- Feb 5, 2002
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For the past few years, I’ve been co-hosting the FORMED Book Club with Father Fessio and Vivian Dudro of Ignatius Press. Each week, we record a half-hour discussion on whatever book we happen to have selected to read. This past week we commenced the discussion of a new book, which is entitled Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain Their Turn to Catholicism. The first essay, “The God of a Philosopher” by Edward Feser, was so well-reasoned and, what is more, so well-written, that I feel the compulsion to share it with others.
“It is sometimes said that teaching something to others is the best way to learn it yourself.” Thus Professor Feser begins. He then explains, at least eventually, how trying to be fair to the classic philosophical arguments for the existence of God in order to teach them well, led to his taking them seriously himself. “Making the explanation as convincing as I could for pedagogical purposes, I inadvertently converted myself.”
Before he gets to this part of his story, however, he explains how he lost his faith and became an atheist.
Raised as a Catholic, he began to lose his faith because of the relativism and modernism of the education he received at a “Catholic” high school where the “spirit of Vatican II” liberalism was the rule:
Continued below.
Reason to Believe ~ The Imaginative Conservative
“It is sometimes said that teaching something to others is the best way to learn it yourself.” Thus Professor Feser begins. He then explains, at least eventually, how trying to be fair to the classic philosophical arguments for the existence of God in order to teach them well, led to his taking them seriously himself. “Making the explanation as convincing as I could for pedagogical purposes, I inadvertently converted myself.”
Before he gets to this part of his story, however, he explains how he lost his faith and became an atheist.
Raised as a Catholic, he began to lose his faith because of the relativism and modernism of the education he received at a “Catholic” high school where the “spirit of Vatican II” liberalism was the rule:
Continued below.
Reason to Believe ~ The Imaginative Conservative
