Reasons to Believe Quotes

“the laws of God, like the law of gravity, do not depend upon how I feel about them.”
― Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith

“If God welcomed newborns into Israel by means of ritual circumcision for two thousand years, why would He suddenly close the kingdom to babies because they could not understand ritual baptism?”
― Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith

“the groundbreakers in many sciences were devout believers. Witness the accomplishments of Nicolaus Copernicus (a priest) in astronomy, Blaise Pascal (a lay apologist) in mathematics, Gregor Mendel (a monk) in genetics, Louis Pasteur in biology, Antoine Lavoisier in chemistry, John von Neumann in computer science, and Enrico Fermi and Erwin Schrodinger in physics. That’s a short list, and it includes only Roman Catholics; a long list could continue for pages. A roster that included other believers—Protestants, Jews, and unconventional theists like Albert Einstein, Fred Hoyle, and Paul Davies—could fill a book.”
― Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith

“A scientist must put faith in the experimental data reported by other scientists, and in the institutions that sponsored those scientists, and in the standards by which those scientists received their credentials. A scientist must put faith in the authority of the journals that publish the results of various studies. Finally, but perhaps most fundamentally, a scientist must trust that empirical reality is indeed perceptible and measurable, and that the laws of cause and effect will apply universally. No scientific endeavor can proceed if the experimenter subjects every phenomenon to radical doubt, disqualifying his own observations as well as those of his peers. Polanyi concluded that science proceeds from a trust that is “fiduciary”—a word that derives from the Latin root meaning “faith-based.” Such faith is well placed and well founded, and it enables science to proceed apace; but, nonetheless, it is a species of faith, not an absolutely certain knowledge. “We must now recognize belief once more as the source of all knowledge,…” Polanyi said. “No intelligence, however critical or original, can operate outside such a fiduciary framework.” Secularism’s attempts to replace the authority of religion with a supposed “authority of experience and reason” has proven, in Polanyi’s words, “farcically inadequate”
― Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith

“If human beings had really tried to invent a god, we would never have invented the God of Christianity. He’s just too terrifying. Our God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-holy, and omnipresent. There’s no place to run and hide from Him, no place where we might secretly indulge a favorite vice. We can’t even retreat into the dark corners of our minds to fantasize about that vice without God knowing it right away.”
― Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith

“Para los laicistas”
― Scott Hahn, La fe es razonable: Cómo comprender, explicar y defender la fe católica (Religión. Fuera de Colección)

“Aprendí a examinar cada estado de ánimo, a analizar mis sentimientos cuando parecen ir contra la recta razón; y a analizar mis intuiciones contrarias al legado doctrinal de las iglesias cristianas en materia de fe bíblica. Ese”
― Scott Hahn, La fe es razonable: Cómo comprender, explicar y defender la fe católica (Religión. Fuera de Colección)

“here I was, eager for Learning and intellectual companionship—maybe even a disputation or two.”
― Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith