Dag Hammarskjold, in his personal diary, wrote: Respect for the word – to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of truth – is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.To misuse the word is to show contempt for man. It undermines the …
Do we have free will, or are all of our thoughts and actions predetermined? People have debated this topic for thousands of years, without conclusively settling the matter. Determinism has its attractions, but even those who believe in pure determinism act, for all practical purposes, as if they have libertarian free will. What does the …
Like all good poems, the Pogues “Tuesday Morning” is derived from a Biblical theme. In this case, from my favorite Psalm. Psalm 13 says: How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have …
Many of our friends reacted with horror when they first found out we are raising our children Christian. The common response is something like, “I don’t want my children to be indoctrinated; I want them to be able to make up their own mind when they are old enough to decide!”. They eventually come to …
I’ve always been uncomfortable with people who defend Christianity by appealing to an innate human sense of “aesthetics” or “beauty”. Christianity is ugly and repulsive. Christ was the stone that the builders rejected. The ugliness of Jesus is the central theme of Martin Luther’s “Heidelberg Disputation”, which he penned in 1518. When I first read …
I just finished reading Peter Sloterdjik’s tribute to Derrida, titled “Derrida, An Egyptian”. Postmodern deconstructionists are generally clowns, but the book was fantastic. Sloterdjik does a beautiful job. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book: A sharp-witted hetero-Egyptian brought into Egypt through a second distortion could indeed have the ability to understand …
New York Times today reveals that Robin Hanson, one of the smartest bloggers alive, has experienced some marital strain as a result of his quest for immortality. This is very relevant to our recent discussion about the soul’s immortality. When afflicted by “love”, people are often jealous and possessive. When I was about 10 years …
Every now and then, you meet a “former Christian” who explains how painful it was to lose his cushy job at the seminary, his financial security, all of his friends, and his social standing by abandoning the faith. This is a tragedy on two levels. First, it’s a tragedy for the guy who is going …
If God made me this way, how can it be a sin? If I was born this way, how can I be punished for it? What kind of “justice” punishes me for something I have no control over? Freedom of choice is often illusory. Modern science has collected reams of evidence showing that we’re often …
I spent several years convincing Christians to give up their religious beliefs. I felt that most Christians had absolutely terrible reasons for believing, and I loved challenging them to defend their reasons. Much later, it began to dawn on me that the reasons they eventually accepted for being atheist were just as bad as the …