Creatively Advancing into Novelty
…We exist simultaneously in cultural and natural ways that are inextricably tangled. We are always already situated in an intersubjective (and thereby already cultural), spatiotemporal, fleshy (and thereby already natural) world before we creatively adopt a personal position in it. Moreover, nothing determines us from the outside or inside, precisely because we are from the…
Measurements of human brain signals on the level of neurons and synapses have long shown that acts of will are preceded by a buildup of neural activity in the brain. These signals can begin up to seconds before a person is consciously aware of the exercise of volition, according to the weight of data, Tse…
I recently read a great blog post by Matthew McCracken on Job and the evil that God brings upon him. Citing a commentary found on the AUFS blog, Matthew focuses on one verse in particular found in the prologue of Job: “…all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.” It’s this “narrative concession”…
An individual entity is that which acts and feels as one. To feel in this context means to take account of the environment such that the individual is, at least in part, constituted by such taking account. An electron is an example of an individual entity. An electron at one end of the universe is…
They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything–all she had to live on.” – Mark 12:44 In the above verse, Jesus is basically defining generosity by examining the effect the gift had on the life of the giver. The gifts of the rich people were meaningless in…
“Darwin saw every reason to predict that this evolution of human cooperation would, after the nineteenth century, continue to even higher levels. “Looking to future generations,” he predicted in the Descent of Man, “there is no cause to fear that the social instincts will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow…
This post originally appeared as part of Toy Adams’ Imaging Jesus Advent Series. Go check out the rest of the great submissions. … I’m not a huge fan of the gnostic Christian sects that existed in the early centuries–you know, the kind that were “silenced” by the rest of orthodox christianity. I say I’m not…
This is a comment I left on Tony Jones’ blog a while back when he posed the questions: what is a “person?” Warning: I quote John Cobb (no surprise there). What is a “person?” Well, let’s start small. Multicellular organisms can loosely be divided into two categories: One type establishes order among cells through their…
Introduction First, a confession: I view nature as being full of indestructible polarities. They’re everywhere. Things like positive/negative, male/female, competition/corporation, chaos/order, are all examples of these type of naturally occurring complementary pairs. Further, I really like when Integral Philosophers like Steve McIntosh talk about the dialectic advance of Evolution in which the two polarities are…
“Jesus was not a pansy. Nor was Jesus “a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand, and a commitment to make someone bleed,” as Mark Driscoll has contended. “Fight Club” may have been a good movie, but it makes for really bad theology. Mark may see things like “kindness,…