Shadowing Practice: Where is the evidence for God? | Bishop Robert Barron - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I think what most people get wrong when speaking of God is to imagine God as a big being.
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I look up in the night sky and I see stars and planets and look around I see animals and plants.
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I see the world of beings, of things.
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The great mistake is to say, well, he must be the biggest being around.
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He's the supreme being among the many beings of the world.
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And that's precisely what God is not.
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How often atheists, both old and new, will say something like, well, where's your evidence for God?
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If you imagine God as one more big contingent thing among others, well then there's just there's no evidence for that reality.
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They're operating out of a scientific framework.
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But see, if you're looking for God that way, you'll never find him.
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That's not what he is.
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God is the sheer act of existence itself in and through which all particular things exist.
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But people get caught up in misunderstanding God and therefore seeking him in a sort of empirical, scientific way.
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That's not going to work.
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You know, the theologian Paul Tillich, who was one of the great
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Protestant theologians of the last century, he said the word faith is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary.
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And I've always felt that's right.
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How do people read faith?
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Through a scientific lens or a scientistic lens.
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Faith is credulity.
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It's superstition.
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It's accepting things on the basis of no evidence.
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It's the way a child thinks.
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That is not faith.
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That is indeed superstition, credulity, stupidity.
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The Church, at its best, is calling people beyond that.
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We're not satisfied leaving people in a state of pre -rational superstition.
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So what's faith then?
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It's something on the far side of reason.
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When reason has gone about as far as it can possibly go, it looks into a kind of alluring darkness.
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Faith in ways like that, the full presence of God, is such that it overwhelms the mind.
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And of course it does.
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And that shouldn't be surprising that God, ipsum esse, the sheer act of being itself, the creator of all things,
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that in whom essence and existence coincide, is not going to be definable by our minds.
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It won't fit into our minds.
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So what does the mind want?
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Well, it wants the truth.
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And so it seeks it.
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It seeks it scientifically, psychologically.
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It seeks it through literature.
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It seeks it through philosophy.
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That's the beauty of the mind.
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I'd be asking people not to close their minds, but to keep opening their minds.
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I love the sciences.
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But I don't like scientism, which is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge.
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I love the sciences and their success in the technology they've delivered to us.
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But first of all, there's all kinds of other ways of knowing the truth about the world.
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Hamlet doesn't have a bit of science in it,
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but Hamlet delivers to us profound truths about human life and about love and about frustration and about aspiration.
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We've got to open our minds beyond just a scientific vision of reality.
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So what I would say is religion doesn't close the mind.
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On the contrary, I'm opposed to any system that wants to shut down the spirit and say, no, no, that's all you can know.
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No, no, no, don't go beyond these limits.
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No, blow open the limits.
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Go beyond the limits.
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See, and that to me is language of faith, not infrarational stupidity and superstition.
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No, no, no. But faith is this alluring horizon, this darkness beyond the light.
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And by God, yes, I want to keep opening that up for people.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Where is the evidence for God?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: faith, scientific, beyond, superstition, seeks. This video has 45 sentences and 614 words to shadow. The speech runs for 3:56. The speaker talks at a natural 156 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| darkness noun | /ˈdɑɹk.nɪs/ | The state of being dark; lack of light; the absolute or comparative absence of light. |
| lens noun | /lɛnz/ | An object, usually made of glass, that focuses or defocuses the light that passes through it. |
| sheer adjective | /ʃɪɚ/ | Very thin or transparent. |
| stupidity noun | /stuˈpɪdɪti/ | The property of being stupid. |
| reduction noun | /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/ | The act, process, or result of reducing. |
| framework noun | /ˈfɹeɪm.wɜːk/ | A support structure comprising joined parts or conglomerated particles and intervening open spaces of similar or larger size. |
| creator noun | /kɹiːˈeɪ̯təː/ | Something or someone which creates or makes something. |
| precisely adverb | /pɹɪˈsaɪs.li/ | In a precise manner; exactly. |
| contrary adjective | /ˈkɑntɹɛɹi/ | Opposite; in an opposite direction; in opposition; adverse. |
| horizon noun | /həˈɹaɪ.zən/ | The visible horizontal line (in all directions) where the sky appears to meet the earth in the distance. |
| rational adjective | /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/ | Capable of reasoning. |
| essence noun | /ˈɛsəns/ | The inherent nature of a thing or idea. |
| satisfy verb | /ˈsætɪsfaɪ/ | To be enough (for) |
| frustration noun | /fɹʌsˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/ | The feeling of annoyance at impossibility from resistance or inability to achieve something. |
| oppose verb | /əˈpoʊz/ | To attempt to stop the progression of; to resist or antagonize by physical means, or by arguments, etc.; to contend against. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. |
| shut down verb | To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as doesn't, don't, gonna. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: atheist /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/, theologian /ˌθi.əˈloʊd͡ʒən/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: sheer /ʃɪɚ/, reduction /ɹɪˈdʌk.ʃən/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, frustration /fɹʌsˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, aspiration /ˌæspəˈɹeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: stupidity /stuˈpɪdɪti/, vocabulary /vəˈkæb.jə.lə.ɹi/, empirical /ɪmˈpɪɹɪkəl/, credulity /kɹɪˈduːlɪti/, misunderstand /mɪs.ʌn.də(ɹ)ˈstænd/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like darkness, lens, sheer.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.