Narratives and truth

A Medicine Which Saved Lives and Destroyed Moral Order?

Some Christians think that God being all-good and all-powerful and all-knowing could have created a world without evil. Maybe. But it wouldn’t be our world. It wouldn’t be the story of the incarnate Son of God sacrificing Himself to the Father. From that main theme, we can consider salvation of the individual and salvation within … [Read more…]

Are Communities a Form of Created Being?

[I’ve found over the past two decades that many of my fundamental ideas can be seen in the novels I’ve finished and put on my website thus far. I think I can say that exploration of communities, what they used to be and what they now are, what they can or should be, was a … [Read more…]

Human Wisdom Should be Dynamic and Not Static

I repeat myself to a lesser or greater extent in many of my essays. I don’t do so to annoy or bore readers but rather in an effort to gain a new perspective which might bring new insights, if only a whisper, and might reach new ears and maybe inspire new thinkers. After all, I … [Read more…]

Something is Missing Even in the Best of Modern Political Thought

This is a very good discussion of some important aspects of our national political mess in the United States: Liberal Constitutionalism and Us. At the same time, something is missing and that something is a more general understanding of our world, in fact, of Creation as a whole. Until we have that understanding, one which … [Read more…]

Why Does Time Move Only Forward?: Once Upon a Time…

In a recent essay, Do We Need Heart and Hands as Well as Mind to Understand Reality?, I wrote: Reduce reality to its various components and aspects but stop reducing when you reach components or aspects which cannot be used to fully explain or to `reconstruct’ each other. At that point in the process of … [Read more…]

Reminder of downloadable books — September, 2012

Some readers might access this blog in ways that don’t display the main page and might not be aware that I have a variety of books, nonfiction and fiction, available for free download. I’ll be putting this message up on a monthly basis or so, each month spotlighting a different book as well as giving … [Read more…]

Should We Read Words or Sentences, Essays or an Opus, Cities or Civilizations?

Some write down scales or perhaps compose etudes. Some write simple tunes or even multi-part tunes. Others compose concertos and sonatas and symphonies which can’t be fully understood unless fully held in mind, if only for an instant. A section in the third movement might well play off a section in the first movement. Of … [Read more…]

Social and Biological: Being Honest About the Basics of Human Nature

While making plans for my more serious reading over the next month or two, I happened to read the opening pages of a book I’ll be perusing before long — Sociobiology, The Abridged Edition by Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard professor who learned a lot about social insects and found that he could apply some … [Read more…]

Why Does Time Move Only Forward?: Some Preliminaries

I’ve just started to read Hans Reichenbach’s The Direction of Time and lines of thought came to life before I’d even finished Hilary Putnam’s foreword for the 1991 reprinting of an English translation by the University of California Press. I’ll probably write multiple essays on this subject of the direction of time, though it doesn’t … [Read more…]