“Love: We crave it so badly. Makes you wanna laugh out loud when you receive it. And gobble it like candy” (“Love” by Paul Simon from his 2000 album, You’re the One).
-
-
The Demise of Word
This morning I wrote a string of sentences that use the plural of the noun ‘text’. For example, I wrote: “Promise texts tell us that God guarantees to save those who persevere.” Microsoft Word underlined ‘tell’ indicating some grammatical error. “What error?” I wondered. After wracking my brains for an answer, I asked Word for some suggestions. It gave me one: ‘to tell’. I realized that Microsoft have deemed it more likely that when someone is writing ‘texts’, he or she is using it as a verb, not a noun. ‘Promise’ is thus the name of a person and she is texting to tell us that God guarantees to save…
-
Kenosis: Why God Can’t Choose to Lose His Powers
According to some versions of the doctrine of kenosis, God, the Son, suspended the use of some of his divine powers while he walked the earth. The doctrine is generally taken to mean that Jesus voluntarily suspended the use of some of his powers while he walked the earth. His powers were not lessened in any way and, like a powerful army during peacetime, he could use them at any moment. However, according to other versions of kenosis, the doctrine implies that one divine power is the power to give up some powers for some time. On this view, Jesus not only restricts his use of some powers while on…
-
Arguments and Eggs
Compare these three writers and their use of the humble egg. First, there is C.S Lewis whose use of the egg is found in his famous liar, lunatic, Lord argument. If a man claims to be God but isn’t, then he is either a lunatic or a liar. According to Lewis, a lunatic is the kind of person who says he is a poached egg: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not…
-
If Materialism is True, Then Everything Stinks
There is a difference between being materialistic and being a materialist. If you are materialistic, you value material things above non-material things. By materialism I don’t mean the valuing of material things. What I mean is the view that there is nothing that exists that is immaterial. A material thing is some entity which is possible to experience. Some material things are so small you can’t see them, but it would be possible to experience them if one’s senses were adequate or if the thing in question was bigger. Of course, if you are a materialist, then you will very likely be materialistic. That’s all there is, after all. What…
-
How to Prevent Facebook Becoming a Bar Brawl
There is a rumor going around that it is not possible to have a civil debate on social media. While there is certainly some truth to this at this juncture in our history, it seems odd to think that one media is the kind of media that renders arguments and discourse powerless. Surely, an argument is as good on Facebook as it is on a printed page. There is no reason to think a person cannot reasonably talk to other people on Facebook and think rationally about some issue and all the while restrain their temper. We have managed this for years in all sorts of formats. Telling ourselves that…
-
Faith: The Ultimate Underdog
I was at mile twenty and pretty sure there was no way I could finish. Mile twenty has a name for marathoners: “the wall.” It’s when you think you can go no further. I was there. I was spent, all out of juice, dead in the water. It is commonly said that faith is at mile twenty; it’s dead on arrival, a dying trade, a disappearing, unnecessary artifact from a bygone era. The culture is like the voice in the runner’s head: it’s time to quit! Atheists think faith has had its day. Sam Harris says that our faith is “the permission that religious people give one another to believe…
-
Presuppositions and Public Discourse
When my students get a Latin test they make mistakes because they attempt to translate sentences according to what they think I would say. For instance, consider the following sentence: vīnum virōs cōservat The English translation is: wine preserves men However, nearly everyone in the class translated the sentence as: the men preserve the wine What explains the mistake? Presuppositions. Given that most of them know their Latin endings, they should be able to work out that ‘wine’ is a nominative singular and ‘men’ is accusative plural. It seems that the most likely explanation for their mistake is a presupposition. A presupposition in interpreting speech or writing is what we…