Creatively Advancing into Novelty
“So long as I myself am identical with Nature, I understand what a living nature is as well as I understand my own life…As soon, however, as I separate myself, and with me everything ideal from nature, nothing remains to me but a dead object, and I cease to comprehend how a life outside me…
“The soul is nothing else than the succession of my occasions of experience, extending from birth to the present moment.” —Whitehead Talking about the soul is confusing. I believe my earliest understanding of the soul was instilled in me by my mother at a fairly young age. Hers was a very Jewish understanding of the…
“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…
“At the center of the new philosophy of nature that emerged victorious in the 17th century was a mechanistic doctrine of nature. This position was, in fact, often referred to as the “new mechanical philosophy.” This view of nature had two fundamental dimensions, both of which exemplified the demand that all “occult” qualities and powers…
“Adults may feel that praising children for their inherent qualities helps combat low self-esteem, but it might convey to children that they are valued as a person only when they succeed. When children subsequently fail, they may infer they are unworthy.” – Eddie Brummelman I recently listened to an episode of Homebrewed Christianity in which…
1. Nature is mechanical. 2. Matter is unconscious. 3. Laws of nature are fixed. 4. Total amount of matter and energy are always the same. 5. Nature is purposeless. 6. Biological inheritance is material. 7. Memories are stored as material traces. 8. Mind is in the brain. 9. Telepathy and other psychic phenomena are illusory….
“Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God’s experience, or God is a God of racism.” —James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation I’ve recently been thinking about the connections between beliefs about God, guns/killing, and privilege/power. My views on guns/non-violence/killing humans have changed quite a bit over…
“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,…
“One of the problems with capitalism is that it produces mediocrity but also renders that mediocrity unsustainable: capitalism needs average workers, but capitalist ideology insists that only the exceptional deserve the rewards that would allow them to live a decent life. We see this in almost parodic form in Silicon Valley tech boosterism, where every…
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness…