Spoiler alert (or should I say plot revealer?). If you don’t 1) already know what “Calvary” means and/or 2) don’t want to know some revealing details about the plot, read no further. As I said, this review is a bit of a spoiler – but no more than the title itself. If you know anything about what “Calvary” means, you’ll know how the film must end. Calvary is – get ready for it – the Anglicized version of the Latin... Read more
Academic work, for the modern imagination, is often dominated by the idea that school is but a stepping stone to the next best thing. This is the rat race: One goes to the best pre-K in order to get into the best kindergarten. One goes to the best elementary school to get into the best middle school. One goes to the best middle school to get to the best high school. One goes to the best high school to get... Read more
Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s newest film, may be duly described as spectacular. The film was released in the summer of 2014 and stars Ellar Coltrane (as Mason), Ethan Hawke (as Mason Sr.), Patricia Arquette (as Olivia, Mason’s mom) and Lorelei Linklater (as Samantha, Mason’s sister). If it fails to win Best Picture at the Oscars, I shall consider moving to Canada… or at least to Austin where I could perhaps bunk up in one of the many guesthouses on Linklater’s nearly 40-acre... Read more
For part three of the series on Science and Religion (Go here to review Part One and Part Two), we will explore reality in se and then take a look at various perspectives on reality, which include idealism, realism/critical realism. It’s helpful to recall that when talking about knowing reality, we are dancing on the floor of epistemology. Again, epistemology is the theory of knowledge or the philosophical line of questioning about knowledge and belief. Epistemology asks: How do we... Read more
In anticipation of the release of Lila, her latest novel, in early autumn (available for pre-order now!), I am taking a brief break from the series on science and religion to write an ode to Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer prize winning novel Gilead. I’ve read this beauty of a novel four times in the past three years and had the privilege of teaching through it thrice while adjuncting at Gordon College. It gets better with every read – one of the... Read more
In Part 1 on this series on the relationship of science and religion, I tried to debunk Richard Dawkin’s assertion that faith is belief in a thing without evidence and in the face of contrary evidence by unpacking the very bible verses he alludes to. If you are interested in reading this, click here: Science and Religion Part One. In the next two posts, I hope to begin making the case for the leveling of the playing field between scientific... Read more
This will be at least a three part series exploring the relationship between science and religion. I am currently taking a course with the renowned Professor John Lennox, who is a guest professor for a summer intensive class at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. Dr. Lennox is Oxford Professor of Mathematics, Fellow in Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science, and he teaches for the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme at the Executive Education Centre in Oxford’s Said Business School. Though his... Read more
The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply: ‘Create silence’. Bring men to silence. The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noises, then it would no longer be... Read more
This is part two of a series, which despite its obnoxiously long title, is simply on poems about stars. In the first part, I interact with Robert Frost’s “Take Something Like a Star” and John Keat’s sonnet “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.” Here I engage with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 and a small section of Canto XXVI from Dante’s Paradiso. In part one, we discover something seemingly fundamental to being human, namely we navigate the ways of... Read more
CAVEATS Before I write a word about suffering, it’s important to qualify what I am and am not attempting here. This is precisely what I am NOT doing. I am not attempting to offer an explanation for evil, injustice, and suffering in the world. Nor am I am justifying evil or suffering as if it were a requirement for knowing what goodness is (i.e., we need darkness to know what light is). Nor is this blog post some feeble attempt... Read more
Transcendentalish
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In