I'm retiring the blog and just leaving the introduction here on the site. Thanks to all who were paying attention! May the Spirit of God be with you ..read more

I was rereading my post from the other day (“Medicine and chocolate cake“) and I was wondering what the heck was my point. It seemed important at the time, but I couldn’t figure out (1) what I was getting at and (2) why I didn’t explain it better. I was thinking about this all day ..read more

When we get what we desire, we tend to call that "good," and when we don't, we tend to call that "bad." But if everything that comes from God is by definition good, the question you might ask is "why aren't we getting what we want ..read more

Does it matter if the Christmas play your eight year old is in is factually correct? Not at all. What matters is the story and the message it conveys ..read more

One of the main arguments against any religious belief is that it “isn’t scientific.” Not very often does anyone reply “well, why should it be?” Take a quick inventory of what makes life worthwhile: spending time with family & friends, being in love, scaling a mountain, eating chocolate cake, etc. None of these things is scientific. Anyone who tries to reduce (for example) romantic love to science is missing the whole point. For a lot of people, one of the things that makes life worthwhile is their faith. They would no sooner give up their faith than they would betray their soul mate. So ..read more

One of the definitions of the word revelation is “the divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence or the world” — it is this sense that I’m using the term here; I’m not referring to the last book in the New Testament. The history of Christianity includes many people having revelations about God, Jesus, prayer, sacraments or existence in general. The problem with a revelation is that it’s hard to tell if it is divinely inspired or just some crazy idea that popped into your head. Some Christian denominations teach their members to expect revelations (mess ..read more

I’ve removed all of the old content (300+ pages) to make way for a new launch of the site. Please keep an eye out for the new material coming soon. I’ve been struggling with the problem of how to make this material more understandable; in a very real way, it is a “chicken and egg” problem — it’s hard to know what to put first because everything relies on everything else, making the entire subject a “web of belief” as Quine would call it. In addition to my go-to writers that I quote often (e.g., Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard), I can tell you that in the last year I’ve discovered some othe ..read more

Hear it at https://youtu.be/Oyk0O9xAjfU In the Christian church there have always been mystics. Although many of them have been viewed with suspicion, some have gained favor in the eyesof the authorities. The experiences of these have been treated as precedents, and a codified system of mystical theology has been based upon them, in which everything ..read more

Hear it at: https://youtu.be/kCdREvA7O0E Over and over again in these lectures I have raised points and left themopen and unfinished until we should have come to the subject of Mysticism.Some of you, I fear, may have smiled as you noted my reiteratedpostponements. But now the hour has come when mysticism must be faced in good ..read more

Hi folks! I’ve opened up all of the content from the very start of the blog. I’m sorry if that caused you to get a lot of emails in a row the other day; I didn’t realize that this would happen. Since all of the site content is open, you will find duplicate posts and ..read more