I’ve included the entirety of an article from the Vatican Information Service. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken publicly about an important issue he addressed in some of his earlier books: Christian philosophy must respond to modernity and theology must also respond, though he apparently believes — plausibly enough — that theology will respond first to … [Read more…]
This article, Six ‘uniquely’ human traits now found in animals, will be worrisome to those who think to secure the moral worth of the human being by appealing to some claim to uniqueness of the human race amongst biological species. Some of us aren’t bothered much at all by such articles because we see human … [Read more…]
Every so often, I’ll review my own long-range goals for developing a more complete worldview. The term ‘worldview’ as I use it is first an empirical understanding of this physical universe and then a more complete understanding in light of God’s purposes as best I can understand them given Christian teachings, my own readings of … [Read more…]
See Exploring The Mechanics Of Judgment, Beliefs: Technique Images Brain Activity When We Think Of Others for news on another major effort to understand the physical human being in ‘scientific’ terms. I don’t put scientific in apostrophes because of any intent of misguided irony but only because we should realize that ‘science’ is disciplined intellectual … [Read more…]
An astronomer at the Vatican Observatory has said, in a very confused way so far as I can tell, that the question of extraterrestrial life is an empirical question. (See Could ET be Our Brother?). This is old news. In 1277, in what seems to have been a confused encyclopedia of condemnations, Etienne Tempier — … [Read more…]
Before commenting, I’ll quote an entire news item from the “WEDNESDAY, 14 MAY 2008” newsletter of the Vatican Information Service (EIGHTEENTH YEAR – N. 91): =============================================================== PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE: MEDIATION AND DIALOGUE VATICAN CITY, 14 MAY 2008 (VIS) – In today’s general audience, held in St. Peter’s Square, the Holy Father resumed his series of … [Read more…]
The usual mantra amongst Christian thinkers is faith and reason, implying that faith should be united to and disciplined by products of the human mind. The problem is that Christians are bound to believe that God was not only free to create or not, but also that — once He chose to create — He … [Read more…]
“Larvae, the immature forms of many animals, are distinct from adult forms by definition. In many life histories–caterpillars and the trochophore larvae of clams and sea snails are examples–larvae and adults bear no resemblance to each other. Biologist Donald I. Williamson has proposed that larvae are juvenile forms acquired through hybridization–the fusing of two genomes, … [Read more…]
Recent centuries have seen a mysterious retreat from the mainstream of modern thought on the part of Catholic clergymen and also Catholic laymen whose intellectual work is oriented directly to the needs of Christianity. I’m far from being a well-read historian but I’ve read enough survey works to see the retreat of Catholic thinkers into … [Read more…]
While reading, Ernst Cassirer’s The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, I realized I’ve been guilty of a major oversight in my discussions of ‘hellenistic metaphysics’. Cassirer doesn’t speak much of Christianity or the Church in that book, but he does speak of swings between various forms of Hellenistic metaphysics. And there are indeed … [Read more…]