and good philosophy, just as there is bad and good science.

I had to take a survey course in philosophy as a freshman. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave fascinated me. If you remember, Plato taught that there are eternal “Ideal Forms” that gives everything that exists its reality. So, for instance, a tree is only a tree in that it reflects some great Form of tree. And so on for everything. He said that there is an ideal world of Forms, and our own world is only a reflection of this ideal world. He compared our situation to someone who is chained facing a blank wall in a cave. He can’t see anything behind him, but he can see the shadows they cast. He starts to give names to the shadows and thinks they are reality.

That hit me hard, because I've had a sense, all my life, that there’s a greater reality behind what we can see. Now, I don’t just mean my religious belief. That’s a conscious, intellectual thing. No, it’s a feeling, a feeling of weightiness, of the reality of not only the things I see, but something that lies behind and, in fact, underlies them. And it is a longing for whatever ineffable thing that is. C.S. Lewis also experienced this feeling: he called it “Joy” (capital “J”). He also used the German word “sehnsucht” (pronounced “zane-zookt”), which apparently has similar connotations. I’ll use that word for the rest of this post.

Sehnsucht comes unexpectedly, and can’t be predicted or replicated. It lasts only a moment, but can leave you breathless. It is usually, but not always, awakened by some beauty in the world. My wife, who has a different temperament than I do, has said that it happens to her sometimes in interacting with people. For me, it’s more as C.S. Lewis described: “That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of ‘The Well at the World's End,’ the opening lines of ‘Kubla Khan,’ the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.”

I have to stress that the feeling is one of longing. It’s a sudden, shattering glimpse of something, we know not what. We can’t describe it. I can use words like “higher” and “greater,” “beautiful” and “perfect,” I can put something in italics, but the words still don’t capture it. Sometimes (and this is the great power of great poets) words can give us the feeling again, another momentary glimpse, but words cannot describe what that glimpse is of. Words can’t even properly describe the feeling itself, as these stumbling words show. 

For the moment that the feeling lasts, it hurts. Your soul groans with the longing. But that longing is so lovely that you would rather experience it again than any having you have ever experienced in your life. 

I can remember a couple months ago driving my car listening to the soundtrack to The Return of the King. Although I’d listened to it over a dozen times, for some reason that time it hit me very hard. I can remember trying to drive the car while tears blurred my vision, and my blood roared in my ears, and my soul cried out for the beauty that I had just glimpsed and just lost. 

The track was called “A Far Green Country,” which is bizarrely fitting because the title comes from Tolkien’s words which were inspired by his own experience of sehnsucht:

“And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise."

And, actually, I just read those words and, I’m serious, I’ve got tears in my eyes right now. Which is wonderful because you can’t predict or control when you get sehnsucht (or I’d probably be a sehnsucht junkie). It doesn’t come when you try for it. It’s rare, and it sneaks up on you.

Anyway, back to my story. As you can imagine, when I was introduced to Plato I got excited. I hadn’t read Lewis yet. I didn’t know the word “sehnsucht.” But the idea of some greater reality underlying ordinary reality was something I already felt strongly.

But Plato wasn’t good enough. His explanation didn’t satisfy. I might see a sunset and feel longing, but I know my longing is not for some Ideal Form of the sun. I might see a green tree on a grassy hill, its leaves moving softly in a fresh breeze, and feel longing, but the longing is not for some perfect Ideal Form of a tree. It seems to point to something more fundamental, something behind not only the sun or the tree but everything else. Plato’s Forms didn’t seem to fit the bill. And indeed, Plato’s philosophy did not seem to be the best system to account for reality in general. 

Fortunately, Plato wasn’t the end. We next studied Aristotle. Aristotle put the forms into the things themselves, rather than supposing some world of ideal forms to give each thing its reality. That made a lot more sense for reality in general, but, it seemed to me, it lost any connection with that strange, powerful longing. And so my opinion of philosophy was largely back to what it had been before college: pointless (if sometimes slightly interesting) conjecture.

But then my world was rocked.

I took a class on Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas took what worked from both Plato and Aristotle and reconciled them. More importantly, I learned Aquinas’ proof of God’s existence, and in the process I learned what God is, and I saw how that connected to that longing I’d been feeling, and POW. ZAP. KABOOM. (Or any other onomatopoeia you choose.) My brain exploded.

Aquinas’ cosmological argument blew my mind. Because it argues not merely that God exists, where “God” means some all-powerful creator like you learn in Sunday school, but that for anything at all to exist there must exist a certain kind of being whose existence and nature are the very same thing, who in other words is Existence Himself. This Being underlies all reality. He didn’t simply create the universe at one point and let it run. He explains why it runs, at every moment. Creation is not merely a moment of time but the continual reliance of all that exists on this fundamental Cause. Every cause and every effect, every natural law, every truth of physics, not only relies upon but its very existence is explained by this Being.

This was profound to me because the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” had been a troubling one for me. Yes, I had been taught as a child that God had created the universe and that God was not created but “always was and always will be.” But I couldn’t understand how God existed. I was hung up on the usual atheist question, “What caused God?” But then again, I couldn’t understand how anything existed. Existence itself seemed completely improbable – nay, impossible – to me. And yet things do exist. Obviously. It was a bit disturbing to be surrounded by things that exist (including myself!) when my reason seemed to tell me that nothing should exist at all.

Existence is weird, man, weird!

See, I’d been used to thinking of existence in terms of natural cause and effect. What I sensed without being able to articulate is that the question of why anything exists at all can’t be answered by appealing to the way things come into existence in nature, since that just means moving the question back without answering it. You can continue to ask, “What caused it?” forever, but if you do keep asking that question forever then you’ve never answered it. And if you’ve never answered it, then . . . how does anything at all exist?

