In this episode of the Dr. Karlo podcast, we explore arguments for God’s existence, the problem of evil, divine simplicity, hell, providence, and the role of miracles in Christian apologetics.
TRANSCRIPT:
Matthew:
Hi everyone. So today I have the pleasure of receiving Carlo Broussard on my channel, who is a Catholic apologist for Catholic Answers. For many years now, he has been devoting his life, his career, to defending the Catholic faith. He has a PhD in philosophy and he has dedicated a lot of his many books to defending the faith against Protestantism, atheism, skeptics. And so today I have the pleasure of interviewing him on many apologetics questions. Also, you can check out his channel, his new channel, Karlo Broussard on YouTube. You can find him easily, and he is going to have one of the best apologetic channels that is on YouTube, in my opinion. So please go check it out and welcome to the show, Karlo.
Dr. Karlo:
Well, Matthew, that’s some pretty high praise man. I appreciate that.
Matthew:
So no problem. Can you tell us about where you come from, how did you start doing apologetics? What got you interested in that domain, and yeah, just a bit of your background.
Dr. Karlo:
Sure. Yeah, so I’m from southern Louisiana. I’m a Cajun boy from southwest Louisiana. Grew up pursuing a musical career in southern Louisiana, playing Cajun music, French Cajun music. I was the accordion player, had my own band from the time I was 13 all the way to 20, recorded a couple of albums, but when I was 20, well, I decided to give up that music career or that pursuit of the music career and devote my life to studying theology, philosophy and apologetics. And the reason for that, Matthew, was because my heart was captured by the Lord through Apologetics, primarily through the ministry of my colleague, now colleague, and good friend Tim Staples. So when I was about 17 and a half or so, I’d heard his conversion story from being anti-Catholic to one of the nation’s leading Catholic evangelists and apologists, and by an invasion of grace that captured my heart and captured my mind.
And so I started informally studying apologetics, which was interesting because I was not an intellectual kid. The intellectual formation knowledge and all of that was just not on my radar, but for some reason apologetics grabbed me. And so I started studying and developed a desire to want to do what Tim Staples was doing. So he became my mentor, dragged me along the rope, so to speak, and gave me direction. And eventually 10 and a half years ago, brought me on at Catholic Answers to be a full-time apologist after 15 years of formation, both informally and informally getting my degrees in theology and philosophy. And so I’ve been working for Catholic Answers now as a full-time staff, apologist and speaker for 10 and a half years. Eventually got my doctorate in philosophy, as you said. And so I’ve just been living the dream, my friend.
Matthew:
Well, that’s nice to hear. What would you say is your favorite domain of apologetics? Because we all know that apologetics is very wide. You could speak about the existence of God, the historical reliability of the gospels, the case for the divinity, the resurrection of Christ, answering Islam, answering Protestants, answering Jews and bioethics, lots of domains where you have to defend the faith and the moral of the Catholic church. So what would you say is your favorite domain of all these possibilities?
Dr. Karlo:
Yeah, I think my favorite is theistic apologetics in dealing with and thinking through the metaphysical arguments for God’s existence. That’s what I did my dissertation on, or at least related to that. I did it on divine immutability and the variability of creation. So I really enjoy the rigor of metaphysical thought and dealing with arguments for God’s existence as well as the ancillary issues, theistic apologetics such as the problem of evil, thinking through those issues. Problem of divineness, I also really enjoy natural law apologetics and so ethical apologetics or moral apologetics. And in thinking through those issues of grounding morality and fundamental moral principles that derived or derived from our human nature and looking to nature our human nature as the measure for assessing what is good or bad for us and thereby assessing what is morally good or bad for us, I really enjoy those issues. Now at the same time, the majority of my work at Catholic Answers deals with the Catholic Protestant arena of conversations, and I really enjoy those conversations as well. And so I mean maybe perhaps my intellect is delighted more with the theistic apologetics just because of the philosophical nature of that discussion. But I really do enjoy and receive great satisfaction in having those conversations about the Catholic Protestant distinctives.
Matthew:
That’s interesting. I would say that I share a similar approach to aps too. Intellectually, I’m more interested in theistic argumentations and just classical philosophy more than Catholic Protestant debates. I do it because people ask me the questions, so I also have to get into these domains. But what would motivate me more would be to study in depth philosophy, especially in ethics, natural theology, things like that. So I think we share this point in common.
