For the feastday

I thought I’d observe the feast of St. Anselm today by pointing readers to a truly remarkable little essay by Brandon Watson on Anselm’s argument for God’s existence in Chapter 2 of the Proslogion. Though written three years ago, and garnering zero comment, it’s well worth discussing. I’d like to initiate discussion of it here.
To [...]

Thank non-God for Science and thank Science for non-God!

So, the claim is that modern physical science is the deliverance of our Stone Age brains from the cognitive myopia we evolved over eons, yes?
Science at last gives us the precise apparatus we need as a species to overcome the crude folk theories of ontology, physics, biology, and ethics which we have simply picked up [...]

No such animal…

If there is no such thing as a straight line, there is no such thing as a crooked line.
Likewise, if there is no such thing as truth, there is no such thing as lying.
If no one is ever absolutely right, no one is ever absolutely wrong, and therefore no one is ever absolutely guilty of [...]

The most important thing…

What is the most important thing you did yesterday, or will do today?
What is the most important thing you did last year, or will do this year?
What is the most important thing you have done, or will do, in your whole life?
The answer in every case is: “Jesus Christ died for me.”
The most important thing [...]

Not hurting anyone, that I could see…

In our day it is a common claim that morality is about enhancing other people’s (as well as animals’) pleasure, while wrongdoing consists in causing people needless pain. Let us call this principle hedonistic utilitarianism. It is the ethos often invoked to defend homosexuality and pornography. “Hey, you might not like them yourself,” hedonistic utilitarians [...]

Foregone forgiveness and guaranteed gifts…

AXIOM: If everything is necessary, nothing is gratuitous.
POSTULATE: Forgiveness and gift-giving are intrinsically gratuitous.
SUB-POSTULATE 1: A non-gratuitous gift is a contradiction in terms, just as ineluctable forgiveness is morally incoherent.
EXAMPLE 1: If I force you to bring about a “forgiveness event” on John’s behalf then I have simply forced you to act in such and [...]

Free to be determined…

“It is a repressive, medieval myth that homosexuality is a perversion of human nature. There is no such thing as an ‘essential human nature’. Homosexuals ought to be able to marry each other; to demand otherwise is a violation of their basic human rights. Homosexuality is as essential a part of human nature as heterosexuality [...]

My soul is not I…

I recently came across a quotation from Graham Oppy that included the following statements:
“…I take it that our ‘mental’ states are nothing other than certain kinds of [1] states of our brains. … the welter of information that we possess concerning neural deficits, and the nature of various kinds of physical impacts on our ‘minds,’ [...]

“So you say I kicked you,” he answered…

A boy is seated on a doctor’s medical examination bed, his shoeless feet dangling over the edge. His doctor approaches and gives him a perfunctory greeting. He then removes a small rubber hammer from his white coat pocket. The boy is in a frisky mood. Just as the doctor crouches to examine the man’s joint [...]

Why, naturalism, naturally…

If you punch 2 + 2 and then = into a calculator, and it shows 5, is it wrong? Naturalistically, nothing malfunctioned in the calculator; its circuitry is flawless. Why is the calculator wrong about its sum but your “neurolator” is correct?
A naturalist believes that what he is saying and typing at any point in [...]

Just so many luscious theories to deflower…

“There is still so much in this life to learn,” he uttered, with the hint of tears in his eyes. “Don’t stop at one point and stay there,” he counseled his disciples.
Then, alas, Leopold rose his hand and slid his hood back past his ears. “Is there any thing to learn that we should not [...]

Religious education is an oxymoron…

Angus: “Religion and education have no place being together. Religion is about converting people to a specific set of beliefs and values. Education is about giving people skills and knowledge that equips them to function in the real world. Religion is inherently sectarian; education is meant to be universal. Religious schools can’t function like real [...]

In the age of godmaking…

Here’s the received wisdom:
Humans have long suffered from various emotional and psychological needs and fears. So, seeing as the real world is harsh, indifferent, and unresponsive to these needs, humans in every age have fabricated gods and godlets to meet every little need. Finally, however, mankind has been freed from this craven superstitiousness and can [...]

Well, everybody I know online is doing it…!

I recently recommended a book to a friend. We were online chatting in Gmail and a few moments after I endorsed the book, he replied that the book had earned “only mediocre reviews on Amazon.” I was a bit stymied. After all, I myself, his close friend of several years, had just endorsed the book [...]

Burn and pop…

“Cherokee and other ritual specialists used deer tongues in divination, by throwing them onto a fire using the manner in which they burned or popped to forecast sickness or health, success or failure, drought or rainfall….”
– Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian (Norton, 1999), p. 155.
Neuroscientists and other physiological specialists use neurons in prognosis, by [...]

If you know the answer, please raise your foot…

Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between the size of students’ feet and their reading ability. Statistically speaking, the bigger a student’s shoe size is, the better his reading level is.
Pretty neat, huh? Maybe you should buy your kids bigger shoes just to encourage them!
EXERCISE FOR THE READER:
My entire factoid, while true, is a [...]

If you are a determinist…

…you will, by your own confession, live your whole effortless life and die your one purposeless death without ever having done anything. If determinism is true, no one an no-thing has ever done anything on and of its own; only “things have happened” as a function of blind, unsleeping Nature. You have never done and [...]

Called up, now walk…

Walk how? Largely irrelevant. Provided you keep walking.
All are called up to Him, out of the prison of themselves. All are called upward to the Holy of Holies, away from the Folly of Follies: men and women on toilets they call thrones. All are called up the same flight of stairs, lit by the same [...]