Follow-Up to Information and Meaning
On March 2 I posted Information and Meaning. This cartoon by Bill Watterson is an appropriate follow-up to that blog post. In three frames this philosophical cartoonist captures the angst of many regarding both meaninglessness and medications of choice. (Click on the comic for a larger image.)
Continue readingWe Started Turning Feral
Tana French opens chapter six of Broken Harbour with two paragraphs of philosophical musing by her protagonist, Mick “Scorcher” Kennedy. He reminisces about the way things were and then he states that something has changed. Somewhere along the line “we started turning feral.” I remember this country back when I was growing up. We went…
Continue readingHope in You
Regardless of one’s philosophical or spiritual perspective, the words found in the middle of 1 Peter 3:15 in the Bible are helpful. There we read that we are to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” As a follower of…
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Moral Law
Lately, with two different groups of people, I have been discussing how one arrives at universal moral laws. Here is Bill Watterson‘s light-hearted look at the question. His tongue-in-cheek analysis is certainly better than several philosophers I have read. Over the years, as I have read “Calvin and Hobbes” comics, I have often noted a…
Continue readingContact
I watched the 1997 movie Contact once again. I love this movie because most of the time it seems to be truly wrestling with questions of philosophy, science, and theology. It asks questions that don’t get answered (just like real life). It recognizes that there are fundamentalist zealot Christians and there are fundamental zealot scientists.…
Continue readingCuriosity
On Sunday August 7, Discovery Channel premiered a new series: “Curiosity.” The first episode was a show entitled “Did God Create the Universe?” The episode was narrated by Stephen Hawking and presented his own arguments and scientific explanations. The show is available online here. Stephen Hawking continues to be a man that both amazes me…
Continue readingMathematics
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to…
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Let’s Get Small
No, I am not referring to the 1970s comedy routine by Steve Martin. This blog is about how we humans perceive ourselves in the universe. Who are we? How are we different from the other life forms on this planet (or other life forms in the universe)? What is our function in this world and…
Continue readingDescartes and Niettzche
Lesslie Newbigin (1909 – 1998) was a missionary and theologian in India and England. He has written some brilliant books including The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (SPCK/Eerdmans/WCC, 1989) and the one I am now reading, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Eerdmans, 1995). It is a short book, not difficult to…
Continue readingPhilosophy Is Dead
Stephen Hawking says that philosophy is dead. In his new book, The Grand Design*, he asks questions like, “How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves?” “How does the universe behave?” Where did all this come from?” “Did the universe need a creator?” Then he states, “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy,…
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