Browsed by
Category: Philosophy and Religion

The Great Clod: Earth, Identity, and Death

The Great Clod: Earth, Identity, and Death

Comments 0 Comment

Taoism strikes me as similar to quantum mechanics in at least one respect: if you claim to grasp it, then you don’t. Nevertheless, that doesn’t preclude approaching an understanding of either. In his What is Taoism? H.G. Creel has an excellent chapter entitled, “The Great Clod”—a chapter that is quite helpful in regard to one aspect of Taoism. In explaining the meaning and role of “the Great Clod” in Taoism, Creel quotes, in order to set up a contrast, a…

Read More Read More

When Death Comes

When Death Comes

Comments 0 Comment

The first poem I ever learned by heart was Mary Oliver’s “When Death Comes.” When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox; when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of…

Read More Read More

Buddhism and the Genius of Meditation

Buddhism and the Genius of Meditation

Comments 0 Comment

Enlightened? No! Buddhist master? No. Buddhist? Working on it. But Buddhist or no, I have been practicing a form of Buddhist meditation, again, for the past month and four days. This is something I’ve been doing (mostly) off and on for the past fifteen years or so. I’m pretty terrible at it. In fact, I composed the gist of this essay while “meditating” this morning. I’ve got a nice spot in an upstairs room in the house I’m renting in…

Read More Read More

Why So Many Disagreements Are Just So Damn Intractable

Why So Many Disagreements Are Just So Damn Intractable

Comments 2 comments

In a recent essay, I made a distinction between what I called epistemic reasons and purely causal reasons. The former are potentially truth preserving (capable of providing epistemic justification) the latter are not even potentially truth preserving (and thus are incapable of providing epistemic justification). In this essay, I’m going to appeal to the same basic distinction regarding reasons that do and do not provide epistemic justification, but I’m going to refer to them simply as epistemic reasons (ERs) and…

Read More Read More

A Difficult Dilemma: Deny that Humanity is Fallen or Deny Evolution?

A Difficult Dilemma: Deny that Humanity is Fallen or Deny Evolution?

Comments 7 comments

I find Christianity (and Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) perplexing. I suppose Kierkegaard would want me to embrace this feeling (as regards Christianity). I admit my perplexity because I do not want to come across as angry or hostile in these essays. I really want to understand religion and humankind’s possible relationship with the divine better. One of the things that troubles me with Christianity is the claim that it is only through Christ that one can achieve salvation, which I…

Read More Read More

Why are you a Christian (Muslim, Jew, etc.)?

Why are you a Christian (Muslim, Jew, etc.)?

Comments 0 Comment

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…

Read More Read More

Language and the Intelligibility of God

Language and the Intelligibility of God

Comments 0 Comment

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,…

Read More Read More

Three Attitudes Toward Suffering — Choices, Choices, Choices

Three Attitudes Toward Suffering — Choices, Choices, Choices

Comments 1 comment

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…

Read More Read More

Possible Reasons for Endorsing Some Kind of Theism

Possible Reasons for Endorsing Some Kind of Theism

Comments 5 comments

What follows is that outline considering possible reasons for endorsing some kind of theism. Importantly, it is just an outline; so its details need to be filled in. Were that filling in to occur, I’m sure that certain points might get modified, added, or rejected. Further, a lot of it is based on things I have written about more extensively in my notebooks and as such a number of things will be presented that might not make sense or for…

Read More Read More

The Dangers of Religious Extremism

The Dangers of Religious Extremism

Comments 0 Comment

In my last blog post, I indicated that I believed that the religious extremes that dominate public discussion of religion are dangerous. Here I will briefly give reasons for thinking that is true. To begin, I consider atheism and agnosticism to both be religious perspectives simply because they concern religion or religious issues. So one can be an atheist and still be a religious extremist. In my last post I wrote: “On the one hand, there are those who openly,…

Read More Read More