What is a man? Not “What is man?” but rather “What is a man?”. That’s a big topic and one not to be addressed in a consistent and coherent manner at this time just because we have no good words and concepts to allow a rational anthropology. Our first task is the more humble one … [Read more…]
Is any existing human language a general purpose tool that can deal with all raw materials and produce all possible objects of utility and beauty? Can any existing human language deal with reality as we discover more about the world around us and even more about what lies inside of us? Is there any possible … [Read more…]
There was no one Cosmos common to all thinkers prior to Einstein but there were some general beliefs held by all, or nearly all, thinkers prior to Einstein — including most early modern scientists. This is not to say that there were none who suspected the Cosmos to be a distortion of reality. But those … [Read more…]
Mathematics, no matter how abstract and symbolic it can be, is founded upon numbers, the number line for those who have taken a geometry or algebra course. Even with the abstractions of group theory and projective geometries, our understanding of mathematics follows our understanding of numbers. About 15 years ago, Gregory Chaitin of IBM proved … [Read more…]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]: Covenant: 3. (Theol.) The promises of God as revealed in the Scriptures, conditioned on certain terms on the part of man, as obedience, repentance, faith, etc. [1913 Webster] I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for … [Read more…]
The web-site of New Scientist magazine has an interesting article on parasites and children with auto-immune diseases, but you can understand this blog-entry without reading that article. Investigations of third-world children with auto-immune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, have indicated that they sometimes do better against their diseases if they are infected with parasites. As … [Read more…]
In my book To See a World in a Grain of Sand, I used the term ‘universe’ to mean pretty much the Einsteinian universe: all that is bound by the same gravitational field as each mortal man, the Sun, the others stars in the Milky Way, the other observable galaxies, and so forth. This is … [Read more…]
Darwin is no problem to Christian thought. The facts gathered by biologists — including evolutionary biologists, geneticists, and brain-scientists — are themselves no problem. Certain thinkers, evolutionary biologists and so-called philosophers, have interpreted those facts in terms of a skepticism of a sort charitably described as reductionistic materialism. Such thinkers, as well as more rational … [Read more…]
And so was Dante. Those of you who have read one of the good modern translations of “The Inferno” will know that the Pilgrim didn’t wander away from the road. The road curved away from him and he continued to go straight. We Christians have continued to walk on straight in our religious language, our … [Read more…]
In “To See a World in a Grain of Sand”, I danced around an analogy that I can now see a little more clearly though I’m beginning to fear it’s more than just an analogy. Matter, particular being, results from a broken symmetry of metaphysical truths. In this claim, I’m basically exploring an expansion of … [Read more…]