I’ve made the claim in various ways that all of our knowledge and thought comes from God’s thoughts as manifested in Creation, including this universe with its concrete thing-like being. This claim implies the further claim which I would strongly support: even the structures and basic elements of our most abstract systems (say those of … [Read more…]
Basic relationships and not complex things or ideas are the true Platonic Reals in the sense of being the basis of created being. So to write. So to speak, if I were discussing these matters with a like-interested friend over some good whiskey or stout or port. If we were to try to imagine a … [Read more…]
Most modern Americans don’t truly believe in biological evolution because it conflicts with a once plausible idea which remained strong in ghetto-Christianity after the separation of Christian understandings of Creation from mainstream science and philosophy; the idea is “human beings came into being once and for all and nothing can undo that”. Most Westerners, including … [Read more…]
In The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity by Richard Fletcher, we learn of the very prominent role played by aristocratic families, even royal families, in the conversion of the European barbarians to Christianity. The missionary monks and bishops and priests were often from powerful and wealthy families of Ireland and England and then Francia … [Read more…]
Sacramental Christians need to have an understanding of this world which is compatible with sacramental Christian beliefs. You can’t believe the Creator is present, let alone Present on the altar, when you have an understanding of the physical world which is inconsistent with such a Presence. A particularly important part of the physical world is … [Read more…]
Once again, I’ll state a standard Jewish and Christian view of man: man can be usefully and truthfully seen as a creature made of mind and heart and hands. This points to state of unity which is not achieved by men in this mortal realm but might be achieved by the resurrected who share the … [Read more…]
I don’t get it. What world do political theorists and philosophers, political commentators of all sorts, live in? For decades, their fellow practitioners of the humane arts and sciences, the historians, have been trying to deal with the realities of human biological existence—William McNeil, the distinguished historian from U of Chicago, was well-known for trying … [Read more…]
Let me oversimplify in a useful way: Facts are local. Understanding is global. Knowledge is something of a bridge from facts to understanding. And, yet, we should not imagine that facts and knowledge exist only to serve understanding. Nor should we imagine that understanding is fully, or even mostly, what can be found in a … [Read more…]
In a recent essay, Science and Naive Anthropocentricism, I wrote: Somewhere—I believe in The Perfectibility of Man, the philosopher, John Passmore, points out the real problem with belief in an all-powerful God: Such a God is consistent with any conceivable world. Only sloppy and ill-disciplined thinkers could seriously believe that the existence of a coherent, … [Read more…]
In the past few months or so, I’ve tried to allocate more of my mental energies to studying mathematics and history, concentrating for a short while (4 or 5 substantial book’s reading time) upon some histories of the ancient Celtic peoples (Gauls to the Romans) and the Germanic peoples of the era of the Roman … [Read more…]