Divine Hiddenness

I keep run­ning across the ques­tion (or objec­tion, depend­ing on how it’s phrased), “Why does God hide him­self?” or “Why does God reveal Him­self to some peo­ple, but not to oth­ers”. In reply my answer is, ‘I’ll have to think about that’. Which in part means that I’m not going to accept out of hand that God hides him­self, as I think that pre­sumes too much, namely, that I know every way which God reveals Him­self (also that I’m capa­ble of rec­og­niz­ing them). As for why God reveals Him­self to some but not to oth­ers, well, I think there are a num­ber of rea­sons for that, prob­a­bly most com­mon is, “some peo­ple aren’t lis­ten­ing”, followed…

Could I be Wrong?

The fol­low­ing is a fun (well, at least I had fun writ­ing it) dia­logue I wrote ear­lier today on one of the forums I’ve recently stopped reg­u­larly fre­quent­ing. It con­cerns the ques­tion ‘are you will­ing to admit you might be wrong?’ The dia­logue was writ­ten in reply to some­one who dis­agreed with me (did not think such an admis­sion should be made). -=-=-=-=- Char­ac­ters: Socrates, Glau­con Set­ting: After speak­ing with Euthy­phro, Socrates is stopped by the Sophist Glau­con, a first year phi­los­o­phy stu­dent who thinks he’s learned it all. Glau­con has heard the accu­sa­tion that Socrates is cor­rupt­ing the youth, teach­ing the young about ‘the God’ and deny­ing the gods of the poets. Glau­con pro­ceeds to…

One for the Many

Exam­i­na­tion is again the source of a change of views, in this case, how I imag­ine God oper­ates. In think­ing about the sort of moral dilemma that pits a loved one against many strangers (e.g. such as sac­ri­fic­ing a son, for a train­load of strangers), I’ve always imag­ined that God would be of the opin­ion of sac­ri­fic­ing the least amount of peo­ple for the greater good of the most amount of peo­ple, i.e. God ‘sac­ri­ficed’ Jesus, the one for the many. But that isn’t right — God sac­ri­ficed Him­self, or at least the third per­son of the Trin­ity who became incar­nate sac­ri­ficed Him­self (but that is the same thing, is it not? Such con­fu­sion with…

A Quick Thought on Euthyphro

Socrates’ younger friend, Euthy­phro, has under­taken pros­e­cu­tion of his father for mur­der­ing a slave (or so Euthy­phro says); that is, his father bound and tied a field laborer who, in a fit of drunken rage, killed a domes­tic ser­vant. In this con­di­tion the field laborer was thrown into a ditch until word could be fetched from an Athen­ian diviner as to how to han­dle the laborer. While wait­ing for word, the slave died. It is with this back­ground that the well-known Euthy­phro has been for­mu­lated: Socrates: Then, my friend, I remark with sur­prise that you have not answered the ques­tion which I have asked. For I cer­tainly did not ask you to tell me what…

Semi-Coherent thoughts

I find it both curi­ous and amaz­ing that for many, belief — such a fun­da­men­tal and basic thing — is so frag­ile. It only takes one idea: a ques­tion, an objec­tion or an appeal to the emo­tions, and the seed of doubt has been planted, and a con­fused and fren­zied descent has begun. It is as if ques­tion­ing were the antithe­sis to belief, and I sus­pect for uncrit­i­cal peo­ple (which are many in this ‘day and age’)  it is. An appeal to the emo­tions, the “pas­sions” — this seems to me the most likely cause of peo­ples lack or rejec­tion of faith, rather than argu­ments. Many of us hide behind cal­cu­lated thoughts — logic and…

Peter S. Williams — Atheists Against Darwinism

EP (Evan­gel­i­cal Philo­soph­i­cal) Soci­ety has fea­tured an inter­est­ing arti­cle by Peter S. Williams on “Athe­ists against Dar­win­ism” which exam­ines an inter­est­ing trend rever­sal — that is, athe­ists defend­ing ID, and Chris­tians defend­ing Dar­win. The arti­cle can be found here. Excerpt: “A log is a seem­ing solid object, but a wedge can even­tu­ally split it by pen­e­trat­ing a crack and grad­u­ally widen­ing the split. In this case the ide­ol­ogy of sci­en­tific mate­ri­al­ism is the appar­ently solid log. The widen­ing crack is the impor­tant but seldom-recognized dif­fer­ence between the facts revealed by sci­en­tific inves­ti­ga­tion and the mate­ri­al­ist phi­los­o­phy that dom­i­nates the sci­en­tific cul­ture.” – Phillip E. John­son It was one of the “Top Ten Dar­win and Design…

Sensationalist “Heretics”

I haven’t done this in a while, this is a reply of sorts to Spencer Burke’s arti­cle “The Illu­sion of the ‘Emerg­ing Church’” which can be found at: http://www.theooze.com/articles/article.cfm?id=2407. I find com­ment­ing on these kinds of arti­cles dif­fi­cult, not because I don’t know what to say (often times, I have too many things to say and don’t know where to begin), but because I don’t so much dis­agree (though I do dis­agree) as find a few of the things being said to be unwise. Spencer Burke is an author, and in my mind that makes him a teacher, a leader, and some­one who other peo­ple look up to and fol­low. One of the things Burke…

Paul Copan: Yahweh Wars

Paul Copan recently pub­lished a response to the crit­i­cisms he had received on his arti­cle “Is Yah­weh a Moral Mon­ster?” titled “Yah­weh Wars and the Canaan­ites”. You can click the links to go to their respec­tive arti­cles. Both worth read­ing, and both (in my opin­ion) inter­est­ing reads. On an entirely dif­fer­ent note, I’ve recently got­ten mar­ried and am mov­ing across the (my) coun­try, which has been the focus of the last few months. When every­thing is done and I’m “set­tled in,” I should begin pro­duc­ing more (bet­ter, hope­fully) con­tent again, prob­a­bly mid-July. Edit* Make that some time before Sep­tem­ber. While I’ll have con­tent writ­ten, I won’t have a sta­ble enough con­nec­tion to update reg­u­larly, though there…

Foundations of morality

Over the past cou­ple of days I had a pleas­ant con­ver­sa­tion with a math­e­mati­cian (actu­ally, a Ger­man math­e­mati­cian, if that makes any dif­fer­ence) con­cern­ing the foun­da­tions of morality–what are they? And one thing that was even­tu­ally brought up was my the­ist lean­ings, and his a-theist lean­ings. I, of course, was accused of being a moral abso­lutist and unable to make any mean­ing­ful moral state­ments. I in turn pres­sured him to pro­vide a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the exis­tence of moral­ity apart from our per­cep­tions (does our belief in moral­ity cor­re­spond to some­thing in real­ity). To make mat­ters “worse,” we were approach­ing the ques­tion — and each other — with com­pletely dif­fer­ent pre­sup­po­si­tions. As near as I could…

Brick Walls and Trampolines

I’ve re-opened a book I thought I had long closed, Rob Bell’s Vel­vet Elvis. Back in 2005 it caused some­thing of a craze and a con­tro­versy, espe­cially at the (appar­ent) sug­ges­tion that the vir­gin birth — among other doc­trines — was effec­tively unnec­es­sary (but don’t worry, I’m not going to dis­cuss the vir­gin birth). The rea­son I’ve re-opened this book is because my post yes­ter­day night was, in fact, “inspired” by Rob Bell. What I want to do with this post is dis­cuss in detail Bell’s illus­tra­tions, and then dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions of what he is teach­ing. There would appear to be mul­ti­ple inter­pre­ta­tions of this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion of Bell’s writ­ing, so I’ll keep  those…