Theology
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Sorry for the dearth of posting around here lately; things have been pretty busy. Among other things, I’m starting a new job this week, so I can’t promise the same level of scintillating content that VI readers are used to. We’ll have to see how things go. However, this weekend I had the chance to Read more
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Slate has an interesting article about the faltering of Conservative Judaism. As neither ultra-conservative like the Orthodox, nor ultra-liberal like the Reform branch, Conservative Judaism has, according to this piece, had a hard time negotiating the tensions between tradition and modernity from a principled position: Take the issue of the ordination of gay rabbis. It’s Read more
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Up until this point, Keith Ward has been arguing that the findings of modern science can point to, even if not demonstrably prove, the existince of an infinite mind that underlies and upholds the physical world in existence. But this is a far cry from what most of us mean when we talk about God. Read more
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Previously we saw that a major difference between a strictly scientific or naturalistic worldview and a supernaturalistic or theistic one is whether or not personal existence is taken to be a derivative and ultimately reducible facet of non-personal existence. Another way of putting it might be to ask which is a more fundamental form of Read more
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Just wanted to call your attention to some of the excellent comments on these two posts. I haven’t had time to respond to all of them, but I’m really glad to get comments of such caliber here. (Of course, the post on booze has generated more comments than either of them.) Also, see this discussion Read more
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In part one of Pascal’s Fire Keith Ward emphasized the ways in which the best contemporary science is consistent with, and maybe even suggestive of, belief in God. In part two he goes one step further to look at the ways in which science falls short of offering an exhaustive description and explanation of reality. Read more
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David Bentley Hart’s The Doors of the Sea is, in large part, a sharp rejoinder to any “theodicy” that would seek to make evil – physical, natural, or moral – a necessary means to the acheivement of some good. As such, it provides a useful counterpoint to the kind of account offered by Keith Ward. Read more
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Pretty much everything I know about quantum theory I learned from reading Stephenen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and I’ve always been wary of people who attempt to draw broad philosophical implications from it. To Keith Ward’s credit, though, he is pretty circumspect in his treatment of the topic. Unlike earlier major scientific revolutions Read more
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Ward takes the theory of evolution as established, at least in its main outlines, but he does question some of the interpretations often given of evolution, especially by “evangelical atheists” like Richard Dawkins. While it’s possible to see evolution as simply an interplay of randomness and the pressures of survivial, it’s also possible, he thinks, Read more
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In Part One, “The Formation of the Scientific Worldview,” Ward examines four major advancements in scientific thinking whose impact extended well beyond the fields in which they originated. These are the heliocentric theory of the solar system, associated with Copernicus and Galileo, Newton’s laws of motion, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the advent of quantum Read more
A Thinking Reed 