What blew me away is that the cosmological argument took that exact problem and made it a part of its premises. It says that since we know that things do exist, then of necessity there must be something to which the question “What caused it?” doesn’t apply.

To put it a little more technically: there can be no infinite regress of contingent existents (a "contingent existent" is an existing thing that relies on something else to explain its existence), or you have not explained why any contingent existent exists. But contingent existents DO exist. So . . . there must exist some non-contingent existent, something that does not rely on anything else to exist. Something that has no cause. Something for which the answer to the question, “What caused it?” is, “Nothing: it didn’t need to be caused.” Only if you have such a being can you explain why anything at all exists.

Aquinas then goes on to demonstrate that if there exists such a Being, it means that its existence and its nature are identical. In other words, it is being, whereas we only have being. And then he shows that a Being like this has to also be all those things that are traditionally taught about God: singular, omniscient, omnipresent, absolutely simple, pure actuality, outside of time, and so on.

This is all wonderful stuff, and it really satisfied my mind. Many times my jaw dropped as the pieces fell into place, and I could see what the ramifications were, and what must necessarily follow. I can remember driving home after a three hour class in this stuff, pounding on the steering wheel as more of the implications struck me, shouting something like, “But that means that this must be true! And if this is true, it follows that that must be the case! Which explains that other thing! It all fits!” But it got even better. As I continued studying, it ended up satisfying not only my mind, but also my heart.

I was taking two classes at the time, one on C.S. Lewis, and one called Faith and Reason taught by the university president, Fr. Robert Spitzer. By sheer accident I took these classes at the same time, and they entwined perfectly. See, in reading C.S. Lewis I came across the first description I had ever encountered of that deep feeling of yearning which I had had all my life, that sehnsucht. I realized that I’m not the only person who experiences it. And then in the Faith and Reason class, Fr. Spitzer identified five “transcendentals,” five things that human beings long for in perfection, despite the fact that we can’t find them in perfection on this earth. They are perfect beauty, goodness, truth, love, and being (this last Fr. Spitzer also described as "home"). C.S. Lewis also spoke of the transcendentals, and traced a compelling argument for the fact that since everything we naturally desire exists, so there must also exist, somewhere, perfect beauty, goodness, love, truth, and being. But I already knew that they existed in perfection, because at the same time that I read Lewis, Fr. Spitzer was explaining, using reason, exactly what the transcendentals are:

If God is the Uncaused Cause, he is the source and ground of all being at every moment. Everything owes its existence to him. He is, in a sense, the single Platonic Form. It’s not that the tree gets its reality from some Ideal Tree, but that it gets its reality from God, who, therefore, has in some way all the goodness that the tree has, in order to give it to the tree. So in a sense the tree is a reflection of something more real: it reflects the goodness and being of God, who is more fundamental – i.e. more real — than the tree, and who underlies it and gives it its reality at every moment. This has some mind-blowing ramifications when you think of the transcendentals, like beauty. Where does the beauty come from? The ground of all being must also be the ground of all beauty. And if you understand (as far as we are able) the nature of God as the cosmological argument reveals it, you understand that God never simply has an attribute. He is that attribute. God could never not have anything that he has. Everything that he has is necessary to him; it is an inseparable part of his being. So, really, God never has anything; since it is his nature, he is that thing. So God is beauty. He is truth. He is love. He is goodness. And he is, of course, being itself. And so beauty, goodness, love, truth, and being are all, ultimately and at the highest level, the same thing. God.

And so I realized that the greater reality that I glimpse in moments of sehnsucht is God. He is what I long for.

(And that made what I’ve always been taught about heaven – that it consists of the Beatific Vision, the union with and contemplation of God, which had always seemed so boring to me – suddenly make sense. Why, yes, thank you, I would love to spend eternity in sehnsucht. But it’s even better than that, because it is the having where sehnsucht is only the longing. I can’t even imagine it.)

And so, after I have expended so many words on a clunky and stumbling explanation of something I feel so deeply, perhaps you can see why atheism has no appeal for me. Firstly, atheism would contradict my intellect, since the cosmological argument shows that to deny the existence of God is irrational and equates to denying that anything exists at all. It’s not that we can’t explain God. It’s that we can’t explain anything else without Him. The staggering, illogical, impossible idea of existence – of something rather than nothing – is made logical and possible by the knowledge that there exists a being whose existence and nature are identical, a being which is pure actuality with no potentiality, an eternal Now, outside of time and space and cause and effect but underlying them all. 

Secondly, atheism would contradict my heart, which has glimpsed, dimly, its greatest desire. In those moments of sehnsucht I know that I am an exile, and I long for my perfect Home. Atheism would tell me that that Home does not exist, and my longing for it is an illusion. In those moments of sehnsucht I behold not simply a beautiful thing but Beauty itself. Atheism would tell me that beauty exists only in my eyes; it is an illusion, an opinion, not something that actually exists. (Which, incidentally, accounts for all that ugly modern art. Art is no longer an attempt to capture a reality external to one’s self, but a navel-gazing exercise in “self-expression.”) If atheism is true, those glimpses which rip through me, leaving me breathless with longing for a perfection beyond my experience or understanding, those glimpses which feel more real to me than reality itself, those yearnings that I would rather experience than any having I have ever had, are a lie. If atheism is true, there is nothing there. 

If I were an atheist, what would I be free of? I don’t want to be free of sehnsucht, but I wouldn’t be, even if I were atheist. I would just be “free” of an explanation for it. Every time I felt it, I would have to think, “That was an illusion. There is nothing there.”

And the taste of ashes would fill my mouth. 