Dr. Karlo:
And Matthew, with regard to that, one of the things I’ve been thinking about, and I try to do at least subtly so far, but maybe perhaps more explicitly as I move forward in my career, is to try and synthesize those two, to try and bring my philosophical training to bear on the Catholic Protestant distinctives and conversations. Because one of the things I’ve come to realize in my training as an apologist is that many problems that arise in the minds of our Protestant friends is due to a lack of proper philosophical insight and training. And then once the underlying philosophical issues are dealt with and resolved, then the Protestant problems or hangups with Catholic theology dissolve as well. And so that’s one thing that I have an intention to try and develop more in my work as a Catholic cancers apologist in the near future. And so it’s a beautiful thing to kind of see how that philosophy and the theology or wedded together, and you can’t, your theology will only be as good as your philosophy.
Matthew:
Sure, yeah, I agree with that, especially when it comes to debating central themes like sola scriptura. Sometimes there’s just a lack of logic and fallacious arguments when you look at Protestants writing, and it’s important to bring these basic rules of logic and philosophy into the apologetic debate. So that’s very helpful. What would you say for going back to theistic apologetics, what is your favorite argument for the existence of God and what do you think is the strongest one intellectually? If you could summarize it here, explain it to the audience.
Dr. Karlo:
Yeah. I think the strongest is aquinas’s argument in the Deante on being in essence, because once the mind is able to grasp first and foremost essay as Aquinas puts it in Latin, which is just the act of being the act of existence, once the mind is able to grasp that and then subsequently see that a particular thing of our experience within this created world like the tree outside does not have that being or act of existence in virtue of its own nature, it doesn’t have it in virtue of what it is as a tree. Once the mine is able to grasp that and then understand and have the insight that if the tree doesn’t have that act of existence that in virtue of which it is something rather than nothing in virtue of its own essence or nature, then that act of existence must be given to it by a cause outside of itself.
And once the mind is able to have that insight that if essay is not had in virtue of a thing’s essence, it must be caused by something outside of itself, then you’re off to the races in logic in order to see the necessity of there being a cause that’s going to have that essay or act existence in virtue of its own essence to be a source from which the essay can be derived for. If all things are such that they do not have that active existence in virtue of their own essence or nature, then no thing has essay, in which case there would be nothing, but there is something therefore it follows that there must be something that has essay or the act of existence in virtue of its own essence or nature. And that’s what we would call God. Because once you have being itself or existence itself, then you’re able to dece all of the various divine attributes that would lead us to the conclusion this is God. And so obviously that’s a summary and each of those premises would have to be justified. But I do think that’s the strongest and most airtight argument there is not only because of the validity or the argument leads to the true conclusion, but also because I think it dodges all of the various objections and challenges that many atheists will pose to us as theists because we’re dealing with what is most fundamental of all things. They’re very active existence itself.
Matthew:
And so what do you think of the modern approach of some apologists, especially in Protestant circles, arguing from natural sciences to God’s existence? So fine tuning type arguments or scientific versions of the Columnal. I know on your YouTube channel you’ve once made a video defending the board good in theorem, so you seem to be open to defending some scientifical arguments that can be used in philosophy for the existence of God. So do you think that the mistic approach and that the approach from natural sciences are complimentary in a way and they can both be used in apologetics, or should we only mainly focus on purely metaphysical arguments that can reach a certainty of metaphysical certainty?
Dr. Karlo:
I think they are both tools in the toolkit that can be used while we recognize that one tool is better than another for some end, we can still utilize both tools. So with regard to thomistic metaphysical arguments, I do think that they lead to CIA or knowledge. I do think that once you reduce the premises of Aquinas, five ways to fundamental metaphysical principles to deny the conclusion that God exists would end up logically in a contradiction that’s not self-evident on the surface. It requires an unpacking, but I do think it ends up in there such that we can know that if denying God’s existence ultimately leads to a denial of fundamental principles of metaphysics, which cannot be denied without the pain affirming their validity, then you have knowledge, you have metaphysical knowledge and certainty as well. Whereas other arguments I think can be used for some other end, namely to lead the mind to the conclusion that it’s at least credible and reasonable to believe that God exists.
Some arguments don’t quite get us across the bridge to metaphysical certainty, but they provide strong reason to believe giving us probable knowledge that God exists. And I think there Matthew is where some of the contemporary arguments that appeal to scientific evidence come into play. I think they are legit tools in the toolkit. They don’t quite get us to the goal where the mistic metaphysical arguments get us, but they can be useful and persuasive. So for example, if I’m talking to some eighth grade kids and they’re asking me about whether or not God exists, the question becomes which tool in the toolkit do I use? Well, I think about the goal in the end, who’s my audience, eighth grade kids. Are they equipped intellectually to follow the argumentation of a mistic proof like in the day and intake? Probably not. So if I were to propose that argument, they probably wouldn’t feel the persuasive force of the argument because they’re not intellectually disposed to see it.
