The Building of a Civilization of Love

The third area of commitment that comes with love is that of daily life with its multiple relationships. I am particularly referring to family, studies, work and free time. Dear young friends, cultivate your talents, not only to obtain a social position, but also to help others to “grow”. Develop your capacities, not only in order to become more “competitive” and “productive”, but to be “witnesses of charity”. In addition to your professional training, also make an effort to acquire religious knowledge that will help you to carry out your mission in a responsible way. In particular, I invite you to carefully study the social doctrine of the Church so that its principles may inspire and guide your action in the world. May the Holy Spirit make you creative in charity, persevering in your commitments, and brave in your initiatives, so that you will be able to offer your contribution to the building up of the “civilisation of love”. The horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world!

- Pope Benedict XVI, WYD 2007 MESSAGE, Growing in love each day


3:12. Not as though I had already attained, or were already perfect: but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, wherein I am also apprehended by Christ Jesus.
3:13. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. But one thing I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and stretching forth myself to those that are before,
3:14. I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus.


-St. Paul to Philippians

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

What is God? What is Creation?

After watching the first Curiosity show on Discovery Channel last weekend, I was reminded on this question and how it is generally assumed that everyone share the same understanding of the answer to it.
Even Physicist Stephen Hawking does not provide a background to 'God' before dismissing Him as non-existant. I believe that, with his brilliant mind, if he would look into 'God' nearly as much as he looks into Physics, he would accomplish the promise of this quote:

Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. - John Paul II
In the first Curiosity documentary titled: Did God Create the Universe? Hawking does a good job of purifying religion from superstition. This is because the science he presents is reasonable. Without realizing it, he did a great favor to religion by comfirming the fact that God is not native of Time. Unfortunately, he does not seem to be aware that some religions are already aware of that. He clearly did not do even a little research of 'God' beyond what we may call the street understanding of 'God'.

Here is the last part of the presentation which includes how Hawking concludes that God does not exist.





Fortunately, I know people who probably think about God perhaps as much as Hawking thinks about Physics, so my faith was not shaken. It was not shaken because I have gone through those arguments before, but also seen video clips like this one:



I was actually glad about the arguments Hawking used because they do reject the common false notion of God and by doing so, they support the true notion of what God is. Somehow, I have a feeling that Hawking my be surprised by finding God since the truth always lead to God and as much as he sees and follow what is true, he get closer and closer to God. Of course this means farther and farther from the false notions of God which he is considering the notion of God...

To be more fair, I will also share Fr. Barron comment on Creation. It is not a particular response to Science, but can give hints about the attitude we should have in regard to God/Creation.



This will be all, even though I saw some other interesting youtube clips on Catholic view on Creation.







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