The funny answer would be that I don’t have enough time to write my essays so that they would be shorter and easier to understand. Ordinarily, there would be some serious truth in that—even so great a writer as Blaise Pascal could say: I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have … [Read more…]
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote stories depicting a moral sickness found deep inside the souls of New England Puritans, fearing he himself was infected by this strange malady which turned warm blood into ice-water. Great historians, such as John K. Fairbank (who mentioned in The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800-1985 that American opium-smugglers in China, all from the … [Read more…]
[In this essay, I’ll be mostly recapping ideas I’ve developed and written about over the previous 10 years or so. These ideas are necessary to understand my deepest and most hardened objections to forms of dualism other than those which are necessary and bracketed ways of speaking.] In my parrot-mode, I say: “Created being is … [Read more…]
Let’s be philosophical: What is knowledge? Under my metaphysics, knowledge is a misleading way to refer to an encapsulation of being in our own being. Words like `know’ and `knowledge’ are our ways of speaking about our active responses to what lies outside of us but also our active responses to our own human being. … [Read more…]
We Are the Image of God, Except When that Requires Effort on Our Part At an Easter Vigil Mass (RC), I was a lector—5th reading. That reading is from the book of the prophet Isaiah and includes these lines: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. … [Read more…]
Far too often, Christians—including some who should know better—claim that: Christianity is simple; just follow Christ’s teaching of loving your neighbor and doing good for him. Baloney. For reference, this is the link to the creed, Profession of Faith, used in the Catholic Mass on Sundays and other Holy Days: Profession of Faith used in … [Read more…]
I’m currently struggling, but joyfully at times, to finish my book, The Shape of Reality. Alas, it won’t be finished by year-end as I had hoped, which hope I’ve stated on my blog. The end of January or even during February is more likely. As I struggle to complete this book, I’m obsessed with questions … [Read more…]
I take knowledge seriously. I take seriously the problems we human beings have in gaining data, checking it, putting it into some sort of shape where it can be considered information and maybe even knowledge. After all, we human beings as individuals and communities are finite creatures biased to survival and reproduction; our individual and … [Read more…]
[Draft as of 2016/10/03. Hoping for publication on Internet before end of 2016.] Human being isn’t merely quantifiable but many components or aspects of human being are quantifiable. Other components are more describable by the term `qualitative’, but this shouldn’t be taken as connoting `irrational’ or `mystical’. Our understanding of the qualitative aspects of being, … [Read more…]
[Draft as of 2016/10/03. Hoping for publication on Internet before end of 2016.] Is a man a unity or is he a collection of warring fragments? Or is something else true, perhaps an intermediate view, or—my favorite—some sort of complex being not describable in current terms of discourse? I should qualify my statement of the … [Read more…]