With a new pope to be elected soon, the Internet as well as print publications are filling once more with suggestions about radical or moderate reforms. “Let priests marry.” “Ordain women priests.” “Be more liberal allowing reception of the Sacraments.” “Allow divorce and remarriage.” “Allow artificial birth-control.” “Re-consider abortion, use of embryonic stem-cells, etc.” Similar … [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…]
We were told by Jesus of Nazareth that we must become like children to enter Heaven. We must become `child-like’ and not `childish’. As creatures of mind and heart and hands, how can we become child-like? Wouldn’t that mean we would think as a child, feel as a child, and act as a child? That … [Read more…]
I’ve claimed that we can see the world, at least after Jesus Christ’s ascension to His Father, as being the story of the growth and development of the Body of Christ, including the evolution and development of the organs of that Body. We can read the main purposes of God as Creator out of this … [Read more…]
I don’t think we ever had our religion in the United States, at least not a true Biblical religion. From an early period, immigrants to this country considered themselves largely freed of the traditions of their home countries, including their Christian traditions. They thought to retain the title of `Christian’ without letting anyone tell them … [Read more…]
Progressives have often founded and supported eugenics movements. This article,
We modern human beings have separated our minds and hearts from reality, our hands not nearly so much. We’re strange creatures who believe the Christian Creeds long enough to recite them at a Catholic or Orthodox Mass or to keep some of the creedal teachings in mind at other sorts of Christian worship services and … [Read more…]
In an essay I published on 2013/01/13, How Can We Describe a Human Being?, I criticized the psychologist Jerome Kagan for making a mostly valid statement in a slanted way: “Biological sentences cannot replace psychological ones, for the same reason that the language that describes the history of a hurricane will never be replaced with … [Read more…]