SF & Fantasy Writer, Healthcare IT Consultant, Recovering Academic
This is part of a series of posts about the value of speculative fiction in understanding religion.
Another reason why speculative fiction is cognitively valuable for understanding religion is that both have a strong connection to feelings of awe and … Read the rest
This is part of a series of posts about the value of speculative fiction in understanding religion.
In Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie,” Jack’s mom merits our pity. Her first memory was of her mother eating dirt during a famine … Read the rest
This is part of a series of posts about the value of speculative fiction in understanding religion.
So far I’ve painted a rather dim picture concerning the cognitive value of speculative fiction. But being a speculative fiction writer myself, that’s … Read the rest
This is part of a series of posts about the value of speculative fiction in understanding religion.
I’ve discussed portrayals of religion I think are best avoided in speculative fiction, but how can we understand what makes a of portrayal … Read the rest
This is part of a series of posts about the value of speculative fiction in understanding religion.
I’m editing an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories about religion called Strange Religion, planned to be out in April. So … Read the rest
We construe transcendent God through analogies: God as a loving father, a just or cold-eyed judge, a suffering savior, as Jesus of the Gospel, as victor over Death, as jealous tribal god of the Hebrews, as (war)lord of hosts… Read the rest
Some commentators and translators of the Heart Sutra, leave the mantra at the end untranslated. So sometimes we find:
“The mantra of the perfection of wisdom is stated thus: gate gate pāragate pārasamgate bodhi svāhā.”
and sometimes we … Read the rest
I’ve already discussed how unconvincing I find William Lane Craig’s Moral Argument for God, so it is interesting that there is a cousin to this argument that I find compelling, the Argument from Moral Knowledge:
Some arguments for theism seem to either rest on a metaphysical confusion, like the Ontological Argument. Others might furnish evidence for God, such as the Cosmological Argument and the Argument From Design. But these arguments rarely convince non-theists, … Read the rest
A friend of mine helped one of his friends recover a chapter of her graduate thesis from a corrupted flash drive. Needless to say, she was appreciative and made this clear on Facebook. Amongst the many compliments and comments to … Read the rest