The knotty question of free will should avoid the extrreme contrast between total determinism and freedom without constraints. Our dialy experience of making free choices takes place within a finite set of constraints. These constraints are set by our biological inhheritance and our cultural environment. Deliberately cultivated habits such as virtues, even if the seem like they are on autopilot, still represent free will because we chose these habits. Read more
Neurophilosophy based on neuroscience locks human free will up in a deterministic jail. The way to liberate free will is to define it as a form of determinism--that is, as self-determinism. Read more
How do we find hope for the future of our warming planet? CTNS asked Richard Norgaard and Daniel Smith. These two scholars lifted up a vision of God's creation in full ecological health and fecundity. Such worldview construction breeds remedial actions. So we hope. Read more
Can AI become sinful? No. Can AI enhance already sinful human activity? Yes. In particular, according to the author of a new book on AI and Sin, Christopher O'Reilly, the sin AI is best at enhancing is acedia or sloth. So, if you feel slothful, ask AI to help. Well, if you feel up to it, that is. Read more
Public theology includes political and prophetic tasks. The political task begins with worldview construction, with a vision of a future just, sustainable. participatory, and planetary society. The prophetic task begins with discourse clarification, with a critique of extant ideologies that exposes underlying anxiety, self-justification, and scapegoating. These two overlap and complement one another. Read more
Government sponsored corruption and cruelty rattle the religious conscience while MAGA Republican bystanders shamelessly keep their mouths shut. What is a public theologian to do? Read more
When comparing Daniel Sheid with John Hart on the cosmic common good, we ask whether "cosmos" should stick with Earth or include ETI elsewhere in the universe. Read more
Lifting up a vision of the global common good -- a vision of a just, sustainable, participatory, and planetary society -- is the first and necessary step to overcome the selfishness justified by modernity's functional religion, namely, free market economics. Read more
Might there by life on exoplanet K2-18b? Does dimethyl sulfide evidence count as a biosignature? At only 124 lightyears down the street, is it time to invite our new space neighbors to a church basement potluck? Read more
Kurt Gödel’s Afterlife Proof for resurrection of the dead meets the standards of scientific rationality and religious faith. If life in this evolutionary and historical world is meaningful, and if we die before that meaning can attain fulfillment, then it follows that we will enjoy meaningful fulfillment in the afterlife. Happy Easter. Read more
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