However, if I utilize the fine tuning argument and illustrate to them the high improbability of our universe, having the initial material conditions and constants needed for the universe to develop in a way to have life forms, I think an eighth grade intellect is disposed to receive that sort of information and see and feel the persuasive force of that argument to provide at least credibility that there is an intelligence behind the universe itself. So given my audience and the ends that I want to achieve will determine which tool in the toolkit that I’m going to use. So to answer your question, I think there are both legitimate tools in the toolkit that we’re going to use based upon the audience to whom we’re speaking.
Matthew:
I totally agree with this pastoral approach. As you could say, not everyone is going to be receptive to high metaphysical arguments. And so yeah, totally
Dr. Karlo:
Agree with that. It’s the same principle as you don’t teach second graders algebra, nor do you teach second graders calculus, right? You have to convey the information based upon the disposition of the audience. As Thomas says, the knower can only receive according to the mode of the knower.
Matthew:
For Thomas who want to learn more about the anti arguments, of course you can read Aquinas, but Edward Feer has a nice book called Five Proofs of the Existence of God, and he covers this way between the distinction of essence and existence in I think it’s the third or fourth proof I’d have to check, but he does cover it.
Dr. Karlo:
He calls it the Mistic proof. I would also recommend Matthew, my dissertation director, Dr. Gavin Kerr, in his book Aquinas’s Way to God, and the entire book is dedicated to Aquinas’s argument on being in essence, and Dr. Kerr does a great job of articulating and explaining the argument on a metaphysical level, even in a way that at some minor points here, and there might be a little nuance diversion from the way phaser interprets the Deante and presents it. So I would recommend that resource as well.
Matthew:
What is your stance on the mistic contingency argument versus the Lian contingency argument? Because we all know it’s two different types of contingency argument. Aquinas argues from the impossibility of infinite regress of contingent causes to a necessary being, whereas Leni focuses more on the question, why is there something rather than nothing and not so much on infinite regresses? So which is your favorites of the two versions of these contingency arguments?
Dr. Karlo:
Yeah. Well, it depends upon what you mean by the mistic contingency argument, the way you just articulated
The third way. The third way, okay. Yeah. So the third way is entirely different in the first part than any sort of Ian argument. So Aquinas is in the first part of the third way. Aquinas in my opinion, is not dealing with the metaphysical reality of essay that only comes into play in the second part of the third way, where he reasons from a necessary being to an absolutely necessary being, rather what Aquinas is dealing with in the first part of the third way, or beings that come into existence and go out of existence. In other words, beings that have a beginning of existence. And I interpret Aquinas’s third way to be focusing on the non being before existence. So I think he’s starting with beings that begin to exist and then asking the question, is it possible that all of reality could consist of beings that begin to exist alone?
And so his argument goes, if that were so, you would come to a point in the past to where there would be a single or at least all beings coming into existence at the same time before which there was nothing. So it’s kind of a quasi kalm argument. I argue he’s not arguing for a beginning, but he’s hypothesizing. If all of reality consisted only of beings that began to exist such that before their existence they had non being, then there would be a time at which there was nothing. And since from nothing, nothing only comes, it follows that there would have to be an everlasting being, because his argument is if all of reality consisted of only beings that began to exist, and at some point in the past there would be nothing but from nothing, only nothing comes, but there is something. And so therefore, all of reality cannot consist only of beings that begin to exist.
And so all that conclusion entails is a being existing without beginning and without end. And as all classical theists know, that is not God yet because you can have a created effect without beginning and without end. That’s still caused in its very active existence. And so this is why he hypothesizes in the second part of the third way, he asks the question, does this necessary being? What he means by that is, does this everlasting being have its active existence in virtue of its own essence or not? If so, that everlasting being would be God, pure essay itself, pure being itself. If that everlasting being does not have its essay in virtue of its own essence, then it would have to receive it from a cause outside of itself. And then we’re asking the question, can every cause in that causal series be like that everlasting being that doesn’t have existence in virtue of its essence?
The answer is no. And so therefore he concludes there must exist a necessary everlasting being that has essay or the act of existence in virtue of itself. And that’s this absolute necessary being that we call God when it comes to nian arguments. The question in the sound and legit, why is there something rather than nothing? But I think those sorts of arguments are appealing to the principle of sufficient reason. By way of explanation, we intuitively recognize that things need to be explained when they’re not self-explanatory. Now, I think that’s more of a surface level approach to trying to offer an explanation of something, which I do think it’s beginning to track what Aquinas offers to be more fundamental on a metaphysical level, something that’s more grounded and rooted. And so I think live nian type arguments are trying, or in some ways tracking what Aquinas is saying on a more metaphysical level. And I think Aquinas’s approach on the metaphysical level is going to provide what the Ian arguments are trying to argue for.