No, I think I will keep the worldview where everything is explained. Reason is satisfied. Existence is explained. Science itself is explained, why it works, what underlies its laws. And the experiences of my heart are explained. Poetry is explained. Art is explained. Mysticism is explained. That heart-wrenching longing for perfect Beauty is explained. 

Atheism would not set me free of fear. It would deny me beauty.

Another Sungenis

Anthony here. So, I’ve been looking through the new magazines we just started getting in at the library, and came across this ad in Discover:

It’s another Robert Sungenis! Another wielder of secret knowledge suppressed by the establishment, another person with "the controversial ‘bold truth.’" Though in this case, it doesn’t seem religiously motivated. As far as I can tell, his theory is that gravity can’t act on gas, so our atmosphere is held in place by . . . gasses in space pushing on it, or something like that. Sounds right up Sungenis’ alley; maybe he can use those space gasses for his luminiferous ether. I googled the author, and the similarities to Sungenis became even more marked:

• Self-published book.
• Author fudges his credentials. ". . . was a researcher for 30 years with a long-standing interest in astronomy.” Translation: he never professionally studied astronomy. “He studied Cosmology at Adler Planetarium in Chicago.” Translation: he visited the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
• Exhaustive website filled with pseudo-scientific gibberish.
• “Establishment is suppressing the truth” attitude.
• Drops comments and “press releases" all over the internet. Issues challenges to physicists, like this: "Can you give an example in nature or a sucessfel experiment to prove gravity can attract and hold gas?"
• And the clincher: a $1000 reward if someone can disprove his theory — with, of course, he himself as the person who gets to decide if it has been disproven.

In this case, I just feel kind of sad for this guy. He looks like a nice, older man. He doesn’t seem to be religiously motivated, so I can’t imagine anyone taking him seriously and doing themselves harm. Wish I could say the same about Sungenis.

I guess this just goes to show that Sungenis types are not really rare.

A Geocentrist Struggles with Scripture, Aquinas, and the Popes

Anthony here. So, Robert Sungenis has written an 87 page “rebuttal” to my post against geocentrism. I’d be flattered, except that's standard behavior for Mr. Sungenis when someone disagrees with him, since he stakes his reputation and his conception of Catholicism on this issue. Unlike Mr. Sungenis, my day job is not writing about geocentrism. And with a wife and baby at home, I can’t give time to 87 pages of rebuttal myself. Fortunately, I don’t need to. I can more briefly address Mr. Sungenis’ underlying assumptions about philosophy, biblical exegesis, and patristics, supported by quotes from Mr. Sungenis’ “rebuttal,” Thomas Aquinas, papal encyclicals, and more. We will find that the problems I pointed out in my original post still remain.

If you are an interested or semi-interested reader but don’t have the time to wade through the mountains of text that always result from a debate with Mr. Sungenis: don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. I’m highlighting the most important stuff. You can just scroll through that and you’ll get everything you need to know.

Slander:

Mr. Sungenis is a singularly aggressive individual when it comes to debate, stretching or breaking the truth about his opponents where it suits him. Let’s take a look at his assertions about me:

I have since been informed that “Anthony” is most likely [REDACTED] and lives at or near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. If so, Anthony is the same person who barged into a lecture on geocentrism I gave in Coeur d’Alene a few years ago and started shouting at me from the back of the auditorium. I was also informed that Anthony and his father tried to have my lecture canceled before I arrived in Coeur d’Alene. Anthony says he “graduated from Gonzaga University magna cum laude with a degree in history and a minor in philosophy.” He now teaches at an SSPX high school in Post Falls, Idaho. 

I wonder if he’s referring to my brother, who did not “barge in” to the meeting (my brother, and my father, and I all attended in the normal manner, i.e. taking seats along with everyone else before the public presentation started, listening silently to the presentation, and then taking part in the Q&A afterwards), but who did question (during the Q&A, and without shouting) Sungenis’ authority to decide what is or is not Catholic doctrine.

As for trying to get Mr. Sungenis’ talk canceled, I believe this refers to the fact that we attended (by invitation) a meeting of the men in the parish who paid for Mr. Sungenis’s lecture, presenting our view that bringing Mr. Sungenis in to talk about geocentrism in the name of Catholicism was a bad idea. We were overruled. (I should note that the men conceived the idea of their own volition: the parish proper had nothing to do with Sungenis’ visit, and the presentation was held at an off-site venue. Though I do not teach at an SSPX high school, I'm not surprised Sungenis seems to have an antipathy towards the SSPX: the SSPX disagrees that geocentrism is doctrine).

I do not appreciate Mr. Sungenis making a slanderous characterization of myself and my family, which includes the outright lie that I “barged in” and “shouted” at one of his lectures. I also do not appreciate that he fails to respect my desire for anonymity on this blog. Blog anonymity has been important to me since homosexual activists wrote on the blog I had in college that I should crucify myself and post pictures — and with my wife sharing this blog with me, it is doubly important now. (I ask Mr. Sungenis to respect my wife’s anonymity even if he won't respect my own.) But for Mr. Sungenis, nothing is too low in his attempts to discredit his opponents. Sungenis is a fundamentalist. As we'll see, he seems to think he is the Chosen One with a God-given mandate to preach geocentrism. Because he’s a True Believer in the message and the message is Important, it doesn't matter how he gets the message out, including slander.

