June 3, 2008

I recently was made aware of the interesting experience of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, who had a stroke that resulted in an experience akin to that described by Buddhists as Nirvana. There is a web page about her work entitled My Stroke Of Insight, as well as the video clip below. I’m very interested in discussing and exploring the relationship between my own religious experience, psychology, and neuroscience. I am often in two minds (if you’ll excuse the pun) about... Read more

June 3, 2008

As many readers will know, my second book, The Only True God, is due to appear in Spring 2009. I’m currently filling in the author’s questionnaire for the publisher, University of Illinois Press. For marketing purposes, I need to answer questions about courses that might adopt the book as a textbook, journals and magazines that might usefully run an ad or draw attention to the book, scholarly list-servs and other such venues where it might usefully be discussed, and so... Read more

June 2, 2008

Some people have been subtly “tricked” into an educational experience. The TV show LOST, for instance, has subtly introduced some viewers into science fiction who thought they hated it. Some still do, but some have had their horizons broadened, and that is what education is all about. Then there are the more obvious references to philosophers and their ideas, which many have gone and explored. Much like the Matrix films, LOST has taken philosophy and packaged it for an audience... Read more

June 2, 2008

There are some things for which one can pay someone else to do them. Hire someone to clean your home. Pay a driver to drive you somewhere. If your house isn’t clean, fire the housekeeper. If you are not taken to your destination, don’t pay the chauffeur. There are other cases where one pays for an experience rather than a service, and you simply cannot approach matters in the same way as in the aforementioned instances. You can hire sherpas... Read more

May 31, 2008

Carmen Andres kindly chose me as one of her five blogs that make her think and make her day. Thanks Carmen! Now all I have to do is whittle down my own list to a mere five and pass on the honor…and that’s not easy! But I will choose five, as I must… Thoughts in a HaystackFind and Ye Shall SeekForbidden GospelsPonderings on a Faith JourneyMetacatholic And now, here are the runners up: Chrisendom, Abnormal Interests, A Guy In The... Read more

May 31, 2008

We had a bad thunderstorm pass through Indianapolis yesterday, and there’s a power line down in my back yard. If I blog, it will be from the office (where I came this morning not first and foremost to blog, but to move the contents of our freezer into our nice new empty office fridge’s freezer). There’s a lot of discussion of LOST around the blogosphere (and presumably in lots of places). Bob Cornwall has blogged about the rise and fall... Read more

May 29, 2008

Tonight’s season finale certainly didn’t disappoint – and now we have indeed found some spoilers to have been true. We also know a bit more about what will happen next season on LOST. But there are a lot of details in tonight’s episode that we’ll be pondering for the rest of the series, and perhaps longer. John Locke is dead, but the action will take us back to before that happened, and Locke will be an important character off the... Read more

May 29, 2008

Tonight will be the season finale of LOST, when we are sure to be wowed once again and then left wondering and with a painful sense of withdrawal until the next season. There have been multiple allusions to The Wizard Of Oz, and the fact that the finale is called “There’s No Place Like Home” should make us wonder whether, for the survivors on the island, like Dorothy in Oz, the key to returning home was with them all along.... Read more

May 28, 2008

I probably should have included it in my last post, since it touches on the book of Job, but here’s a link to an article in Worship Connection by Matt Kelley entitled “Collaborative Preaching: Teaching Others the Art of Holy Conversation“. Matt was one of the very first religion majors I got to know at Butler University. Read more

May 28, 2008

I was planning on posting on this subject anyway, but I then got tagged with a meme by Lingamish, and so the original idea will have a longer prelude and the post will have a slightly different form. The meme began at Elizaphanian. It poses the following questions: 1. if the nature of god is omnipotent, benevolent, and anthropomorphic (that god is a person, who sees suffering as wrong, and can change all of it), why does god not act... Read more


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