I haven’t read Stephen Hawking’s most recent book where he’s said to argue that a Creator-God is unnecessary nor have I read more than summaries of the efforts of certain Christian theologians to shoot down those arguments. I’ve read that Hawking argues gravity fills the need for such a God, but that’s irrelevant to the … [Read more…]
There’s a serious and insightful commentary on the debate between ‘Darwinists’ and ‘design-theorists’ on America Jones’ blog — Debating Popular Intelligent Design. The discussion is addressed to the difference between ‘hypothesis’ and ‘theory’.
We know Christ redeemed us, but what does that mean? The usual answer is: Christ paid for our sins on the cross including our original sin. A gruesome scene arises in the imagination of Christ being tormented by every sin I ever committed but most of all by the original sin we’re all said to … [Read more…]
Many Christians throughout history have insisted on seeing imputable guilt behind all the sins for which we are responsible. This seems wrong to me. You can be responsible for a situation, say the self-destructively rebellious state of a teenager, though you might well be free of guilt in a criminal or moral sense. Being responsible, … [Read more…]
As-if is a strange and wonderful language that we all speak inside our normal language — whether English or French or Japanese. Even an Enlightenment rationalist like Adam Smith spoke of the Invisible Hand when he found himself not able to speak directly about what might now be called a self-organizing system. This is not … [Read more…]
I want to enlarge upon what I’ve said in a prior posting, What is a Conservative?: Most modern politicians or thinkers who call themselves ‘conservative’ are better described as ‘right-wing liberals’. By definition, conservatives conserve, but those — Rush Limbaugh is a good example — who call themselves conservatives are mostly concerned with the marketplaces. … [Read more…]
The answer would seem to be, “Yes”. We’ve lost our ability to say that Christ was man and God in one divine Person just because we use the word ‘person’ to refer to each instantiation of a human being. One of these two possibilities is true: Jesus of Nazareth was born a human person. If … [Read more…]