In a blog posting a week or so ago, I stated that the central contribution of 20th-century science was the shattering of absolutes. There is a corollary: The importance of everything.
Articles with Religious naturalism
Detail from "Great Piece of Turf" by Albrecht Dürer (1503)
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
On prayer
The earliest prayer I can remember is “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
"Pepper No. 30" by Edward Weston (1930)
More clearly than the eyes see
My recent Musing about Virginia Woolf’s “moments of being” sparked a thread of comment about those elusive incidents of attentiveness and insight when we are lifted out of the “gray wool” of everyday life and permitted to feel an intense connection with the world beyond our selves.
Photo by Jonas Weckschmied on Unsplash
In the morning of the world
We knew the morning was special when we saw the blue meadow.
Photo by Robynne Hu on Unsplash
The end is near?
Ray Kurzweil is back. The in-your-face futurist/inventor from Massachusetts has a new book — “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” — that touts the tipping point when silicon, not carbon, becomes the basis for intelligent life on Earth.
Photo by Francesco Gallarotti on Unsplash
Pathways to God
This past Wednesday I was asked by the director of the Stonehill College Honor’s Program to talk to the students about intelligent design. The title of my talk was “Why ‘Intelligent Design’ Is Not Science — and Bad Religion.”
Photo by Charlotte Harrison on Unsplash
Mr. Blue Redux
Sometime during my sophomore year at the University of Notre Dame, in 1955 – 56, my girl friend (now my wife) gave me a copy of Myles Connolly’s novella, “Mr. Blue.”
The Orion nebula • NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Public Domain)
A peephole to the gods?
Under truly dark skies our ancestors saw the middle “star” of Orion’s sword as a tiny smudge of light. The Englishman William Derham, who wrote on cosmology in the early 18th century, believed the glow in Orion was a opening in the celestial sphere through which we observe the radiance of God.
Photo by Mark de Jong on Unsplash
Can a skeptic pray?
When two pagan Irish princesses, daughters of King Laoghaire, asked Patrick about his God, he is said to have answered: “Our God is the God of all things, the God of the sky and earth, the God of sea and stream, the God of sun and moon, the God of the great high mountains and the deep glens, the God of heaven, in heaven and under heaven.”
"Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" by Ludolf Backhuysen (1695)
Gladdening smiles, mournful tears
The stained glass window above the altar of St. Andrew’s Anglican Church on the island of Exuma shows Christ stilling the waters of the Sea of Galilee. However, the waters in the window do not seem particularly threatening, nor do the apostles seem anxious.