Philosophy is easier than Daily News Discernment.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how strange this moment in history really is. We live in an age with more information than any generation before us, yet it has become increasingly difficult to say, with confidence, what actually happened
yesterday.
That may sound dramatic, but sit with it for a moment.
It is genuinely easier for me to answer questions like Does God exist?, Is there objective truth?, or What is the purpose of human life? than it is for me to say whether a headline I read this morning is true and this fact has come about in a world
where everyone has a camera in their pocket!! This should concern us deeply…or maybe it shouldn’t?!
The big philosophical questions humanity has wrestled with for thousands of years are hard, but they are stable and I believe solvable. The arguments don’t change every twelve hours. Plato hasn’t updated his position. Aquinas doesn’t issue retractions. Christ doesn’t need fact-checkers. You can study
these questions deeply, compare schools of thought, trace arguments to their foundations, and arrive at conclusions that remain coherent over time.
Daily news, on the other hand, is built on sand. Actually sand seems to strong, maybe it is just built on nothing and continues to fall deeper into an abyss of some sort.
By the time you
finish reading one article, another appears contradicting it. Sources are unnamed. Incentives are hidden. Algorithms reward outrage, not accuracy. Retractions quietly replace certainty, and yesterday’s “misinformation” becomes today’s accepted truth. THINK: Covid lab leak, President Biden Mental stability, President Trumps alleged collusion with Russia, contradicting news about the Ukraine-Russia war, odd headlines and agendas surrounding the war in Gaza and so on and so forth. And yet we’re
expected to speak confidently, even morally, about events we have no direct access to and no reliable way to verify.
What makes this worse is that we are subtly trained to reverse the proper order of things. We are encouraged to hold strong, emotional convictions about fleeting political stories while remaining agnostic or dismissive about the deepest questions of existence. We speak in absolutes
about wars, elections, and scandals, but shrug our shoulders at God, truth, and morality.
That inversion is not accidental.
Big philosophical truths demand humility, patience, and submission to reality. Daily news demands reaction. One forms the soul; the other feeds the passions. One draws you toward wisdom; the other pulls you into
tribalism.
This doesn’t mean we should ignore the world around us or pretend current events don’t matter. But it does mean we should be far more cautious about the confidence with which we speak. If the smartest people in the room with access to intelligence briefings, raw data, and years of expertise still disagree on what’s happening, what makes me think my social media feed has granted me clarity?
Contrast that with philosophy and theology. While disagreement exists, there is at least an acknowledgment of limits. The greatest minds in history often speak with restraint. They argue carefully. They qualify their claims. They admit mystery. In modern media, mystery is intolerable. Everything must be explained immediately, preferably with a villain attached.
Ironically, this makes the ancient questions easier to answer. Not because they are simple, but because they are honest. They admit complexity. They allow for silence. They don’t pretend that proximity to information equals understanding.
Why are we in this predicament? Two reasons really.
- Money is power in Satan’s world and there
is about half a trillion dollars swirling around the news industry just in the USA alone. This includes podcasting, blogging, cable news, and all forms of mainstream news media. That half a trillion is not dedicated to clear and honest reporting, it is dedicated to attention grabbing consumerism. Which leads to point number two.
- When we do not pursue a life of virtue, we become slaves to our passions and
therefore slaves to consumerism. That half a trillion dollars preys on our passions so it can grow each and every day.
I wrote and continue to rewrite the below essay on how I came to my belief in Jesus Christ and the Sacraments of Holy Mother Church. The more I go back to this essay the more I realize I am far more convinced of my Faith then I am of any news story I read or hear.
Catholicism or nothing…
Even from extreme skepticism, we can still know that existence exists. Even if we were living in a simulation, existence itself would remain undeniable.
If existence exists, then
the essence of existence must also exist. Light cannot exist unless the essence of light exists; blue cannot exist unless the essence of blue exists. The essence of something is that thing fully actualized. Therefore, the essence of existence is pure actuality, meaning it has no potentiality and nothing that could be added to it.
