On 2019/02/24, Roman Catholics who attended the Mass for Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (Cycle C) heard St Paul telling the Corinthians: It is written, `The first man, Adam, became a living being,’ the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But the spiritual was not first: rather the natural and then the spiritual. The first man … [Read more…]
I recently read Alvin Plantinga’s powerful book, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. I have little to say against what he deals with and bow to his well-organized, scholarly mind. He does a better job than any of a half-dozen or so books I’ve read which critique the metaphysical imperialism of some … [Read more…]
Over the past few centuries or more, Western Christians have retreated from a proper engagement with God’s Creation. Many modern scientists and philosophers now work actively to sequester religious beliefs in the most general sense. Sometimes this is as crude and as juvenile as claiming that the success of the equations of modern physics prove … [Read more…]
Let’s do a Plato-update. Mathematics is the key, as it was for that heavyweight wrestler (according to some rumors which even hint at championships). Very roughly speaking, philosophy to Plato was a generalization of the thinking done in geometry and arithmetic. It may not be true that Plato’s school (the Platonic Academy Academy) had 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…]
An Overview of What I’m Up To I’ve tried to concentrate on the general speculative, or `metaphysical’, task of making sense of created being, abstract as well as concrete, in light of Christian beliefs. I’ve tried to avoid too much in the way of theological speculation and certainly have and will avoid questioning the basic … [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…]
We should be very careful in how we reason from even the best of facts by way of the most sincere respect for empirical reality even if we have proper respect for plausibly conjectured abstract realms of being. We all carry in our heads and hearts and even in our ways of behavior something that … [Read more…]
Though most of what I write in this essay is applicable to most populations and nations of the West, I don’t pretend to write in a truly general way. It might not be possible to write in such a way without engaging in needless abstractions. Thus it is that I write of the problems of … [Read more…]
I have uploaded A Modern Understanding of Human Being, a book about human being from a viewpoint of a Christian accepting and making some sense of modern empirical knowledge. In this book, I lay a foundation by advocating respect for empirical reality, the reality into which we are born and in which we develop. Moreover, … [Read more…]