On 2019/02/24, Roman Catholics who attended the Mass for Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cycle C) heard St Paul telling the Corinthians: It is written, `The first man, Adam, became a living being,’ the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But the spiritual was not first: rather the natural and then the spiritual. The first man … [Read more…]
Liberals lie. And I include libertarians among liberals. Perhaps they lie first to themselves, but they lie. All liberals, from Hobbes to Locke to Jefferson to von Mises to Nozick and on to the collectivist enablers or advocates of a `liberal’ and totalitarian order. The biggest part of their lie is the one which claims … [Read more…]
I recently read Alvin Plantinga’s powerful book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. I have little to say against what he deals with and bow to his well-organized, scholarly mind. He does a better job than any of a half-dozen or so books I’ve read which critique the metaphysical imperialism of some … [Read more…]
Over the past few centuries or more, Western Christians have retreated from a proper engagement with God’s Creation. Many modern scientists and philosophers now work actively to sequester religious beliefs in the most general sense. Sometimes this is as crude and as juvenile as claiming that the success of the equations of modern physics prove … [Read more…]
In my previous posted essay, Elitism and Americans, I responded to an article by Steven Wasserman, In Defense of Difficulty and subtitled A phony populism is denying Americans the joys of serious thought.. I largely agreed with Wasserman but went further in maintaining that higher literary pursuits make sense only in light of a greater … [Read more…]
It’s natural for most human beings to seek simple understandings. They correspond at least roughly to the simple (or elegant) understandings which are a goal of many theorists in the sciences which have a large mathematical component. Einstein pointed out that a theory should be as simple as possible but no simpler. Closer to ordinary … [Read more…]
I’m going to slightly misuse a quote from Wittgenstein: Doubt itself rests only on what is beyond doubt. [On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Harper Torchbooks, 1972, page 68e] He was writing about knowledge inside of a `language game’, which I think to be something like the active use of a hypothetical dictionary and grammar of what … [Read more…]
Let me state a certain political position as: The United States of America are but Massachusetts is. This is a grammatical statement of the classic States’ rights doctrine which was one of the matters so violently dealt with in the American war between the states. It was, in fact, a matter of contention from the … [Read more…]
Without a doubt, we are children of our age. There have been indications that the young folk with higher IQs tend to drift away from Christian and Jewish belief and practice. The interesting exception in some of those studies is the Church of the Latter-day Saints. I’ve read lightly, but substantially by current standards, in … [Read more…]
I’ve started rereading Science and Creation by John Polkinghorne, the physicist at Cambridge University who left his professorship to enter an Anglican seminary before returning to Cambridge as a chaplain and administrator. Father Polkinghorne is quite polite to those who denigrate natural theology and to those who simply question what natural theology can really tell … [Read more…]