- Feb 5, 2002
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A certain Jesuit I once knew liked to write the following syllogism on the board on the first day of his introduction to Catholic theology course:
“I want to have sex with my girlfriend. The Church says I can’t. Therefore, there is no God.”
Besides grabbing the attention of his college students, forced as they were to take theology with an old celibate priest, the syllogism got to the heart of university students’ resistance to faith. God does not exist, they decided, because if he did, he would not allow them to do what they wanted.
When I ask my own introduction to theology students — many of whom attended 13 years of Catholic school before coming to college — whether there is such a thing as religious or moral truth, they say no; truth, they insist, is knowable in the areas of math and science, but religion and morality are matters of subjective opinion.
To be clear, the majority of students do not claim, as Immanuel Kant did, that moral and religious truths exist but are merely inaccessible to human reason.
They claim that religious and moral truths do not exist outside of one’s subjective invention of them. Indeed, students regularly go so far as to say that the afterlife will be whatever one wants it to be: Christians can expect Jesus, Muslims can expect Allah, Buddhists can expect nirvana and materialists can expect to rot in the ground and experience nothing.
“What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me,” they pronounce. The fact that they themselves are advancing a universal truth claim by saying that there is no truth escapes them.
Continued below.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
“I want to have sex with my girlfriend. The Church says I can’t. Therefore, there is no God.”
Besides grabbing the attention of his college students, forced as they were to take theology with an old celibate priest, the syllogism got to the heart of university students’ resistance to faith. God does not exist, they decided, because if he did, he would not allow them to do what they wanted.
When I ask my own introduction to theology students — many of whom attended 13 years of Catholic school before coming to college — whether there is such a thing as religious or moral truth, they say no; truth, they insist, is knowable in the areas of math and science, but religion and morality are matters of subjective opinion.
To be clear, the majority of students do not claim, as Immanuel Kant did, that moral and religious truths exist but are merely inaccessible to human reason.
They claim that religious and moral truths do not exist outside of one’s subjective invention of them. Indeed, students regularly go so far as to say that the afterlife will be whatever one wants it to be: Christians can expect Jesus, Muslims can expect Allah, Buddhists can expect nirvana and materialists can expect to rot in the ground and experience nothing.
“What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me,” they pronounce. The fact that they themselves are advancing a universal truth claim by saying that there is no truth escapes them.
The demands of truth
Continued below.
Freedom and truth: Teaching theology in a relativistic age
Many college students reject objective moral truth for personal will, but Catholic educators can help reconnect truth with authentic freedom.
www.oursundayvisitor.com
