Professor's Proposition: Only Two Logical Choices

[Mister Agenda]

My father, who is a very devout Catholic, has two Ph.d.'s, in math and computer science. He is very interested in science and he has a broad-ranged knowledge of science in many fields. He is also very informed of the Catholic faith.

My father had a Catholic father who really wasn't into it, and a mother who converted to Catholicism to marry my grandfather. But neither of them were much interested in religion.

My father, however, was so devout that by the age of 12 he was going to Mass by himself.

Which is to say, my father is not Catholic because he was brow-beat into it by his family, he is a devout Catholic because he used his intelligence to look into it and determined that the Catholic Church's claim to be the One True Faith are true.

Now, you can't dismiss my father as some ignorant fundamentalist, he very much believes in the theory of evolution and does not try to wave away any science because of the Bible.

And also, my father's IQ is so high that my guess is he's smarter than all but one or two people on this forum. He is certainly smarter than the vast majority of people who think they are intelligent and crow about it in groups like Mensa.

My father once told me that there are only two logical choices for the educated man who investigates the religion issue and comes to a conclusion based on all the evidence, without rejecting any due to prejudice or bias.

One logical conclusion is to be an agnostic.

And the second logical conclusion is to be a Roman Catholic, believing everything the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

And all other conclusions would ultimately be rejected if subject to thorough analysis by the educated man who really wants to know the truth.

Anyway, that's the start of what I'm saying here. Is there anyone here who believes my father is wrong about this?

I guess I'd like to hear from agnostics especially. And if there are any Catholics, I'd like to hear your reaction too.

Appeal to authority is a fallacy. Appeal to high IQ should be its own special subcategory of that fallacy.

---

But the big clincher for me is the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. I looked into that and there is no way to explain how 70,000 people could be affected by a "mass hypnosis" which is the usual atheist explanation for this even.

I don't know about 'usual atheist' positions on this phenomenon, but the usual opthamologist position on the topic is that if you stare too long at the sun, it will seem to start to move around. This is an automatic neural defense for the eyes being attached to the brain of someone too stupid to look away from the sun: your eyes involuntarily move around slightly to avoid looking directly at the sun. When your eyes move involuntarily, it appears as though it's what you're looking at that's moving. You can easily observe this by moving your eye (through your eyelid) gently with your finger.

This 'miracle' can be easily reproduced by anyone willing and able to get a large crowd to stare at the sun long enough.