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Aug 27

7 Comments

Selectively Skeptical

A couple of days ago, a friend gave me a copy of the latest Skeptical Inquirer due to the fact that it contained an article which referred to the recent swell of popular books characterized by a rather aggressive form of atheism (a central part of the thesis that I am in the process of researching and writing).  I had seen this magazine a few times in Regent’s library over the last couple of months, but had not had the chance to check it out. I’m not sure what I was expecting as I don’t know much about Skeptical Inquirer (i.e., whether it is a publication that is taken seriously in the broader philosophical/scientific communities or not), but I was surprised and disappointed by what I found. Read more

Aug 23

7 Comments

I Wish This was a Joke…

One of the interesting features of blogging at WordPress is being able to see which sites are linking to your own posts. There aren’t usually very many of these, mind you, but the odd one pops up. Some of these are intriguing, but many are just plain strange and I have no idea where they come from or how they connect to me. Read more

Aug 21

2 Comments

The Persistence of Religion

Columbia professor Mark Lilla wrote a very interesting article in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine which deals with the relationship between religious belief and politics (adapted from his forthcoming book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West). It’s an interesting article—one well worth taking the time to read and think about. Among the many interesting issues raised by this article, I was drawn to one in particular—the persistence of religious belief, and what might account for it. Read more

Aug 18

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The Politics of Doing Good

Two articles from Vancouver newspapers today left me scratching my head and feeling a little frustrated. The first is the more high-profile story of a Vancouver church’s dispute with local authorities regarding what services it can and cannot legally offer as a place of worship, and the second a less publicized issue relating to the Vancouver civic workers strike. Read more

Aug 14

3 Comments

A Simulated Theodicy

I was interested to read this article in this morning’s New York Times. According to Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, the chances of human beings and our perceived existence on planet earth being a computer simulation are around 20%. John Tierney, the Times writer covering the story, considers this scenario to be even more likely—”almost a mathematical certainty” once we accept some “pretty reasonable” assumptions. Read more

Aug 8

10 Comments

Ad-trocious

I don’t like advertising.

I resent the exorbitant amounts of money that are spent to convince people to buy things that, in all likelihood, they probably don’t need. I resent the pathetically transparent appeals to human pride and vanity that accompany most commercials, and I resent the level of intelligence that most advertisements implicitly assume of their audiences—as if I am really expected to believe, for example, that shaving with four blades (or is it five now? I can never keep track of how close a shave I ought to be demanding from the manufacturer of my grooming products…) will transform me into a ravishingly handsome fighter pilot, barely able to fend off the hordes of gorgeous women who will inevitably be lured my way by the extra micro-millimeter of hair that I have managed, with the benefit of “fusion” technology, to harvest from my face. Read more

Aug 3

13 Comments

I Give Up! (An Utterly Ridiculous Reflection on Bathroom Technology)

I’ve done a lot of traveling over the past couple of weeks. First, it was back to southern Alberta to spend some time with my family, then up to Edmonton for a speaking engagement, then over to Hepburn, SK for a whirlwind visit with my brother and his family, then back to Lethbridge to spend a week with Naomi’s folks, and then, finally, the long trip back to Vancouver. And then, after only a brief period at home, we were off again—this time to Galiano Island to spend a delightful couple of days enjoying the laid-back island life with friends. We just returned tonight and are now going to settle down around home for the month of August (and try to get some of the work done that I have been putting off for most of the month of July!). Read more

Jul 31

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Religion Poisons Everything?

I’m currently reading Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. While the book is thus far proving to be a much more entertaining and interesting read than, for example, Dawkins’ The God Delusion (Hitchens is just a flat out good writer), I am finding the same troubling tendency to access history selectively—focusing exclusively on the tragically frequent instances where religion has been a (not “the,” as in “the only”—things are rarely that simple) motivating factor in the perpetration of great evil and ignoring the simple fact that religion is responsible for a lot of the good in the world as well. Read more

Jul 25

9 Comments

How Could God Allow this to Happen?

I recently became aware of a tragic automobile accident which claimed the life of a young man and seriously injured a fellow passenger. I don’t know any of the people directly affected by this tragedy personally, but I am aware of many people who do. This death, as all deaths are, will be devastating for a huge network of people connected in a variety of different ways. Read more

Jul 23

18 Comments

What are People For?

