Two goldfish swimming in a fish bowl. One says to the other, “Do you think it’s possible that there’s someone dropping that food for us, aerating the water, turning the light and off, and so on?” “Well,” answers the other… Read More ›
Philosophy of Religion
WELL, THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!
WHY THIS RATHER THAN THAT? As any mother of a small child can tell you, any answer to a why question invites a why to that, and then another to that one, and so on, until the child either declares… Read More ›
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
The birth of the Saviour wasn’t foretold. It was backtold. That doesn’t mean the story is false, though in fact it is. But it does mean the backtellers have to make up a whole lot of the details. Repeat a… Read More ›
THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE
In his Introduction to Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger asked, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It’s a stupid question only in the sense that the answer is so self-evident. Of all the nigh-infinite worlds that could be, there’s only one… Read More ›
CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD (Repost, November 2020)
Presented at the Seventh World Conference on Metaphysics at the Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain, Oct 24-27, 2018 ABSTRACT: By a political theodicy is meant an attempt to harness our theological resources to ameliorate the evil we do and suffer… Read More ›
THE TRUTH ABOUT JESHUA OF NAZARETH
People think that Moses and Jesus and Mohammed must have been incredibly charismatic. I don’t know about Moses or Mohammed. Never met them. But I can tell you that Jeshua of Nazareth was anything but. He was dour, in just… Read More ›
CHARLIE HEBDO VS THE PROPHET
Rightly or wrongly we can decide when we’re more at our leisure; but in the meantime, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice can be taken as pretty much the canon on distributive justice, at least in our relatively affluent Western… Read More ›
AN ANALYSIS OF MIRACLES IN THREE AWKWARD PHILOSOPHICAL MOMENTS
I. What is a Law of the Land? Thomas Hobbes thought that in a state of nature there’s “no government at all, except the government of small families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust,” I’m not sure the concord… Read More ›
SOME UNSOLICITED THEOLOGY FROM A SELF-CONFESSED ATHEIST
A being that wants for nothing wants nothing. That’s why it makes no sense to talk about the self-sufficiency of God. If there was nothing He felt was wanting He wouldn’t have bothered creating anything. But apparently He did. In… Read More ›
CHARLES DARWIN AND DAVID LEWIS
I’m not sure we needed Charles Darwin to alert us to this tautology: Things that persist over time do and things that don’t don’t. I’m not sure this explains anything, but yes, a Monarch butterfly keeps its markings over the… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 