Much of what I have to say is critical, but I do not mean any disrespect to my family and friends, or any one else of a particular faith. The purpose of this short essay is to further my project of trying to understand religious belief and to cultivate a certain kind of humility that I find lacking in many religious people. The latter may seem condescending, though I certainly do not intend it to be. When asking for the…
In a recent article, “Exceptionally Articulate: Obama’s eloquence fails to quiet charges that he does not believe in God or America,” a key issue is the relevance of Obama’s faith to his being worthy of being president. The consensus seems to be that most voters would not be happy if he were not a man of faith. I assume that this is because voters think they can judge a lot about a person from his or her beliefs about god….
Life as tapestry: the whole cloth is the great clod, our lives patterns of thread in relation to each other—the patterns, the threads of those dearest to us are interwoven with our own, and in places here and there the interwoven threads merge as our identities flow into each other…. The above is meant to be a poetic expression of the following, hopefully, more philosophically rigorous idea. Having lost my ex-wife, Jennie, to suicide seven months ago (and “ex-wife” does…
1. Introduction In this post I want to consider a number of aspects of the question of whether and to what extent our claims about God’s nature are intelligible. I will begin by considering the question of intelligibility on its own before applying those considerations to some of the things typically said about God in the Judeo-Christian tradition. My conclusion will be that in regard to some things we say about God, e.g., that God is outside space and time,…
If we can be certain of anything, then it is of death (of course) and……not taxes (for one might live where there are no taxes)…..but suffering: death and suffering confront us as part of what it is to be human. Just as we must eat and drink to live, so too we must suffer and eventually die. Much may come between birth and death—real love and fulfillment would be “nice”—but two of the most important questions we should ask ourselves…
A song from Modest Mouse begins with these lyrics: “I was in heaven – I was in hell – Believe in neither – But fear them as well.” Subtract the claim of having been to both and just consider the claim, “I believe in neither heaven nor hell, but I fear them.” Further, suppose someone asserts this with the utmost sincerity. Is there anything strange about that assertion? Is it at all like “Moore’s Paradox”: “It’s raining but I don’t believe it.” ?…
Let us define the number i as equal to the square root of -1. So i cannot be positive or negative, but all real numbers are positive or negative—so i is imaginary. I am pretty much the farthest thing from a mathematician, but i strikes me as being something that we think we have some understanding of, but we really don’t, similar to saying “There is either a red square-circle or there is not a red square-circle.” But the funny…
Before talking about the nature of arguments in my Intro to Logic class, I start off talking about inferential relationships between statements more generally. So I ask them to consider what else must be true , e.g., if “Todd is dead” is true and if “Bob loves Jill” is true. Two of the claims that people said followed from “Todd is dead” were: 1) There is at least one dead person. 2) There is a reason for Todd’s death. I…
I like a look of agony, Because I know it’s true; Men do not sham convulsion Nor simulate a throe. The eyes glaze once, and that is death. Impossible to feign The beads upon the forehead By homely anguish strung. (Emily Dickinson) An important part of seeing what Wittgenstein is up to is to recognize that his starting point when “doing philosophy” is that there are all of these phenomena of life: we talk meaningfully about dreams, the future, sensations,…
I wrote this over the summer when climate change legislation was in the news. But given the recent “scandal” over the hacked climate scientists’ emails, it seems that the main points are newly relevant. A background assumption of what follows is that government legislation is needed because people are not sufficiently motivated on their own to put the necessary changes into effect. The things that I really understand are few and far between, so I would love feedback on the…