There is something describable by the term `human nature’ and something else describable by the term `human personhood’. We’ve confused the two greatly in our modern world, so intellectually challenged in nearly all fields of thought but science and technology and so morally challenged in all fields including science and technology. To orthodox Trinitarian Christians, … [Read more…]
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…]
There are writers on the Internet, some maybe just scribblers but many are thinkers of some capacity, who criticize other peoples, including most Latin Americans, for being too dumb to handle complex, American-style economic and political systems. To be sure, many of these criticisms are quite true, though we should realize that current immigration patterns … [Read more…]
Christians in the past century or more have failed utterly to face up to the biological reality: God has created a world where family-lines of organisms are kept in good condition by Darwinian selection processes leading to death or reproductive failure of organisms with `inadequate’ traits—often caused by mutations. Complex traits, such as intelligence or … [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…]
In the essay, When Does Human Life Begin?, Brook Stanton makes a clear and forceful statement, with highly summarized arguments which are really—and he admits so—references to well-established facts and theories of modern biology: human life begins at conception. He doesn’t show awareness that there is some, if not total, truth in the claim that … [Read more…]
I’m currently struggling, but joyfully at times, to finish my book, The Shape of Reality. Alas, it won’t be finished by year-end as I had hoped, which hope I’ve stated on my blog. The end of January or even during February is more likely. As I struggle to complete this book, I’m obsessed with questions … [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…]
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…]
Razib Khan, is a geneticist who is an atheist but not a naively anthropocentric atheist nor one blind to the reasons why others hold or seek a faith he doesn’t hold and doesn’t desire. He has published an essay, Can a Religious Person be a Good Scientist?, in which he says: In the culture of … [Read more…]