Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Václav Havel - power
"Why is it that people long for political power, and why, when they have achieved it, are they so reluctant to give it up?" (Václav Havel, acceptance speech for the Sonning Prize given for his contribution to European civilization)
We are on the verge of celebrating the greatest abdication of power in the history of the universe. This speech (full text here) is an amazing treatment of the human attitude toward power and serves as a perfect backdrop to consider God's attitude toward it.
We are on the verge of celebrating the greatest abdication of power in the history of the universe. This speech (full text here) is an amazing treatment of the human attitude toward power and serves as a perfect backdrop to consider God's attitude toward it.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Psychology Today: Alternate belief systems
This article squares well with Keller's assertion that atheism or other forms of non-belief are actually alternative belief systems. A quote from the article (full text here):
"One way to explain religious deconversions is to think of them not as a subtraction but as a substitution. When religion departs, science-based humanism jumps in to take its place. "The point you hear again and again," says the anthropologist and biologist David Sloan Wilson, is that "somebody who says 'There's no God' trades the belief in for science. I'm perfectly happy thinking of science as another kind of religion. It's a very specialized kind of religion, in which the stated God is objective knowledge: factual realism."
Note in the last sentence of the article how Dawkins feels a person without some system of morality is an "incomplete person."
"One way to explain religious deconversions is to think of them not as a subtraction but as a substitution. When religion departs, science-based humanism jumps in to take its place. "The point you hear again and again," says the anthropologist and biologist David Sloan Wilson, is that "somebody who says 'There's no God' trades the belief in for science. I'm perfectly happy thinking of science as another kind of religion. It's a very specialized kind of religion, in which the stated God is objective knowledge: factual realism."
Note in the last sentence of the article how Dawkins feels a person without some system of morality is an "incomplete person."
Friday, March 7, 2008
questioning suffering
Suffering exists. True statement? How do we know it exists? How have we come to call one life a "good" life and another a "bad" one due to a great deal of what we call suffering? If there is no God there can be no such thing as suffering. There is nothing to which we can compare our lives. Agree? Disagree?
(Further reading: The article mentioned in the notes for Chapter Two of TRFG, God, Evil and Suffering, by Daniel Howard-Snyder can be found here.)
(Further reading: The article mentioned in the notes for Chapter Two of TRFG, God, Evil and Suffering, by Daniel Howard-Snyder can be found here.)
The Book website
An introduction to the book in a short video by Tim Keller, a few audio messages on some of its topics and a pdf reader's guide can be found at the book's official website here. (also added to sidebar)
Friday, February 29, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
