Category: Beliefs
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DiaBlogue: It Takes Tao to Tango
Alan has kindly responded to my post about hell, but in a way that I must confess leaves me with more questions than answers. I think part of the confusion is that he isn’t clear about whether I’m trying to convince him my views are “true” vs. merely “consistent.” Then…
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DiaBlogue: The Tao of Hell (or perhaps vice versa)
Alan has very kindly and patiently answered all my questions, but appears (understandably) somewhat concerned whether this conversation is ever going to converge: I am just trying to address Ernie’s wondering, and I hope that Ernie will be responding soon with some more details about how he sees these issues.…
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DiaBlogue: Playing God
I thank Alan for his latest round of clarification, which I might summarize as: * The issue is not primarily fairness, but “justice, morality, and goodness” * The argument is primarily ethical (with secondary epistemic concerns) * The eternal nature of God’s punishment is what really bothers him [Read More]…
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DiaBlogue: Putting Descartes Before Da Hearse
In my previous DiaBlogue entry, I made three assertions which underly my belief in “hell”: a. Ethics: Choices have real consequences b. Epistemology: Character, not facts, drive belief c. Theology: God is just not fair Alan responded primarily to the third point, in a way I might summarize as a…
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DiaBloguers Meetup
In a turn of events that I’m sure Alan would ascribe to mere coincidence (though I consider them providential :-), he ended up here in California for Thanksgiving, less than two hours away from my house! We met halfway at the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, where we took the…
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DiaBlogue: Ernie’s Ethical Inferno
Since Alan has so patiently and valiantly attempted to answer all my questions, I will finally answer his: “Do I believe in hell?” The short answer is: Yes, I do believe that the Biblical descriptions of an eternal hell do refer to some sort of meaningful objective reality that await…
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DiaBlogue: Just, The Facts
Alan has kindly revised my Brickman to match his actual position. I think the central point he makes is well stated here: I believe that it is fundamentally unjust to punish someone eternally for choices he makes based on uncertain, incomplete and seemingly contradictory or incoherent information, while being subject…
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DiaBlogue: On Hell, eh? No!
Today’s palindromic title is a response (on several levels) to the latest post/attempt at wordplay from my friend Bucky (aka Alan Lund, aka “Physical Plant”). He is “concerned about getting mired down in philosophical hair-splitting”, and wants me to address what he sees as his “most important problem.” So I…
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DiaBlogue: Belief, Reality & Epistemology
My friend Alan made an excellent point in his response to my last post: while Ernie has made a good faith effort to respond as best he knew how, we are lacking some kind of “meta-agreement”. I do not know quite how to explain that, except to say that I…
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DiaBlogue: A Post-Modern Faith in Jesus, Take 0
My friend Alan Lund was kind enough to reply on Little Endian to my lengthy post, and raises a number of extremely valid questions, which I might summarize as: a. Is that all you believe is empirically knowable? b. Is there anything left worth believing? c. Can we have empirical…
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DiaBlogue: A Post-Modern Faith in Jesus
I’ve recently received a couple of emails regarding friends of friends who’ve “lost faith.” In most cases, they’re rejecting a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity on empirical grounds, with the end result of rejecting all of historic Christianity. While I admire their intellectual honesty, I suspect that part of the problem…
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Thoughts from a Sunday Morning on Purpose
These random notes cover what I was thinking about at church Sunday morning. They were inspired by the worship and message, and resulted in me going up for prayer, though the actual topic (Parable of Soils, Luke 8 ) was only indirectly connected to the various issues I’ve been wrestling…
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Keeping Promises, with John Dawson
I spent a wonderful weekend at Promise Keepers in San Jose with my friend John McClements. It formed an interesting counterpoint to the Web 2.0 conference I had attended earlier that week. One of my favorite talks was by John Dawson , President of YWAM, whose book I had read…
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Intellectuals vs. Faith (?)
Hat tip to Applejack for “Ross Douthat’s exceptional response at The American Scene” to Mark Lilla’s personal essay in the Times Magazine about the loss of his “evangelical” faith. I appreciate how Douthat doesn’t shy away from conceding Mark Lilla’s valid points about the superficiality and cultural conditioning of much…
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On Being a Man, and Marriage
I am working on a statement for a friend regarding my position on sexuality, and wanted to include it here: Deeper than my marriage, deeper even than my sexuality, I am a Man. Whom I am as a man is central to my understanding of my self, my marriage, my…
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Absolute Virtue in a Complex World
Faith is the ability to believe what is absolutely true Hope is the ability to anticipate what is absolutely good Love is the ability to value what is absolutely beautiful [Read More] for the backstory on why I’m writing this at 3:30 AM. Update: Perhaps the following would be more…
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Radical Centrism as charity
Another great post from fellow Christian-physicist-blogger David Mobley, about Politics, rhetoric, insults and charity. This fits in very nicely with my idea of radical middle political dialogue, or even post-modern paternalism. In particular, it reflects my understanding of love as choosing to identify others based on their positive nature, rather…
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Another physicist on Legalism
Another blogging Christian physicist, David Mobley, had a wonderful piece on Holiness and legalism. [Read More] for an excerpt.
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Embracing Completeness: A Manifesto
A Completeness Manifesto (with gratitude to Henri Nouwen, a manifestly wounded healer) To acknowledge Reality is to embrace external In-Completeness To acknowledge Humility is to embrace internal In-Completeness To manifest Character is to embrace internal Completeness To manifest Community is to embrace external Completeness [Read More] for the backstory.
Radically Happy 