Before editing his “rebuttal” to include my real name, Sungenis made several digs against my lack of a public last name on this blog, implying that I probably don’t have the credentials to be involved in this discussion. If Mr. Sungenis must know, I am a librarian. That means I specialize in information, specifically in finding and evaluating good information. My masters degree in library science should qualify me at least as much as Mr. Sungenis’ unaccredited and illegal diploma mill PhD. But as we’ve seen when Sungenis tangled with Stephen Barr, and from his dismissive words about Dr. William Carroll in his rebuttal to me, credentials only count if he thinks the bearer supports what he’s saying. Sungenis will proudly sign his name “Robert Sungenis, PhD” because he has a “degree" from an internet “university” that exists as a secretarial office on a small island in the south Pacific and also offers degrees like “Doctor of Transpersonal Hypnosis” and sports professorial staff like this. But Dr. William Carroll, Thomas Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, specialist on the Galileo Affair, who gave lectures at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Vatican Observatory's Institute on Astrophysics, and who was published in peer-reviewed journals like that of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (yes, the Angelicum) . . . doesn't know his stuff.

I have to say I’m kind of fascinated by Sungenis’ rhetorical style. His modus operandi is a flood of words, a self-assured, patronizing attitude, and a variety of ad hominems meant to give his readers the impression that he knows his stuff and his opponents don't, even as he glosses over serious problems or buries them under a torrent of rationalizations and out-of-context or bizarrely misinterpreted quotes.

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/01/09/

Enough of Sungenis' rhetoric. Let’s look at his ideas, one last time. Science first.

Science

Since writing my post about geocentrism I have been introduced to David Palm’s excellent site Geocentrism Debunked. It’s a compendium of Palm’s writing and those of experts like Dr. MacAndrew who have, yes, debunked geocentrism. I salute Mr. Palm’s patience in compiling and maintaining the site for so long, since it has made him a target of Mr. Sungenis and we've just seen what that's like.

I’m not going to go over science again, since that has been ably handled by Sky and Telescope science editor (and Catholic) Camille Carlisle, Dr. Alec MacAndrew, Dr. Tom Bridgman, and others who are more qualified than myself (or Mr. Sungenis). But I can’t resist addressing one aspect of science: Sungenis’ answer to NASA’s eastward rocket launches.

If you remember, rockets are launched east to take advantage of the eastward spin of the earth. Launching with the spin gives the rocket a boost compared to launching against it. Sungenis flat-out denies this:

As for whether there is a boost in the helio system if a rocket is launched eastward, this is nothing but a myth. When NASA is asked to provide the math to substantiate such a 'boost,' an answer never comes.

You will recall that I said in my original post that Sungenis believes that NASA is actively engaged in withholding information from the public. We’ll see more of this shortly. Sungenis goes on:

A boost relative to what? "Boost" implies that there is more ground covered for the same time, or less time flown for the same distance, or less force/fuel needed to cover the same distance or same time.

Less force/fuel? Hmm. That should be observable, right? We should know whether it takes more fuel to launch westward than eastward. And in fact, we do! NASA’s Dr. David P. Stern writes:

[T]he velocity needed for a stable orbit around the center of the Earth above the atmosphere is about 8000 meter/second. An object on the surface of the Earth already has an eastward velocity, because of the Earth's rotation, but it is much too small: 409 meter/sec on the equator, and 409 times cosL at latitude L. That is much too small to fling you or me into orbit (for which we ought to be grateful), but it's still something, and satellite launchers, eager to make use of the smallest advantage, fire their rockets eastward. At Cape Canaveral you get a bonus of about 360 m/s. 

Israel has launched two satellites so far (maybe more). Lacking the choice, it must launch westward over the Mediterranean, and those 360 (or so) meters/sec hinder rather than help its rockets, reducing the available payload. Yes, it can be done, but when a choice exists, eastward is preferable. 

(Note that this applies to any orbit, not merely geostationary ones.)

Mr. Sungenis response to this will no doubt be that Dr. Stern and NASA are lying. He has a low opinion of NASA. In this archived post, Sungenis says,

NASA has every incentive in the world to promote UFOs, simply because they want to implant in our heads the idea that there is life on other planets. In that way the government will continue to give them billions of dollars to a program that the government has thought more than once of scrapping. . . . I also think crop circles can be made from space with lasers or plasma projectors. All NASA would have to do is put a digital pattern in a laser/plasma projector aboard a satellite and then shoot it down to earth, and presto, you have a crop circle. It gets everybody talking about UFOs. But really, all they are doing is getting our minds off the Bible and Christ by making it look like neither are true.

(The reality behind crop circles is rather more prosaic, but much more charming.)

Sungenis may also have a problem accepting the words of a Jewish scientist talking about Israel's rocket launches: he already has a history of belief in Jewish conspiracies, so I suppose he will simply choose to believe that they are colluding with NASA to suppress "the truth."

Sungenis goes on,

"It’s sad to see traditional Catholics like Anthony defend the atheists who run NASA and attribute to them the purest motives . . . Not only is Anthony ignorant of much of the scientific and historical facts, he is also naïve. That Anthony doesn’t realize that the quest to find alien life on other planets is part‐and‐parcel with the Copernican Principle to keep Earth out of the center of the universe and be regarded as nothing special, shows just how well NASA’s program has worked to convince Christians that NASA has the true story and the Church is full of ignoramuses.”

Given that Catholics have been involved in NASA from the start, and the Flight Director for the first moon landing (which Sungenis apparently denies happened) is a Catholic (“I’m a Catholic, and in the flight director business you want all the help you can get”), somehow I think the people spreading the perception that the Church is full of ignoramuses don’t work at NASA . . .

Mr. Sungenis still thinks that the only thing at stake with a change to a geostationary reference is just that: a change of reference. I’ll let Dr. Phil Plait tackle this one:

And Geocentrists have to assume that all local phenomena are caused by cosmic motion. For example, the Coriolis effect, which makes hurricanes spin different ways in the northern and southern hemispheres, is relatively easy to explain if you assume a spheroidal rotating Earth. For a Geocentrist, you have to assume that the Universe itself is revolving around us, and affecting the weather here. Again, the math works out, but it’s standing a pyramid on its tip: you have it precisely backwards. And with one poke the whole thing falls over.