I’ve been meaning to write a few (!) words about this article since I came across it in The Globe and Mail several days ago. It’s a review of a book called The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, and while I’ve not read the book yet, I find the premise of the book to be a curious one—one that I’m not sure is best suited for what it is trying to accomplish. Read more

Jul 17

1 Comment

Redemption as Imitation

Well, I apologize for the lack of activity here over the last couple of weeks. The infrequency of my posting is due to the fact that we are out in Alberta and Saskatchewan visiting family and friends. We’ve been out here for just over a week now, and so far we’ve been having a very enjoyable time. Read more

Jul 4

5 Comments

A Necessary Lesson

It’s funny the kinds of situations that produce “teachable moments.” I spent a good chunk of today fruitlessly banging my head against the wall, trying to come up with a workable structure for the class that I will be co-teaching this fall at Columbia Bible College. It was a very frustrating day, and on the trip home my mind was filled with misgivings and anxiety about my ability to do the things that are required of me over the next couple of months. Read more

Jul 2

5 Comments

iInsanity!

Readers of this blog will know that I have mixed feelings regarding the ubiquitous nature of technology in our culture. On the one hand, I am happy to use it for the things that make my job easier; on the other, I resent the way in which I allow it to monopolize my time and dictate the manner in which I engage with the world around me. I resent the way it conditions us to value the immediate, the visually stimulating, the excessive, the spectacular, and the trivial. Technology giveth and technology taketh away; it is a decidedly mixed blessing. This, in a nutshell, is my view on the matter. Read more

Jun 27

10 Comments

All the Good Music Comes from Across the Pond

Throughout the last week or so I have been making incremental additions to my sad excuse for a music library. One of the occupational hazards of being a student is, obviously, a lack of extra funds to explore and purchase new music. I usually get new music twice a year—July and December, when I get a bit of birthday and Christmas money. And as much as I consider Def Leppard’s greatest hits to be a greatly under-appreciated work here at the dawn of the 21st century, I can only listen to the same songs as I bang away on my keyboard for so long until something gives. Read more

Jun 25

2 Comments

Moltmann on the State of the World

I came across these powerful lines, which conclude Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, this morning and thought they would be worth sharing in light of my previous post on the inappropriateness of perpetual happiness in a world plagued by sin and evil. I think that this is a much better (and much more realistic) way of understanding the state of the world and what we ought to do and expect in it:

This means, however, that the hope of resurrection must bring about a new understanding of the world. This world is not the heaven of self-realization, as it was said to be in Idealism. This world is not the hell of self-estrangement, as it is said to be in romanticist and existentialist writing. The world is not yet finished, but is understood as engaged in history. It is therefore the world of possibilities, the world in which we can serve the future, promised truth and righteousness and peace. This is an age of diaspora, or sowing in hope, of self-surrender and sacrifice, for it is an age which stands within the horizon of a new future. Thus self-expenditure in this world, day-to-day love in hope, becomes possible and becomes human within that horizon of expectation which transcends the world. The glory of self-realization and the misery of self-estrangement alike arise from hopelessness in a world of lost horizons. To disclose to it the horizon of the future of the crucified Christ is the task of the Christian Church.

Jun 24

1 Comment

Are You Happy? Should You Be?

The Globe and Mail is currently doing a very interesting feature on happiness. I was particularly intrigued by this article that I came across yesterday which questions our cultural fascination with the “cult of happiness,” both its legitimacy as an enterprise, and its efficiency in achieving the results we crave. We are obsessed with being happy, and when this happiness eludes us, we’re desperate for someone to tell us how to fix the problem. Everywhere we turn, there are no shortages of “life coaches,” psychologists, therapists, and all manner of “happiness experts” eager to lead us (usually for a handsome fee!) to the promised land of rapturous bliss. Read more

Jun 21

2 Comments

The Altruists Paradox

A few days ago, I came across this piece on the nature of altruism from John Tierney in the New York Times. Apparently brain scans conducted at the University of Oregon found that “pleasure areas” of the brain are activated in experiments where participants performed a charitable act, thus demonstrating that there is a biological basis for altruism. Typically results such as this are thought to bolster arguments against theistic belief—if some human behaviour can be shown to produce pleasure its origins must clearly be explained without remainder by evolutionary biology. Read more

Jun 19

4 Comments

Moltmann on Hope

It seems like every second author I’ve come across lately is full of references to some book or other by Jürgen Moltmann. So, this week I decided to start reading him for myself. Suffice it to say that I think I’m starting to see why many find him to be such a compelling voice. This quote, in the middle of a reflection on the nature of Christian hope, stopped me in my tracks: Read more

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