“Does the universe hold levels of emergence beyond individual consciousness, beyond the collective accomplishments of human societies? Might the cooperative awareness of billions of humans ultimately give rise to new collective phenomena as yet unimagined? If higher stages of emergence await our discovery, then science and theology may someday converge into a more unified vision of the cosmos and our place in it” (Robert M. Hazen, Genesis: the scientific quest for life’s origin (Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2005) pp.245-246) Read more

This is to inform regular readers that my blogging will be at best sporadic over the next couple of weeks, if it happens at all. I won’t call it a hiatus, since I don’t know for sure that I won’t be blogging, but I will not have regular computer access until well into the new year. So that’s why I’m taking this opportunity to wish you a happy start to 2008. Happy new year! Read more

I don’t put much stock in these quizzes, many of which are repetative, have either-or questions where one might wish to say ‘both/and’, and sometimes asks questions that I might regard as in themselves fundamentally flawed. But since several other blogs I read seem to include these sorts of quiz results, I decided to try it and share this… Which theologian are you?created with QuizFarm.com You scored as Friedrich Schleiermacher You seek to make inner feeling and awareness of God... Read more

I regularly comment on spam for the sake of the gullible who might fall for the various scams and hoaxes that are around. But I suspect that the most common form of spam that makes it into our inboxes rather than our spam filters comes from well-intentioned relatives and friends who say things like “This is a must read” or “I know this probably isn’t true but…” or even “I saw this and thought that you (in this case “you”... Read more

I’m bound to have a number of reflections on episodes of Heroes over the coming weeks and most likely months (I will need to return the DVDs to the public library before I’ll have time to watch the whole first season). In this post we reflect on the revelations in the episode “Six Months Earlier” about the character “Sylar”. Is there anyone who doesn’t feel at some point the way he did, that that they are “meant for something more”,... Read more

I just recently began watching Heroes – from the beginning of season 1. I have done this with several series that I didn’t start watching from the beginning but had recommended to me later. (It was good to have something to do during the long hours of computer problem resolution besides staring at the screen watching it reboot for the nth time). The first question I found myself asking is whether Heroes or The 4400 came first. Of course, I... Read more

Apparently searching for “sex hermaphrodites” can lead one to my page on Intelligent Design and Gnosticism. I don’t find either word on that post. Perhaps among the comments? Anyway, apologies to anyone who comes to my blog via a search engine and finds the contents don’t quite live up to what they were expecting. I’m guessing this person found what they were looking for, though, since apparently it was on the seventh page of search results. If such a search... Read more

More spam to highlight on the slight chance that gullible Google key words before falling for this scam. If one were foolish enough to believe it, they would have to believe that Toyota gives away money and/or cars for free to random people, when at the same time they are so financially strapped that their employees in charge of the distribution of all this money are forced to use free Hotmail and/or Yahoo! addresses. Please learn critical thinking skills if... Read more

I would hope that most readers will read the title of this entry and think first of the closing segment of the movie The Matrix. Alas, my use of the phrase here is far more mundane. Windows Vista finally crashed on me utterly and completely. I’m attempting to reinstall Windows XP and there are still a few glitches but progress is being made. It is time for someone to tell me again why I should switch to Linux. Perhaps I... Read more

There’s only one thing that needs to be said today… HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS! (if you are reading this in England, you have my permission to have a happy Christmas instead). Read more