The Pure actuality of the essence of existence must possess all
knowledge and all power. If it lacked either, it would not be pure actuality and would not be the essence of existence. Since existence is undeniable, pure actuality must exist. Something that is all-knowing and all-powerful must also be all-good, because it would never choose anything that is not good. Human beings act against the good only because we lack knowledge or the strength of will. Pure actuality has no such deficiencies.
Therefore, anything that exists must have been allowed to exist because it is for the good. An all-knowing, all-powerful essence would recognize anything not good and would have the power to prevent it.
Philosophers call this pure actuality Esse. Theists call it God, which aligns perfectly with the God described in the
Bible.
Many think the existence of evil contradicts this conclusion, but this misunderstanding comes from confusing “the good” with “the easy” or “the safe.” The true good is love, specifically selfless love. We know this instinctually and science in some ways prove it out since the greatest factors for joy in a human life are close relationships, meaning/purpose, and religious faith according to the
gold standard happiness study conducted by Harvard. Love must be freely chosen, which requires free will, and free will requires the possibility of choosing the opposite of love. Thus, evil is a necessary option, not because evil is good, but because the ability to choose it is required for genuine goodness. Forced love or forced goodness is nothing and meaningless thus voiding the value of creation. We are either God’s playthings or we are his children that were created because we possess some
good. Since God is pure actuality and needs nothing, especially playthings, then the latter option is the correct one.
God allows evil so that we may freely choose love, the highest good. Natural disasters, diseases, and moral evils flow from the corruption humanity introduced into creation. God had to allow us this choice; without it, creation would not be good.
If God desires our good, He would want to teach us to be good. He would therefore reveal Himself through a prevalent and evangelistic way of life or religion. He could not reveal Himself in full to everyone, since His perfect presence would overwhelm our fallen nature. So, we must look for a widely accessible, missionary religion through which God communicates.
Only
five real options could even potentially fit the criteria: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.
Buddhism does not affirm a creator God, views creation as something to escape and not a good, is not particularly evangelistic, and sees Jesus as a possible path to end goals. It can be dismissed.
Hinduism affirms religious
pluralism stating all religions are a path to the same ultimate reality but most other religions are so at odds with each other that this idea of religious pluralism seems nonsensical. Also, Hinduism is not prevalent or evangelistic beyond a certain geographical area, It can also be dismissed.
Islam is evangelistic and widespread, but it contains contradictions, especially the Islamic dilemma in which the Quran affirms the
authority of the Bible while the Bible contradicts Islamic doctrine. Thus, Islam cannot be true.
Judaism, though foundational, is not evangelistic and does not seek converts, so it does not fit the criteria. Judaism no longer has the prevalence throughout the world to influence the world in moral ways like it did in the Old Testament.
Christianity remains. Jesus is
affirmed as a great prophet or teacher by all the other systems, and Christianity is both widespread and evangelistic despite persecution. Christianity clearly meets the criteria.
The remaining question is which version of Christianity is true. If Jesus is who He says He is, and if He promised that the “gates of hell will not prevail” against His Church (Matthew 16:18), then the investigation must
begin with the first Christian Church: The Catholic Church.
If the Catholic Church is not the true Church, then Jesus either failed to protect His Church or spoke so obscurely that humanity has no reliable way to discern His intent. In that case, determining the correct form of Christianity becomes impossible.
The essence-of-existence argument proves a good God. A good God would establish a relationship with humanity, and that relationship would appear through a widespread and evangelistic means. Christianity alone satisfies this. And among Christian traditions, the one that must be correct is the original one, or else none are correct, leaving each person to interpret Scripture alone among countless conflicting voices.
If the choice is between the Church established by Christ, which has preserved its original teachings, or relying on my own interpretation of the Bible, I choose the former. To believe that the first 1,500 years of Christianity misunderstood Christ, but that modern interpreters have finally discovered the truth, is an extraordinary and arrogant claim.
Catholicism must be true, or truth is indiscernible.
