Search Results for: papers/490937
Brennan Manning on Singing to Grace
The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions. It calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as a class, forgiving each other after we have hurt each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence. Of such is the kingdom of heaven, and of such homely mysteries is genuine religion made. The conversion from mistrust to trust is a confident quest seeking the spiritual meaning of human existence. Grace abounds and walks around the edges of our everyday experience.
J.L. Mackie on Mind Creating Matter
On the other side, the hypothesis of divine creation is very unlikely. Although if there were a god with the traditional attributes and powers, he would be able and perhaps willing to create such a universe as this, we have to weigh in the scales the likelihood or unlikelihood that there is a god with these attributes and powers. And the key power … is that of fulfilling intentions directly, without any physical or causal mediation, without materials or instruments. There is nothing in our background knowledge that makes it comprehensible, let alone likely, that anything should have such a power. All our knowledge of intention-fulfillment is of embodied intentions being fulfilled indirectly by way of bodily changes and movements which are causally related to the intended result, and where the ability thus to fulfill intentions itself has a causal history, either of evolutionary development or of learning or of both. Only by ignoring such key features do we get an analogue of the supposed divine action.
Kyle Roberts on Blind Spots in Our Thinking
The “blind spot” metaphor is ubiquitous to the point that we hear it with a yawn. But my accident reminded me that, while the familiarity of the metaphor may dull its impact, it is a powerful hidden factor of everyday life. Whether one is driving, theologizing, or debating social issues and public policy, blind spots are pervasive and dangerous. We are often too lazy to crank our necks for the full truth. It’s easier to keep looking ahead and assume all is well. It seems easier—until we crash.
Rebranding Realism
The idea of objective reality really needs a makeover. A reality that is outside of ourselves is the very best of things; it is the prerequisite of every good and perfect thing. And yet, when there’s mention of “objective reality”, many functional and otherwise competent denizens of the 21st century clamor to disavow the possibility of any such thing. Alan Bloom famously noted this phenomenon twenty-five years ago. He attributed this phobia of objective reality to its being associated with loathsome things like “absolutism”, “chauvinism”, “closed-mindedness”, and the like. So, when I say “objective”, you hear, “intolerant”. When you say “subjective”, I’m to hear, “how kind”. Say you, say me, say it together. The idea of “objective reality” — that is, of reality — has been graffitied over with so much toxic paint as to be unrecognizable as the load bearing wall it remains. But tagging realism as the culprit for the sins of the past is not only to falsely accuse, it is also untenable and unlivable. At its most basic, realism is entailed by something, anything existing before or beyond my own consciousness.