We also know earthquakes can affect the rotation of the Earth. That makes sense since they shift the mass around on the surface, and that changes how the Earth spins. To a Geocentrist, though, that earthquake affects the entire Universe.

That’s simpler?

This also serves to answer, again, Mr. Sungenis’ assertion that invoking Occam’s Razor when comparing heliocentrism and geocentrism is “pretentious.”

Doctrine:

“Modern heliocentric science is Anthony’s infallible authority,” Sungenis says, over and over again. If I point to the scientific consensus as rational and consistent with Catholic teaching, I am blinded by dogma. But his a priori belief that geocentrism actually is Catholic doctrine is . . . what, a clear and objective response to physical evidence? Of the two of us, only one of us is arguing that something in the realm of science is infallible.

It should be obvious to anyone who reads his “rebuttal” that Mr. Sungenis’ adherence to geocentrism rests on a prior assumption that geocentrism is Catholic doctrine. Can anyone doubt that he wouldn't make an issue of geocentrism if he didn't believe this? So it’s worth revisiting this question again to show how much he disagrees with the popes about what is or is not doctrine. Here, again, Mr. Palm has done an admirable job of laying out the doctrinal status of geocentrism. (And I highly recommend this post if you want a clear, readable breakdown of the issue.) In this post I'll confine myself to showing that Sungenis is inconsistent in his appeal to Catholic authority, ignoring or dismissing those Catholic popes, Fathers, and Doctors who disagree with him.

Sungenis repeatedly brings up the Inquisition’s decrees of 1616 and 1633, holding them as having the mark of infallibility since, he believes, they are consonant with the consistent teaching of the Church Fathers. When I instead put forward the view stated in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1914 that these decrees were not infallible, Sungenis accuses me of overstepping my authority: "Essentially, Anthony has become a Pope in his own right (or rite) and he will settle the issue for us.” 

But I already pointed out in my original post that popes don’t hold this to be true. John Paul II wrote specifically that the Inquisition erred in thinking the earth was at the center:

“The error of the theologians of [Galileo’s] time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture. . . . In fact, the Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning.”

In response, Sungenis says, "John Paul II is entitled to have his own personal opinion about cosmology or any other subject, but the glory of the Catholic Church is that there is a big difference between a pope’s personal beliefs and what he declares officially as Catholic doctrine.” But John Paul II just said that the details of the physical worlds are not a matter of faith, meaning they couldn't in principle be a matter of doctrine. So when a pope agrees with Sungenis it’s doctrine, but when he disagrees it’s personal opinion. Sungenis criticizes me for using the “canard” that something does not meet the criteria for infallibility, but then plays the same card when he says that John Paul II’s statements about what is or is not infallible are not themselves infallible. (Just one of many times Sungenis does what he accuses others of doing.) Essentially, Sungenis has become a pope in his own right and he will settle the issue for us.

Of course, John Paul II is not the only Catholic authority to hold that matters of natural science are not matters of faith. Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissium Deus is very clear on the issue:

[W]e must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost "Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation." Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. . . .

The unshrinking defence of the Holy Scripture, however, does not require that we should equally uphold all the opinions which each of the Fathers or the more recent interpreters have put forth in explaining it; for it may be that, in commenting on passages where physical matters occur, they have sometimes expressed the ideas of their own times, and thus made statements which in these days have been abandoned as incorrect. Hence, in their interpretations, we must carefully note what they lay down as belonging to faith, or as intimately connected with faith-what they are unanimous in. For "in those things which do not come under the obligation of faith, the Saints were at liberty to hold divergent opinions, just as we ourselves are,"(55) according to the saying of St. Thomas. And in another place he says most admirably: "When philosophers are agreed upon a point, and it is not contrary to our faith, it is safer, in my opinion, neither to lay down such a point as a dogma of faith, even though it is perhaps so presented by the philosophers, nor to reject it as against faith, lest we thus give to the wise of this world an occasion of despising our faith." The Catholic interpreter, although he should show that those facts of natural science which investigators affirm to be now quite certain are not contrary to the Scripture rightly explained, must nevertheless always bear in mind, that much which has been held and proved as certain has afterwards been called in question and rejected. And if writers on physics travel outside the boundaries of their own branch, and carry their erroneous teaching into the domain of philosophy, let them be handed over to philosophers for refutation.

Pius XII reiterated these points in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. Calling Leo’s encyclical “the supreme guide in biblical studies,” he urged, "This teaching, which Our Predecessor Leo XIII set forth with such solemnity, We also proclaim with Our authority and We urge all to adhere to it religiously.” 

And if you want something that specifically mentions the belief that the earth is the center of the universe, Benedict XV, in his encyclical In Praeclara Summorum, wrote,

If the progress of science showed later that that conception of the world rested on no sure foundation, that the spheres imagined by our ancestors did not exist, that nature, the number and course of the planets and stars, are not indeed as they were then thought to be, still the fundamental principle remained that the universe, whatever be the order that sustains it in its parts, is the work of the creating and preserving sign of Omnipotent God, who moves and governs all, and whose glory risplende in una parte piu e meno altrove; and though this earth on which we live may not be the centre of the universe as at one time was thought, it was the scene of the original happiness of our first ancestors, witness of their unhappy fall, as too of the Redemption of mankind through the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. 

This is a pope, in an official teaching document, allowing that "this earth on which we live may not be the centre of the universe as at one time was thought" -- a serious problem if that belief is a matter of doctrine.

Not good enough? Since Sungenis places such importance on decrees from the Inquisition approved by a pope, how about the decrees of the Inquisition in 1820 and 1822 approved by Pope Pius VII? David Palm has an in-depth examination, so I'll just quote the pertinent part from the 1820 decree for the record:

His Holiness has decreed that no obstacles exist for those who sustain Copernicus’ affirmation regarding the earth’s movement in the manner in which it is affirmed today, even by Catholic authors.

