[This essay is a lightly edited fragment from my upcoming book, The Shape of Reality, a book which might be delayed a bit longer (maybe middle of March?) because of a relatively mild but persistent sinus infection as well as major housecleaning tasks as the result of a death in my family.] From ancient times, … [Read more…]
Let me go to the ever reliable 1913 edition of Webster’s once-fine dictionary, listing just two definitions of `covenant’ which seem most relevant to my discussion: A mutual agreement of two or more persons or parties, or one of the stipulations in such an agreement. [Appropriate example:] Then Jonathan and David made a covenant. –1 … [Read more…]
I’ve claimed that “Created Being is Created Being is Created Being” some number of times, but there it’s a little more complicated than that. Those who’ve read some of my metaphysical writings might have some ideas on the topic. “Some ideas” is really all that I have. The basic situation is this: As a Christian, … [Read more…]
Rod Dreher posted an interesting essay on March 23, 2016: Millennial Landslide. I’ll start with a snippet of a quote he provided from another source: The percentage of Americans who prayed or believed in God reached an all-time low in 2014, according to new research led by San Diego State University psychology professor Jean M. … [Read more…]
Let me oversimplify in a useful way: Facts are local. Understanding is global. Knowledge is something of a bridge from facts to understanding. And, yet, we should not imagine that facts and knowledge exist only to serve understanding. Nor should we imagine that understanding is fully, or even mostly, what can be found in a … [Read more…]
Razib Khan, is a geneticist who is an atheist but not a naively anthropocentric atheist nor one blind to the reasons why others hold or seek a faith he doesn’t hold and doesn’t desire. He has published an essay, Can a Religious Person be a Good Scientist?, in which he says: In the culture of … [Read more…]
Psalm 24 tells us rightly: “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness, the world and all its peoples.” It’s God who creates from nothingness and God who brings order to the raw stuff He first creates. This isn’t to deny that we human beings, in fact—all things and living creatures and all of created … [Read more…]
Happy New Year. May the Good Lord bless you and yours. It’s now 2015. Where Am I In My Mission? Clearly, I’m not writing a blog which simply responds to cultural or political or intellectual events or states. I’m not part of an established institutional effort, not part of a mission as the term would … [Read more…]
An Overview of What I’m Up To I’ve tried to concentrate on the general speculative, or `metaphysical’, task of making sense of created being, abstract as well as concrete, in light of Christian beliefs. I’ve tried to avoid too much in the way of theological speculation and certainly have and will avoid questioning the basic … [Read more…]
In the last essay I posted, Mathematical Models of Human Communities: Local and Global Processes, I discussed briefly my oft-stated opinion that we need to model human nature, personal and communal, by a model (qualitative and quantitative) which is much like those of the theory of general relativity where local regions of space and time … [Read more…]