Matthew:
Okay. And how would you answer the objection of some philosophers who argue that Aquinas commits what you could call in logic, modal quantifier shift fallacy when he says that if everything could not exist at sometimes, then there is one time at which nothing exists? How would you answer this?
Dr. Karlo:
Yeah. So I don’t think he’s committing a fallacy there because he’s just taking into consideration things that have a beginning, right? So let’s say I have a collection of things. I have A, B, and C, and those three things represent all of reality. Okay? Now, if every single one of those things has a beginning, then at one time there’s going to be nothing. So consider A at some point, A had a beginning, okay? At before, which it was nothing. B, at some point had a beginning at some point before which it was nothing. And C, if it had a beginning, there was that time before which it was nothing. So if C is the first thing that came into existence, having a beginning subsequent to which B and A came into existence, well then at some point in the past, there was nothing because C came into existence before, which it was nothing.
Or hypothetically, if all three A, B and C came into existence at the same time, there would still be a point at which there was nothing because before A, B and C came into existence, there was nothing. And so I don’t think Aquinas is committing this sort of fallacy because he’s just following the logic of what things having a beginning entails. And if everything in all of reality had a beginning, then it logically follows that at some point in the past there was nothing because everything had a beginning before which there was nothing. It was nothing.
Matthew:
Yes. So what you’re saying here is interesting because it seems that Aquinas with this argument would be defending aala type of arguments because the universe according to him would be contingent. And since everything that is contingent according to him has a beginning, it would follow that the universe has a beginning. And if you look at the prima parts of the summa in question 46, Aquinas argues against the possibility of proving the fact that the universe has a beginning. So to me, it’s not so easy to reconcile these two elements. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this issue. I
Dr. Karlo:
Have. Yeah, I have precisely because in my reading of the first part of the third way, Aquinas is not trying to prove that there was a beginning of the universe. There was in fact a beginning of the universe. What he’s proving is that if all of reality, it’s a hypothetical situation, a hypothesis. If all of reality consisted of things that had a beginning, then there would be a point at which there was nothing. But the conclusion is that not everything had a beginning, that there must be an everlasting being. And this is where I agree with Faser in his book, Aquinas, A beginner’s Guide, Aquinas would be content with even that everlasting reality without beginning, without in which not necessarily God being matter itself, which would be consistent with what Aquinas says of the possibility of their being an everlasting universe where the universe itself does not have a beginning.
So in this articulation and framework, the everlasting being that Aquinas arrives at the end of the first part of the third way again, is not necessarily God. It could be even a physical material reality that has been existing without beginning, without in that conception would fit what he calls a necessary being or an everlasting being without beginning and without end. So even the everlasting or even his argumentation, the first part of the third way does not entail a proof that there is a beginning of the universe itself. And so that’s how I would reconcile my reading with the first part of the third way with his other statements, that it cannot be proved that the universe has a beginning.
Matthew:
And do you ultimately agree with question 46 of the prima par when Aquinas argues that there is no apriori argument that can be put forward in favor of the beginning of the universe? Because there has been lots of new arguments that have been proposed in contemporary analytic metaphysics proposed by even Thomas, like Robert Coons, Coons, Alexander Per David Oberg, guys like that who are Thomas usually, but they defend the column, a philosophical version of the column. And so it seems that Aquinas might not have thought of these new metaphysical arguments. What is your stance on this?
Dr. Karlo:
I am open to it. I have not read in depth the new literature from Thomas of trying to argue for the finitude of the past from philosophy. I have read some, and it’s been a while, it’s been a while since I’ve swam in these, but currently right now, I haven’t come across anything that has convinced me. Like I said, I haven’t read it all. So there may very well be something that would convince me. But currently where I’m at right now intellectually is that many times there’s a lot of assumptions being made and insertions into the arguments that I think just beg the question against a denier of these sorts of arguments. Like for example, the idea that you can’t traverse the infinite, right? Well, that assumes that there is something going from one moment and succeeding from one moment to the other, but we can hypothesize a situation where there’s not one thing that’s trying to traverse the infinite because all you need is just God who is outside of that temporal succession of events in order to hold that temporal succession into existence.
And there not be one thing trying to traverse that infinite gap. So a lot of times there’s insertions of things within the scenarios that I think would end up begging the question against a denier of these arguments. Now, again, this is a cursory reading of some of the ar... Read more on Catholic.com