I’ve argued that moral reasoning has the nature of narrative, a story, rather than being reasoning about axiomatic principles. This is certainly the most reasonable standard for Christians who accept the reality of the Incarnation. The Son of God didn’t come in glory carrying books on systematic theology and other supporting works in logic and … [Read more…]
What’s it like to be a bat? That question was a matter of debate in certain philosophical circles a decade or two ago. I read a some contributions to that debate and remember at first feeling sympathy for the arguments of those who were considered champions of the mind as something that is independent of … [Read more…]
[Part 4: Continuation of my comments upon reading Barth’s “The Epistle to the Romans”, Oxford University paperback, 1968] On page 437, Barth claims: “As an act of thinking [thinking of eternity] it dissolves itself; it participates in the pure thought of God, and is therefore an accepted sacrifice, living, holy, acceptable to God.” Barth — … [Read more…]
Even an armchair historian can tell you that a good general prepares for his retreat as soon as he sees the need for it. He tries to arrange an orderly retreat to minimize casualties and loss of equipment and other materiel. He knows not to try to hold ground which is indefensible, being well aware … [Read more…]
I’ve argued that the human mind is shaped by its immediate environments, including social relationships starting with that between infant and mother. From there, we expand out into larger sections of those immediate environments and may begin to interact with other environments. In this expansion into other environments, we’re like other opportunistic animals — bears … [Read more…]
Einstein gave a great gift to rational thinkers, Christian and non-Christian. He gave us a universe, that is, a coherent definition of a universe. And the definition is proving to be quite a bit different from the traditional metaphysical definitions. In fact, the simplest way to think of Einsteinian Universes as a class is to … [Read more…]
There was no one Cosmos common to all thinkers prior to Einstein but there were some general beliefs held by all, or nearly all, thinkers prior to Einstein — including most early modern scientists. This is not to say that there were none who suspected the Cosmos to be a distortion of reality. But those … [Read more…]
Mathematics, no matter how abstract and symbolic it can be, is founded upon numbers, the number line for those who have taken a geometry or algebra course. Even with the abstractions of group theory and projective geometries, our understanding of mathematics follows our understanding of numbers. About 15 years ago, Gregory Chaitin of IBM proved … [Read more…]
It sounds strange to speak of God creating truths — even God, but I have two lines of reasoning that lead to this conclusion that God has created the truths of our universe, mathematical and metaphysical, as well as the things of our universe. I discuss this claim in my book To See a World … [Read more…]
In my book To See a World in a Grain of Sand, I used the term ‘universe’ to mean pretty much the Einsteinian universe: all that is bound by the same gravitational field as each mortal man, the Sun, the others stars in the Milky Way, the other observable galaxies, and so forth. This is … [Read more…]