"His Holiness has decreed . . ." And yet Sungenis says, "Anthony is setting himself up as a pope in his own right." 

We have here the official teaching documents from three popes and a juridical decision from a fourth. But Sungenis is a greater authority than Benedict XV and Pius VII about whether we don't have to believe geocentrism. He's a greater authority than Leo where scriptural exegesis is concerned. And he's a greater authority than Pius XII, from whose exhortation to take Leo’s encyclical as “the supreme guide in biblical studies” and “adhere to it religiously” Sungenis flat-out dissents.

Sungenis’ idea of biblical interpretation seems not to have progressed beyond his protestant roots. Though he gives lip service to the marriage of faith and reason, in practice he seems to be a kind of a Catholic fideist — faith trumps reason — as contrasted to Augustine and Aquinas' "two books" approach — faith and reason both aim at truth and so cannot contradict. I already quoted Aquinas in my original post, and he's worth quoting again. Aquinas says: 

“For certain things are per se the substance of the Faith, as that God is three and one, and other things of this kind, in which no one is authorized to think otherwise. Thus the Apostle says in Galatians 1 that if an angel of God preached diversely from what he had taught, let him be anathema. But certain things (pertain to the faith) only incidentally (per accidens), inasmuch, that is, as they are handed down in Scripture, which faith supposes to have been promulgated under the dictation of the Holy Spirit. And these things can without danger remain unknown by those who are not held to be knowledgeable about the Scriptures, for example, many items of history. In these things even the Fathers have thought differently and have explained the Scriptures in different ways. So, therefore, with regard to the beginning of the world, there is something which pertains to the substance of the Faith, namely, that the world was created to begin with. And this all the Fathers agree in saying. But how and in what order it was made does not pertain to the Faith except per accidens, inasmuch as it is presented in Scripture, the truth of which the Fathers retained in their varying explanations as they arrived at different conclusions.

Sungenis doesn’t like this passage because it contradicts his belief that the six-day literalist reading of creation is dogma (another example of Sungenis holding a belief that the popes  do  not, not to mention that even the Fathers were not as unanimous as he claims). When I quoted this passage in my original post, Sungenis put words into my mouth: "Anthony is trying to tell us that Aquinas either did not believe in a literal and chronological six day creation or that the view he quotes above was the norm in Catholic teaching.” Neither, actually. As Leo XIII noted above, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church believed many things according to the knowledge of their times. What I was claiming, and still do claim, is that Aquinas had no problem with believing otherwise. Aquinas explicitly states that the order and time of creation are not a matter of faith. And despite Sungenis’ claim that Augustine’s outside-of-time idea of creation was tolerated by Aquinas “out of respect for Augustine,” Aquinas in fact states in the same passage just quoted that Augustine’s interpretation "is more reasonable and defends Sacred Scripture more from the derision of non-believers, a factor which Augustine, in his Letter of Genesis (bk. I, ch. 19) teaches us is to be kept well in mind, so that the Scriptures may be expounded in such a way that they not be mocked by nonbelievers. This opinion pleases me more.”

I’m going to quote Aquinas one more time just to pound home the point that Sungenis’ idea of what belongs to faith is not shared by the foremost theologian in Church history. This comes from Summa Contra Gentiles, book 2, chapter 4. Aquinas writes:

For this reason, also, the philosopher and the believer consider different matters about creatures. The philosopher [i.e. scientist] considers such things as belong to them by nature—the upward tendency of fire, for example; the believer, only such things as belong to them according as they are related to God—the fact, for instance, that they are created by God, are subject to Him, and so on. 

Hence, imperfection is not to be imputed to the teaching of the faith if it omits many properties of things, such as the figure of the heaven and the quality of its motion. For neither does the natural philosopher consider the same characters of a line as the geometrician, but only those that accrue to it as terminus of a natural body.

So to Aquinas, what belongs to faith regarding created things is their relationship to God (just as Benedict XV said above), whereas their natural properties, including movement, belong to the natural sciences. To say that faith doesn't include matters of science is not a mark against faith: it’s simply a delineation of scope, just as other subjects, like natural science and geometry, are delineated.

But despite popes like Leo prizing Aquinas enough to quote him in their encyclicals, Sungenis is quite comfortable contradicting Aquinas, even holding ideas about God’s nature that are contrary to the teachings of St. Thomas — and the Fathers. In fact, in asserting against Aquinas that God can change his mind, Sungenis blames Thomas for muddying Scripture with metaphysics — so much for interpreting Scriptures in line with the thinking of the Doctors and Fathers. Sungenis' method of scriptural exegesis is basically protestant (it does not allow for analogous or metaphorical language), and in this case it's caused him to have a very serious misunderstanding of the nature of God.

Sungenis’ basis for thinking that geocentrism is a matter of faith ends up resting entirely on the Inquisition’s say-so in the 17th century. But given that the Inquisition disagreed with Aquinas, Augustine, Benedict XV, Leo XIII, Pius XII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and others about whether a matter of natural science can be a matter of faith, John Paul II’s statement that the Inquisition erred should not surprise us or be hard to accept. The Inquisitions's decree could never be binding even if it otherwise had the character of an infallible decree, precisely because infallibility only extends to matters of faith. (Of course, it did not have the character of an infallible decree: the Inquisition’s power was limited to disciplinary and juridical authority only. The Church has never taught that tribunals can define doctrine. The approval of a disciplinary action by a pope does not constitute an infallible teaching.)

