The Problem
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle points out a strange fact about humans: we often know what is right, and desire to do what is right, and then don’t. We tend to do the opposite – to revel in the things that are worst for us, to stop even trying to do good, and to dance toward our own demise. In other words: something’s wrong here. Some cog in the human machine doesn’t turn the way it’s supposed to.
We see the results everywhere: war, injustice, poverty, crime, hatred, greed, objectification. How ought we respond to this strange predicament? What are we supposed to do about all the evil out there when we can hardly control ourselves?
Hope
Hope is looking forward to something with confidence. A man’s honest answer to the question “what do you hope for?” tells you nearly everything about him.
Considering our strange predicament, what should we hope for? Some would say nothing; life is a random cosmic occurrence, brutal and short, and that’s all there is to it. Some would say the best we can do is enjoy it while we’re here. Others say our problem is the body itself, and that we must escape into a spiritual realm; still others, that we should escape the cycle of rebirth, or learn to live in harmony with it. But do any of these inspire confidence? Where should we dare to place our hope?
Sanity
Sanity is acting rationally in response to reality. This requires two things: that what we believe about reality is true, and that we act accordingly. If an atheist lives as if there is no God, but there is, he is not acting as a sane person ought. If a monk lives as if there is a God, but there isn’t, neither is he. What we believe existence is all about is no trivial matter; it concerns the whole of life, not just a portion. And there’s no sitting it out – not choosing is a choice.
You may be under the impression that “the answer” can’t be known with any confidence, and that our hope rests on a cosmic roulette of birthplace and upbringing. It doesn’t. Using careful reasoning and well-established evidence, we can reach a confident answer in three steps: that God exists, that He revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, and that Christ founded the Catholic Church. You don’t have to take my word for any of them. Each step is laid out in full on this site, with its strongest objections and my answers to them. Here is the short version.
Step One: God
Everything we encounter depends on something else. A seed depends on its cells, molecules, and atoms to exist at all; on the order of nature to grow into a tree; on sun and rain to change it. But if everything depended on something else, nothing could exist, cohere, or act. Plug a television into a power strip, that strip into another, and so on forever – the television never turns on. Somewhere there must be a source that has power of itself.
So reality must rest on something that exists without condition: not created, but uncreated; not one more thing in the chain, but the ground of the whole chain. Such a being must be one, unchanging, immaterial, and eternal; and, as the argument shows, a mind – infinitely knowing, powerful, and good. This we call God. His name – “I AM” – describes His nature (Ex. 3:14). God is not the biggest, strongest character in the story, like Zeus; He is like Homer, the author, present to every word.
The full argument, a second and independent line of evidence from human consciousness, and answers to the strongest objections – including the problem of evil – are in the God section.
Step Two: Christ
If God made us with a thirst for Him, we should expect Him to make Himself known. And history’s attempts to find God on our own – human sacrifice, ritual cruelty, gods made in our image – show how badly we need Him to. We cannot find God; if we are to receive Him, He must find us.
“I am the way and the truth and the life.” No teacher had ever spoken as Jesus of Nazareth did. Others claimed to know the way; He claimed to be the way. Others claimed to speak for God; He claimed to be God: “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I AM” (Jn. 8:58).
His followers staked their lives on His resurrection. Most scholars accept that Peter, Paul, and James – witnesses to these events, not merely believers – died for the Gospel, and none of them gained wealth, status, or power by it. They reported meeting the risen Jesus together, repeatedly, eating and drinking with Him. Even skeptical scholars like Bart Ehrman date the Gospels within living memory of Jesus, and Paul’s letters earlier still. Paul could tell his readers that hundreds had seen the risen Christ, most of whom were still alive to be asked (1 Cor. 15).
And this was not an event without context. The Jewish scriptures foretold a Messiah who would suffer for the sins of many (Is. 53), who would bear divine titles (Is. 9), and who would come and be killed while the Second Temple still stood (Dn. 9). Jesus fulfills all three. The full case – why we should expect revelation, the evidence for the resurrection, how Jesus completes Israel’s story, how the Trinity is coherent, and why the Quran’s rival claim fails – is in the Christ section.
Step Three: The Church
Christ came to save us from the very problem Aristotle described: we are foolish, dulled, and easily led astray. Would a wise lawgiver, seeing such a people, remedy their confusion by making each of them his own judge of the law? Certainly not. So Christ appointed the Apostles and their successors as His judges on earth, giving them authority – “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven” (Matt. 18) – and the promise of His Spirit to “abide forever” and “teach [them] all things” (John 14).
But the Apostles’ successors have divided, and every divided body claims to be right. A sport needs a referee: without one, no player can call another out, and every dispute ends in a stalemate. Christ provided one. He named Simon “Peter” – Rock – and said, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 16:18-19). The early Church understood Peter’s see, Rome, to carry that role. St. Jerome wrote to the Pope, “I follow no leader but Christ and join in communion with none but the chair of Peter.” The Council of Sardica made Rome a court of last appeal, and the Third Council of Constantinople received Pope Agatho’s letter “as by the Chief of the Apostles.”
Why the Bible alone cannot serve as that referee, and why the Pope must, is laid out in the Church section.
Read On
Atheism leaves reality without an explanation. Christianity alone rests on a public, evidenced historical event. And among Christians, the Catholic Church alone offers a visible, final authority to settle what Christ taught: ensure your faith is Rome’s faith, and you are not left to follow your own musings wherever they lead.
I doubt that many who started reading this page as atheists consider themselves Catholic converts by this sentence. My hope is that I’ve intrigued you and challenged you, and presented a view of reality which – if strange – is plausible enough to examine. The God of Catholicism is strange. He does not cater to our appetites, but relentlessly points us to the arduous: obedience instead of self-reliance, grace instead of self-justification, discipline instead of self-indulgence. These are hard teachings. When many of Christ’s own disciples heard them, they turned back. “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:60-68).
Start with God. If you find this work valuable, the best way to show it is to pass it along to friends and family, or to pick up some of my merchandise (I make no profit; it exists to spread the word).
You may not agree with all of my ideas, but I think you’ll leave here a little more hopeful, and a little more sane.