Tag: philosophy
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Politicization, polarization, and extremity
I have a philosophy degree; we’re used to exploring different ideas and hearing different viewpoints, in fact we demand it. We demand testing and argumentation. We demand refinement and consistency. So I’ve been listening to the views of many opposing sides. I’ve been immersing myself into the arguments of the ideological right and the ideological…
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Differing perspectives on life and suffering
In contrast to many modernist views, the viewpoint of the ancient world was that life, by its nature, was Dukha. Unhappiness, stress, pain, disappointment. That’s what life is, and the goal of religion and philosophy was to address it. The Judaic religions echoed this by asserting the “fallen” nature of the world. The world is…
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On belief in God
https://youtu.be/TUD3pE3ZsQI A few comments. It’s a long video, but interesting. I don’t agree with everything in it, of course, but it’s interesting. This position sort of comes down to recognizing that, regardless of whether the Judeo-Christian religion is empirically true in all its details, it is at least philosophically, psychologically, and archetypically true, and maybe…
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On concepts and their limits
The limiting problem with concepts, when we focus too tightly on them, is that they obscure and remove the inherent mysteriousness of actual facts and objects. Concepts can only be themselves, consistent within themselves and in opposition to or complementation to other concepts. But actual things tend to be far more messy. The concepts of…
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Why the best teachers don’t give answers
You cannot easily give definitive answers to the deepest problems of life. If you could, they would not be so contentious as they are and provoke so many responses. A good teacher can’t give you all the answers. What a truly good teacher does is to make the questions clearer. The moment of embracing an…
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On atonement
It’s hard to say what my own position on atonement theory is, and I prefer not to share many specific details of what I think. But I’m going to take a stab at articulating it. I suppose I would be classified as a Christian evangelical. But I’m probably overly influenced by people like C.S. Lewis…
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Why evolution is hard for average people to swallow
I think the primary objection many people have to the theory of evolution isn’t the process itself or its vast time scales. It’s the attendant philosophy. One of the core tenants of evolutionary theory is that it has no intended goal, no purpose, no design in mind, no ends. It is an undirected process aimed…
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Tricky modern terms
The tricky thing about using terms like “marginalized” or “disenfranchised” to describe certain groups of people who aren’t doing as well as some other people, is that it ends a discussion that perhaps needed to be had before the current discussion could even begin. By labeling them as marginalized or victimized or disenfranchised, you’ve already…
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