QUOTATION: Scientism

Scientism is not discoverable through the scientific method. Where did you empirically verify and test through experimentation that only scientific knowledge is valuable? Scientism is a philosophical position and therefore self-refuting.

--Robert Barron, Speech, Catholic Convocation, Orlando FL, July 4^th, 2017.

QUOTATION: Nominalism

If, as the nominalist says, 'all chairs are different,' how can he call them all 'chairs'?

--G. K. Chesterton.

QUOTATION: What Christ Offers

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Philosophers

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.

Bertha: What's that?

Socrates: Philosophy.

Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here.

Socrates: Where are they?

Bertha: In the philosophy department.

Socrates: Philosophy is not a department.

Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.

Socrates: Are they dangerous?

Bertha: Of course not.

Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers.


--Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Jesus: History's Greatest Questioner Confronts the Claims of Christ

QUOTATION: Philosophy

You can’t choose between philosophy and no-philosophy, only between good philosophy and bad philosophy.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: The Philosophical Foundations of Faith

Let me then, to avoid further ambiguity, give a list of certain leading doctrines which no Catholic, upon a moments reflection, could accept on the authority of the Church and on that ground alone.

(i.) The existence of God.

(ii.) The fact that he has made a revelation to the world in Jesus Christ.

(iii.) The Life (in its broad outlines), the Death, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

(iv.) The fact that our Lord founded a Church.

(v.) The fact that he bequeathed to that Church his own teaching office, with the guarantee (naturally) that it should not err in teaching.

(vi.) The consequent intellectual duty of believing what the Church believes.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Philosophy

People will tell you that theories don't matter and that logic and philosophy aren't practical. Don't you believe them. Reason is from God, and when things are unreasonable there is something the matter.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Salvation

It did not please God to save his people through dialectic.

--St. Ambrose, De fide

QUOTATION: Philosophy and Miracles

Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

--C.S. Lewis, Miracles

QUOTATION: Philosophy, Bible Scholarship and the Supernatural

In a popular commentary on the Bible you will find a discussion on the date at which the Fourth Gospel was written. The author says it must have been written after the execution of St. Peter, because, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ is represented as predicting the execution of St. Peter. ‘A book’, thinks the author, ‘cannot be written before events which it refers to’. Of course, it cannot—unless real predictions ever occur. If they do, then this argument for the date is in ruins. And the author has not discussed at all whether real predictions are possible. He takes it for granted (perhaps unconsciously) that they are not. Perhaps he is right: but if he is: but if he is, he has not discovered this principle by historical inquiry. He has brought his disbelief in predictions to his historical work, so to speak, ready made. Unless he had done so his historical conclusion about the date of the Fourth Gospel could not have been reached at all. His work is therefore quite useless to a person who wants to know whether predictions occur. The author gets to work only after he has already answered that question in the negative, and on the grounds which he never communicates to us.

--C.S. Lewis, Miracles