Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” — Isaiah 45:7 I’ve been listening and reading a lot about the Devil in relation to Christian theology lately. Yesterday I listened to the “Devilpalooza” episode of Homebrewed Christianity which featured Richard Beck talking about…
“If a political party receives a tenth of all votes but no representation in government, can we claim the system is democratic and people’s voices are being heard? Should an international political body, bank or committee be able to decide the destiny of a country and its government? It is clear that democracy is struggling,…
“According to this view the mind is best understood as a complex and dynamic system, always in process, always changing, growing, and becoming more diverse and differentiated. At the same time they grow in internal complexity, ecosystems also become more integrated and specialized, filling up their niches and fostering symbioses. Ecosystems are composed of a…
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;”” John 11:25 Good Friday is the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus. There are a few theories out there regarding why Good Friday is called “Good Friday.” The one…
“One pulse of enjoyment follows another, and, as their number grows, all the pulses form the serial society we call the soul. It is like a growing pile of coins. Each pulse takes in all the frozen data from its predecessors and adds novel feelings of its own. The occasion does not passively copy the…
“I don’t believe in God but I’m very interested in her.” –Arthur C. Clarke I recently listened to another great interview with theologian/philosopher, LeRon Shults. Every time I listen to LeRon he challenges me and gets me thinking. I really appreciate this about him. Reflecting back, though, every time I hear LeRon talk about his…
“No matter how politically successful either the left or the right becomes, our democracy will always have some version of the other side.” –Steve McIntosh I’ve been reading a lot of lengthy, in-depth write-ups lately claiming to have diagnosed the Trump phenomenon. Two of the better ones I’ve read were written by Amanda Taub, at Vox,…
“It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration.” –Whitehead … “It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is…
“I agree there are differences between race and gender. The differences have to do precisely with the unique forms of oppression that have been constellated in relation to each historically. I’m less convinced by attempts to draw lines separating “culture” from “nature.” It’s misleading to simply say that gender is learned (and so contingent) and…
“One reason that a profound moral improvement of humankind is hard to envision is that it seems difficult to pull ourselves up morally by our own bootstraps; our attempts at improvement are going to be made by the unimproved. The people who implement the singularity, mess about with the genome, prescribe the medication, preach the…