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
Tag: Religion
Trial in Majority
My story “Trial in Majority” was originally podcasted by Simultaneous Times (starting at 12:01) last month. First time anyone has been so kind as to compose music based on my work!
Posting it here for anyone that wants to read … Read the rest
The Nonsense End of the Heart Sutra?
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
A Compelling Argument for God
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:
- We have knowledge
A Very Bad Argument for God
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
On Giving God More Than His Due
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
God, Author of the Bible
In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Jorge Luis Borges playfully suggests through an unreliable narrator that Don Quixote could have been written twice, once by Miguel de Cervantes in the seventieth-century and again by a fictional French … Read the rest
Can a Religious Outsider Be a Theologian?
When I was an undergraduate studying religion and a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School I was taught that theology is written by religious insiders, and theologians are religious insiders. Non-Christians cannot be theologians of Christianity or write Christian theology, … Read the rest
Understand Before You Criticize
Once when I was discussing a paper topic with Frank Clooney, I told him I wanted to critique some parts of the ritual theory of a third-century Indian thinker by the name of Shabara. He asked me, “Have … Read the rest
Boy Scouts of America “Belief in God” Is Just a Shibboleth
I’m an Eagle Scout, have a Master’s in religion from a prestigious university, and I don’t shy from calling myself an atheist, so I have an uncommon perspective on Boy Scouts of America. In truth, I’m glad BSA is … Read the rest