In Mirror, Mirror: Religion Gets Explained, But Science …, we hear a pretty typical account of religion from scientific quarters: A number of authors … have suggested that the human proclivity for acquiring and transmitting supernatural agent concepts is an incidental byproduct of cognitive mechanisms genetically adapted for other purposes. … have argued that religions … Read more →
After saying that big is bad, one of the writers chiefly responsible for my opposition to all things large has to go and ruin my simple categories. This passage from Wendell Berry’s Life is a Miracle is to blame: Freedom in both science and art probably depends upon enlarging the context of our work, increasing … Read more →
Jac and I are reading The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch very sporadically, but tonight’s session produced some particularly juicy food for thought. Hirsch contends that discipleship became very difficult during the modern period, as three powerful forces competed with the call of discipleship to Christ. These were: The rise of capitalism and of the … Read more →
From Pope John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, § 31-32: …there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification. Who, for instance, could assess critically the countless scientific findings upon which modern life is based? Who could personally … Read more →
10 myths — and 10 truths — about atheism – Los Angeles Times This article is written by Sam Harris, a fairly fundamentalist atheist in the ilk of Richard Dawkins. I first heard about him in a Wired article that describes how Atheism has fallen on pretty hard times as of late, and personalities like … Read more →
I have to save all of my creative juice for essays at the moment, but here’s a couple of posts that I’m finding particularly interesting: Erika Haub blogs about reclaiming some aspects of the parish model. Keep reading into the comments, because she makes the interesting comment that the urban missional church that she helps … Read more →