The Rant Institute

I just watched a clip on Word On Fire  with Fr. Robert Barron. Fr. Barron is an affable, intelligent Catholic priest who follows his vocation perhaps to a fault, and all to convince the world (or maybe just himself) that science cannot prove, nor should it ever try to prove, that God does not exist. The problem, as Barron sees it, is that science cannot find God because God is not a scientific being. Science can only illuminate for us  the what, while the "why" is reserved as the playground of Philosophy and Religion. There are definable differences, obviously, between science, philosophy, and religion. Science is the means by which we try to know and understand what our universe, and our reality, actually is. Philosophy and Religion, on the other hand, are attempts to understand what it all means. In other words, philosophy and religion interpret what science discovers. The difference between philosophy ...

"How can anyone defend that guy?" I was asked today while watching the news about the Colorado theater shooter, James Holmes. "It's obvious he's guilty," they continued, "and defending him is like defending pure evil." The question was not directed at defending what Holmes did in the theater, which by any standard is indefensible, but toward defense attorneys who defend "obviously" guilty people in a courtroom. Since starting law school a few years ago I often encounter this question, buzzing around like a fly that can't quite decide where or if to land. It's a good question to think about. How can  a person defend someone they know is guilty of a horrible crime? And why would they want to?  This time, that question seemed to drop like a pail into a well.  And today, if for no other reason than to justify my school loans, I felt the need to try to reel up some kind of an answer. Why, I wondered, did John Ada...

  Below is my response to Jamie Glazov's 2007 article "Forced Clerical Celibacy Violates Central Christian Tenet"  to show how Glazov deliberately misrepresented the work of Michael Rose to serve his own ends. Glazov's article can be found here: http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=25256 May 15, 2007 I just finished reading "Forced Clerical Celibacy Violates Central Christian Tenet" by Jamie Glazov (FrontPageMagazine.com | May 30, 2002) in which Mr. Glazov so distorts the ideas of Michael Rose and clerical celibacy that one wonders if by calling himself a Catholic Mr. Glazov intends to call himself a cannibal.    In his article, Glazov uses  the book Goodbye, Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations from the Priesthood by Michael Rose, to support his claim that clerical celibacy fosters “abnormal sexual behavior.”  In so doing, Glazov completely misrepresents what Rose argues i...

The "argument from change" for the existence of God is an argument put forward by theists for whom "faith" in God is evidently not enough. It is an argument, in other words, less concerned with converting the fallen than with comforting the faithful. Ultimately, it is an argument that worships a God born from a trinity of assumptions in the shape of a Russian matryoshka doll. Those assumptions can be thought of as the Son, the Father, and the Holy Ghost.     The first assumption is "the Holy Ghost," for it is built on the idea that the law of “cause and effect” is necessarily a finite and linear process. In other words, it assumes “cause and effect” has an origin instead of a genealogy. The second assumption is "the Son," because, as a derivative of the first assumption, it assumes that any “cause and effect” model necessarily requires a belief in a “first cause" to kick start the universe. Finally, the last assumption is that an...

Is the sin of Adam greater than the salvation of Christ? I didn't used to think so, but today I'm not so sure. If Christ died for our sins, than why do people die? Adam and Eve, according to one interpretation of the Bible story of Genesis, were supposedly immortal. Then they ate a bad apple and spoiled the whole apple cart of humanity forever. Our mortality is therefore the result of humanity's original parents trick-or-treating at the Devil's tree house, and suffering the mortal cavity that comes from eating forbidden fruit. The stain of 'original sin' is thus our human birthright and proof of how destructive a sweet tooth can really be. Christ, however, came to undo our sinful sugar addictions by dying for all the sweetness of sins everywhere. At least, that's what I thought. This lead me to wonder if man's power to sin was somehow greater than God's power to forgive. All the Christians I asked replied, "of course not." ...

Friday, July 20th, 2012, was the day that changed the movie going experience forever. Just after midnight, in Aurora, Colorado, at the premiere of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises , James Holmes opened fire in a crowded theater killing at least 12 people and wounding many others.  The horror that was poured out that night in the shape of a gunman's bullets, would eventually ricochet around the internet in one digital brow of woe, through the hollowed lives of the families and friends of the victims, in a resounding knell of why. Why? Why do people do such things? Why Columbine? Why 9/11? Why do such things keep happening? Why? The question is sometimes aimed less at understanding the event and more at reassuring ourselves. It offers the comfort of a prayer in the simplicity of a chant. It sutures a wound with its needle and thread. While it asks heaven for an answer, it opens hell with it...