theology

In most theologies, it is said that God created the material world. It is also said that God is (1) omnipresent, (2) omnipotent, and (3) omniscient; that God knows the future and the past. It is also said that God is an unchanging, eternal, immaterial being and the root of all existence. Unless God is itself subject to linear time, the idea that God “created” anything is absurd. The idea of “creating” something necessarily implies that there was a time before that thing was created. From the “perspective” (I’ll explain the scare quotes below) of being everywhere and everywhen in one’s “now,” nothing is ever created. It always exists, has always existence, and will always exist, from God’s perspective, because Read More ›

A few days ago we had a post on Science, Miracles, and Benny Hinn, highlighting portions of Bill Dembski’s new online book The Faces of Miracles.  It seems appropriate this time of year to consider miracles.  After all, in the Christian world, this month we’re celebrating an event that can only be described as a miracle: the virgin birth of Christ.  So what exactly do we mean by the term “miracle”?  In the book, In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History, Richard Purtill provides this definition: A miracle is an event that is brought about by the power of God that is a temporary exception to the ordinary course of nature for the purpose of Read More ›

Some of us try not to wade into theology as such very much for the same reasons as we try to avoid taking a whack at the tarbaby. Where theology is directly relevant – for example if someone claims that there is an “artistic license to lie” about traditional religious ideas about the universe, well, we don’t have much choice, do we? Just recently, a troubling statement emerged: A notion of theology that suggests it is somehow counter-real or anti-real. A priest explains, in a post mainly devoted to issues in the Vatican’s media office: But on the communications front, 2018 demonstrated amply that it is not the supposed “enemies” of the pope who cause the Holy Father the most Read More ›

A piece of mine has been just published in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC’s) excellent Religion and Ethics website. It provides a larger context for my own theologically positive approach to ID, which I realize is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, like Gregory Sandstrom, I welcome johnnyb’s intervention, which raises the issue of which companies an ID supporter would invest in (or not). I personally find the choices a bit on the Rorschach side of plausibility — i.e. it tells us more about the beliefs of the proposer. So Eric Holloway is happy to regard ‘gamers’ as ‘human’ in a way that has not been contaminated by the AI ideology of Kurzweil et al., so he doesn’t see their Read More ›