Happy New Year. May the Good Lord bless you and yours. It’s now 2015. Where Am I In My Mission? Clearly, I’m not writing a blog which simply responds to cultural or political or intellectual events or states. I’m not part of an established institutional effort, not part of a mission as the term would … [Read more…]
I have published two essays in this short series: Traditional Morality is Dead, Long Live Traditional Morality: A World of Evolution and Development and Traditional Morality is Dead, Long Live Traditional Morality: The Dangers of Understanding God’s Acts-of-being. Now I will write about the greater meaning of this line of thought. I’m writing in response … [Read more…]
Peter Frost has published a good essay in which he deals with human moral nature. The essay can be found at Does Natural Law Exist?. I vaguely anticipated this discussion in my previous essay, The Interior Richness Which Lies in a Civilized Man. Frost defines natural law as teaching: All people are born with a … [Read more…]
In a recent essay, What is an Explanation?: The Context of Thought and Language, I opened up a line of discussion which might provide a new view of some of my basic ideas, a view which might lead me to more fruitful explorations and perhaps others to better understandings of what I’m trying to do … [Read more…]
I use the term `empirical science’ to include any field of disciplined study of Creation, physics and chemistry and engineering sciences but also including mathematics and history and literature. The modern empirical sciences have advanced ahead of philosophy and very far ahead of Christian theology. Philosophers and theologians would be wise to start borrowing from … [Read more…]
Is the invisible hand justly celebrated by Adam Smith really the hand of the pilgrim human community, of the Body of Christ forming—however imperfectly and incompletely—in this mortal realm? Yes, though the language is far from optimal and that language can lead to improper concepts regarding the Body of Christ and its relationships to human … [Read more…]
In an earlier essay, A Brain Shaped to Geometric Thought?, I responded to evidence that the brain does abstract from physical distance to derive, for example, an idea of emotional distance. This isn’t a matter fully understood, though the scientists seem to believe, as do I, that human beings have learned to unconsciously and consciously … [Read more…]
In my most recent post, the essay: How a Christian Finds Metaphysical Truths in Empirical Reality, I argued that Christians should respond confidently to what lies around us, to our concrete and thing-like realm of Creation and to all the other realms which remain yet in our universe which is our world when seen in … [Read more…]
I confess to failing the tests of being a `professional’ philosopher, having been forced to face up to that criteria during a reread of Etienne Gilson’s Being and Some Philosophers. I don’t really care since I see serious advantages in being non-professional, advantages similar to those of the highly energetic semi-barbarians (da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc) … [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…]