Feb 25
Two of my projects this week have been working on an article on suffering and the sovereignty of God, and preparing a class for this Sunday on the varieties of approaches to the problem of evil. Consequently, I’ve been raiding the bookshelf over the last few weeks in order to reacquaint myself with some of the authors and ideas that I leaned on more heavily during my university and grad school days. Read more
A short article from The Economist has me thinking about thinking this morning. The article offers a brief review on James Miller’s Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche, and asks the question, “Can philosophy inspire a way of life?” The answer, at least in the book, seems to be, “not really.” Read more
It’s a busy week around here, so apologies for the lack of original posts. In the meantime, I continue to come across interesting articles and posts discussing the justification for/origins of our moral intuitions (which has been the subject of conversation around here for the last little while). Here are a few quotes on these matters from the eminently quotable David Bentley Hart who last week wrote this essay for First Things’ On the Square: Read more
Given some of the discussion that has been taking place on an earlier post, I thought I would pass on this link to an interesting article by biologist Frans de Waal in today’s edition of “The Stone” (a philosophy forum from The New York Times). The entire article is worth reading as I think he touches on a number of very important points (including the limits of science), but I was especially drawn to one particular section. Read more
Later this month Prof. John Stackhouse from Regent College will be here in Nanaimo to talk about the New Atheists (can we still call them “new?”) and whether or not it is crazy to be a person of faith. Those who have been long-time readers of this blog will know that this is an event that has special interest for me because a) I wrote about the New Atheists for my masters thesis a few years back; and b) John Stackhouse was my supervisor for this project. So I’ll be there with bells on. And if you are on Vancouver Island on Saturday, October 23, I would encourage you to attend this event (you can register here). I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say. Read more
A few more loosely connected thoughts and links for a (holiday) Monday morning…
“The Stone” is a New York Times philosophy forum that I have enjoyed spending time at recently. Yesterday’s post by Tim Crane called “Mystery and Evidence” is one of the best attempts I have seen from an atheist to honestly lay out the difference between religious approach to the world and a scientific one. Crane critiques the view popularized by Richard Dawkins (and others) that religion and science are two competing alternatives for the same explanatory slot—as if religion were a kind of primitive science that offered the same kinds of explanations that science now offers in a much more comprehensive, rational, and intellectually satisfying manner. Read more
A lot of my reading for this week’s sermon has been focused on Sabbath—how to keep it, why it ought to be kept, what prevents us from keeping it, etc. Whatever else a consistent and deliberate observation of Sabbath might protect us from, I think that our societal addiction/enslavement to technology would be high on the list. A couple of articles I’ve come across over the last few days from the New York Times’s “Your Brain on Computers” series (see here and here, for example) have simply reinforced my sense that one of the things that the inhabitant of twenty-first century postmodernity is most desperately in need of is unplugging. Read more
Any piece with a title like “Should This Be the Last Generation?” is bound to provoke a bit of curiosity, especially when the famous misanthrope Peter Singer is discovered to be its author. Today, the issue on Singer’s mind is whether or not human beings should consider ceasing to reproduce as an ethical response to our predicament, whether from the perspective of ecological responsibility (i.e., human beings are bad for the planet, therefore less of us are better than more) or based on more existential concerns (every child born will suffer, and we have a duty to prevent suffering). Read more
May 23
I’ve been getting a daily dose of Calvin and Hobbes in my inbox for some time now (via Gocomics), and figured this classic was worth sharing:
A few weeks back, while browsing the Regent College Bookstore, I was surprised to see a new book by Marilynne Robinson called Absence of Mind that deals with issues around the philosophy of mind. I was familiar with, and deeply appreciative of, Robinson’s novels (e.g., Gilead and Home), but this topic seemed like a rather radical departure for her—at least based on my limited exposure to her work. I did a quick scan and of the contents, mentally put the book on my “to read someday” list, and pretty much forgot about it. Read more
In what is becoming a most enjoyable annual tradition, I find myself back at Regent College for their pastors conference during this, the first month of May. This year, the theme of the conference is the interaction between science and faith and is called “Wonder and Devotion: Bringing Science and Faith Together for the Church.” We’ve talked about creation and evolution, the immanence and transcendence of God, issues around the interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and a whole host of other very interesting things. It’s been a great week thus far. Read more
The controversy around the Bruce Walke story has led to some interesting conversations (on this blog, and elsewhere) about the relationship between science and faith, questions about how we read Scripture, and others. One of these conversations took place this morning. Read more
Those who have been following the previous two discussions about what our response to suffering ought to be, what resources we draw from, and what kinds of ethical paradigms inform how/where we locate suffering might want to check out Gil’s latest post. He’s been reflecting on Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self where Taylor contrasts something like “traditional” ethics, where our vision of goodness and human dignity is grounded in a transcendent God (or Good), and a modern naturalist approach which sees the “good life in terms of a heroic determination to face a meaningless existence with courage.” Read more
It’s fairly common these days to see religious belief presented as a kind of primitive holdover from our superstitious past. So in that sense, yesterday’s article from the National Post‘s religion blog, “Holy Post” was nothing new. What was interesting was the angle Prof. Hank Davis has apparently taken in his book called Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in the Modern World. The objects of Davis’s criticism—what he sees as prime examples of “caveman logic”—are the purposive phrases we use in everyday life. “It was a sign,” “thank God,” even “good luck”—we use these phrases seemingly instinctively (in fact, Christians seem to have a whole separate arsenal of them: “it was a ‘God thing’,” “it’s all part of God’s plan,” etc.). But do they make any contact with what is objectively true? For Davis, the answer is obviously “no.” Read more
I’ve been looking forward to Dallas Willard’s latest book for a while now, and was happy to see it arrive on my doorstep yesterday afternoon. Willard is tackling the question of whether/how the claims of faith constitute genuine knowledge (as opposed to private beliefs, opinions, emotions, blind commitments, etc). I’ve only had time to read the introduction thus far, but it looks like a very intriguing, not to mention timely, project. Here’s a few quotes from Knowing Christ Today: Read more
When I was at the University of Lethbridge a few years back, I needed a philosophy course in the summer to fill out my degree requirements and allow me to finish a year early. As I recall, there weren’t very many attractive offerings, so I ended up taking a course called “The Philosophy of Sport.” I thought this would be a kind of cream puff course without much substance, but it ended up being fairly interesting. Philosophers can subject a lot of innocuous looking activities to mind-numbing analysis, after all, so why not sport? Read more
Well, sixteen months of toil came to an end today as I finally submitted my thesis for grading. I can’t tell you how good it felt to plunk that big stack of paper down at the Regent front office today. I am very relieved to have this completed—it’s a huge load off my mind. For those who might (still) be wondering about what, exactly, I’ve been beavering away at for so long, I’ve reproduced the abstract below. If you’re interested enough to read more, drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy. Read more
The last chapter of my thesis is where I try to make the move from the existence of a strong element of moral protest in the new atheism, to the claim that the whole enterprise can profitably be understood as an attempt at theodicy. As such, I’ve been brushing up on some responses to the problem of evil in Encountering Evil. I came across these passages in John Roth’s chapter on “protest theodicy” this morning, and I’ve been mulling them over since: Read more
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