So what are the criteria for determining whether something is a matter of faith? Here I will quote the 1914 Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on infallibility (though unfortunately we’ve already seen that Mr. Sungenis considers himself a more knowledgeable source than the Catholic Encyclopedia):

As regards matter, only doctrines of faith and morals, and facts so intimately connected with these as to require infallible determination, fall under the scope of infallible ecclesiastical teaching. These doctrines or facts need not necessarily be revealed; it is enough if the revealed deposit cannot be adequately and effectively guarded and explained, unless they are infallibly determined.

So let’s use our God-given capacity for reason and apply these criteria to the belief that the earth is the unmoving center of the universe. Can the revealed deposit of faith be "adequately and effectively guarded and explained” if we believe that the earth revolves around the sun?

It seems that it has been, since at least 1820 when heliocentrism was allowed to be presented as established fact. Of course, Sungenis believes that this was the result of a “campaign of lies" — but even if that were the case, it’s hard to deny that we seem to have done fine without the “doctrine” of the immobility of the earth. I don’t think it has affected my understanding of the deposit of the faith — has it affected yours? I certainly don’t think anyone who believes in heliocentrism risks his soul. Nor do I think that Mr. Sungenis is in danger of losing his soul for his beliefs in geocentrism, because the physical relationship of the earth to the cosmos is just not a matter of faith.

But Sungenis is his own authority in interpreting not only the Scriptures, but also these popes, Doctors, and Fathers. He either claims they never said it, or they didn't mean it, or it doesn't apply to him, or (in the case of Augustine and Aquinas) they're just flat-out wrong. At this point (which arrives quite fast with Sungenis) all debate and discussion breaks down. It's pointless to continue to engage with someone who keeps repeating, "Nuh-uh!"

The Harm of Geocentrism

But if that’s so, then what’s the big deal? Why did I just spend so much time and so many words on the subject if it doesn't matter? Shouldn't we just laugh off Mr. Sungenis’ ideas as an eccentricity, not to be taken seriously or engaged with?

Of course. But the scary thing is that people do take it seriously. Sungenis has disciples preaching his word on the internet (trust me, I know -- hence the comments being closed on this post). He has enough supporters that they were able to fund his movie. Writers of The Remnant spread his message through traditional Catholic circles. He’s given hearing by Christopher Ferrara and Michael Voris, and his name is associated with the Fatima Center. To put it bluntly: he besmirches the name of Catholicism, turning it into a cult. So what prompts myself, and David Palm and Camille Carlisle, and Dave Armstrong, and many others to write against him is the damage that we have already seen when Sungenis' discredited scientific belief is presented as something integral to the Catholic faith..

Sungenis says I have an "agenda." He's right. He says, "Could this perhaps be Anthony’s motivation – the desire not to be looked at with derision by the world?” I’ll correct that to, “Anthony's motivation is for Catholicism not to be looked at with derision by the world based on a claim of natural science.” This is an “agenda” I share with St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. Aquinas wrote in Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei:

"As to the first discussion two things are to be avoided: one is the making of false statements especially such as are contrary to revealed truth, the other is the assertion that what we think to be true is an article of faith, for as Augustine says (Confess. x), when a man thinks his false opinions to be the teaching of godliness, and dares obstinately to dogmatise about matters of which he is ignorant, he becomes a stumbling block to others. The reason why he says that such an one is a stumbling block is because the faith is made ridiculous to the unbeliever when a simple-minded believer asserts as an article of faith that which is demonstrably false, as again Augustine says in his commentary (Gen. ad lit. i).”

Is the faith "made ridiculous to the unbeliever” when geocentrism is presented as Catholic doctrine? Yes. A simple Google search for "Catholic geocentrists" will turn up plenty of derision, not merely for the theory but for Catholicism in general. The consensus is that this is just more proof of how dumb Catholics are. One might respond, "Well, of course they'd say that; they already hate us." Yes, but now they have a reason to point to that has nothing to do with faith and morals and seems certifiably nuts to any outside observer, discrediting us to anyone that doesn't hate us. It's a nice gift to the anti-Catholics, giving them such impressive ammunition.

I warned in my original post:

We must be wary of suffering a loss of credibility. If any non-Catholic hears a Catholic, especially one who, like Sungenis, presents himself as a Catholic authority, talk about geocentrism as both scientific fact and Catholic teaching, and that person later hears a Catholic talking about matters of genuine faith and morals such as homosexuality, abortion, or any of the dogmatically defined Catholic truths, they will lump these moral subjects in with the mistaken scientific subject and believe that Catholics are wrong about both.

Here's a quote confirming that: 

Obviously, this is a fringe movement. But when you’re surrounded by people who think a consecrated wafer is the actual, physical body of Jesus Christ, should we be surprised when some of them also believe other completely irrational things?

The same thing happens in a more measured way in this article from Popular Science. The author investigates Sungenis' movie, The Principle, and speaks to its producer, Rick Delano. The article highlights Delano’s blog, saying that Delano’s beliefs about science have been given “a Catholic hue” and particularly points out, 

Go back far enough in the blog's archives, and you find political opinions, frequently about gay marriage: "May I say that the incredibly disoriented, intellectually and morally weak voters of Maryland, of Washington, of Maine, and of Minnesota, have contemptibly surrendered their children to indoctrination in radical homosexualist propaganda."

For a world that already has trouble understanding the Church’s reasons for opposing homosexuality, being asked to swallow geocentrism as well is simply too much. 

Sungenis' adherence to geocentrism has also prevented a thoughtful protestant from reading Sungenis' own book about his conversion from protestantism back to Catholicism: 

When I was in (Protestant) seminary, my favorite theology professor used a book for one of his classes written by a Protestant-turned-Catholic entitled, Not by Faith Alone. I didn't take that class, but I did plan to someday study this book, maybe together with Alister McGrath's Iustitia Dei, and see where I came out. However, the author of Not by Faith Alone has also published a two volume work entitled Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, volume 1 of which deals with "the scientific case for geocentrism", thus absolving me of any requirement to take him seriously.

But none of this matters to Mr. Sungenis, because he is in possession of a God-given mandate to preach geocentrism. Mr. Sungenis writes in his "rebuttal" to me that when he wondered if he should be focusing on geocentrism, "I always received the same answer from God: 'Now is the time.' Hence, I believe God has great plans to turn the world around and evangelize it from the bottom up. Showing the Church was right about Galileo would be just the spark to ignite that divine revolution."

If this language sounds familiar to you, it's because we usually hear it from televangelists. It ends the discussion, of course. Once someone plays the "God told me" card, it's obvious that reason goes out the window. It's just unusual to hear it from a Catholic. Catholics usually receive our knowledge of God's will through the clear teachings of the Church, not personal feelings. I think Mr. Sungenis should study St. Ignatius on the discernment of spirits. Has he consulted with a spiritual director about this "God-given" task? That's usually the first step.

Mr. Sungenis wants to believe in conspiracies? Here's one that shouldn't stretch belief. Satan "as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8). In a world in which Cardinals publicly agitate against marriage and most American Catholics don't understand the doctrine of the Real Presence, Satan would very much like to devour those conservative and/or traditional Catholics who don't follow the trend of piecemeal rejecting, reinterpreting, or simply not caring about the Faith. But he can't get us the way he gets the rest: by muddying doctrine and making feelings of paramount importance. So, like a Judo expert, he gets us by using our strengths against us. He takes our existing momentum and turns it to his advantage. We want to emphasize doctrine even when it seems hard? Fine, he'll give us a "doctrine" to plant our flag on that has nothing to do with the Faith. We're willing to stand for truth against what the rest of the world believes? Fine, he'll make us proud of that, and gives us a "truth" to stand for that will make us a laughingstock to the rest of the world. He'll make us think that we alone are the keepers of the truth, and others should follow us. He'll conspire to make us elitists preaching meaningless "doctrine" so that no one will take what we have to say on matters of actual importance seriously. That's the conspiracy here.

Conclusion

I'm still amazed the time and effort that Mr. Sungenis and his followers put into defending a theory that has nothing to do with the deposit of the faith. They really need to ask themselves: will people go to hell if they believe the earth revolves around the sun? When they've answered in the negative, perhaps they could redirect some of that time and energy into something of actual import to the faith, like exploring the scientific rationale behind the fact that human life begins at conception, for instance.

Meantime, I’m through here. I can’t waste any more of my time (and my family’s — my wife is waiting patiently for her husband to stop pacing around the apartment muttering about Catholic fideists) answering this nonsense. As is his style, Sungenis will doubtless claim my declination to waste more time with him as a victory.

I, of course, have a different perspective. http://xkcd.com/1081/

Arguing with Sungenis is like speaking to a black hole: a lot goes in and nothing comes out. He assigns motivations to everyone who disagrees with him, usually of a malicious or conspiratorial bent. He spouts a rationalization or an out-of-context quote for everything, so that he can claim he has "already answered” whatever anyone puts forward, when in fact he has only pushed a torrent of pseudo-scientific jargon or personal, un-shared interpretations of Scripture and the Fathers at the question. He has not convinced anyone who does not have a prior belief or willingness to believe that the bible teaches geocentrism or that Catholicism falls if geocentrism does. That should tell us enough about his “science.” As for doctrine, I don’t doubt he'll respond to my quotes from Leo and Aquinas and others by telling us that they didn't really mean those things, and then he’ll tell us what they really meant, or at least why what they said doesn't apply to him. No amount of reason will budge him, because, as I said before, he’s a fundamentalist, a True Believer who thinks his own ideas are of towering, God-mandated Importance. "The vision I have," he says, "is too big for Anthony." 

"The vision I have . . ." That should be a warning sign for Catholics. We are not followers of cults of personality.

I hold no hope for Robert Sungenis to change (though my wife, more charitably, does. That's why I love her!). A simple Google search of his name shows that he has been rebutted many times by qualified individuals, both about geocentrism and about his conspiracy theories about the Jews, the moon landing, and others. But Sungenis has shown the immutability of mind that he denies to God.

No, he won't change. But I do hope that anyone who has heard of him or his theories and Googles him comes across this page. He can block the Wayback Machine from showing the archive of his site and his wacky conspiracy theories, but he can’t shut down this site. This post will remain up as a destination for the curious, so they can quickly see:

1. The Catholic Church does not hold that geocentrism is doctrine or a matter of faith at all.
2. Robert Sungenis is not an authority on the Catholic faith: he disagrees with Augustine, Aquinas, and even popes in his formulations of what belongs to the substance of faith, and even about the nature of God. He will not heed correction because he believes God told him to preach geocentrism, and that he will be at the tip of a "divine revolution" that will occur once the world is finally convinced that geocentrism is true. To those who disagree, he says "The vision I have is too big" for them.
3. Robert Sungenis is not a scientific authority. He has a mail-order degree, and his ideas are rejected by reputable scientists. He attributes the scientific consensus against his ideas to malice and conspiracy. He believes NASA creates crop circles “in order to control people.” He is in general just not a very rational man. This is because:
4. Robert Sungenis is a textbook example of a man driven by fundamentalist ideology, forcing everything, from science to the writings of the Fathers and Doctors and popes, to conform to his pre-held ideas. Far from holding Augustine and Aquinas’ "two books" approach to faith and reason, he subsumes reason to his pre-existing rigid adherence on a matter of cosmology which he thinks is integral to faith and salvation. He’s the Catholic equivalent of an evangelical preacher thumping his bible and saying, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it!"