Category: Religion

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Deep Thoughts or Daft Ideas? Part V

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All the known sub-atomic particles and force carriers – the fundamental stuff of the universe.

These are the things I know and surmise about quantum physics. It’s not much, I’ll admit, but it is elemental and well sourced. The fact that physicists often refer to the Higgs Boson as the “god particle” is kind of a leaping off point for me. The fact that light sometimes behaves like a stream of particles and sometimes behaves like a wave is another. Theoretical physics can be as opaque, confusing, and malleable as theology if you dig deep enough. As I like to say, since God is the author of religion and of the laws of nature that are the subject of science, whenever science and religion seem to disagree, either the science is incomplete or the religion has been wrongly interpreted.

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Deep Thoughts or Daft Ideas? Part III

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Less an Introduction Than Yet Another Excuse

This is the third installment of my rambling and quite possibly heretical attempt to reconcile Trinitarian theology with string theory. It’s taken me two years to get to this point, which is not entirely my fault…but mostly. At this rate I will never catch up to the voluminous output of the Early Church Fathers and Doctors, but then a lot of them had secretaries and stenographers. I have a 10 year old laptop, an open-source word processor, and I’m not as likely to be put to death or exiled for my flights of theological fancy. Even so, the very thought of being tortured by Tomás de Torquemada, that most notorious Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition and primary designer of the modern bicycle seat, and subsequently burned at the stake for my sloppy logic and leaps of misguided faith has given me serious pause. Please accept my heartfelt apology.

The Early Fathers of the Church.
I don’t know who’s supposed to be whom here. I do have to wonder what these fellows really looked like, don’t you? and what they wore when they weren’t being painted years after they’d died by someone who never saw them in the flesh. Even so, just based on this one image, I’d find it difficult to argue with them, and I’ve argued with Stephen Hawking (although to be honest, he didn’t know it at the time.)
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Deep Thoughts or Daft Ideas? Part II

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Some Thoughts on the Trinity

(I made the mistake of deciding to check my work before I published. Not that the checking itself was a mistake, far from it, but the notion that I could do it quickly and without a lot of head-scratching and ponderments may have been. This is difficult stuff to grasp, and when I went to the early Church Fathers: Augustine, St. John of the Cross, Origen, Hilary, Ambrose, and others for guidance, although I found a wealth of wisdom and depth of analysis, a lot of it is about as interesting to read as tax code. It’s taken a lot longer than I thought it would, and I’m beginning to wonder if theoretical physics, particle mechanics, and string theory are going to be any easier. Plus, it’s just damn difficult to make this breezy, humorous, and irreverent as is my usual style . Bear with me.)

I’m going to start with some thoughts on the Trinity. I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. It resonates for me. It makes sense to me, although it may not make the same kind of sense to you. I accept this. I already know from whence some of the arguments against what I have to say are going to come.

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Deep Thoughts or Daft Ideas? Part I

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I Think. Therefore I Might Be.

fractal black hole artI like to think that I think  deep thoughts. They might not be as deep as I imagine them to be, but that realization does not dissuade me from thinking them. Nor should it…I think.

My latest thought project is trying to link string theory with the Christian mystery of the Triune God. (As you can plainly see, I do not lack for ambition.) Continue reading

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Heaven and Hell

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Hell on TV

Contemplating the Stick and the Carrot

One of the problems with trying live a good life is that we don’t really have a clear idea of what Heaven will be like. Heaven after all is supposed to be the reward that motivates good behavior. If we don’t really have a good idea of what it is like to be in Heaven though, we can’t be very motivated.

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Humility and The Book of Job

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Favorite Lines

My favorite passage from A Cup of Pending is this one from Chapter 3:

“… and that’s the third great lesson of Job. There’s no justice in a world where God makes bets with the Devil for his own amusement.”

Irreverent, sarcastic, a little caustic – this is the kind of line that defines my writing and my usual demeanor. My second favorite passage comes a little earlier in the same chapter when Blanche offers to pray for Cliff and makes a mockery of Christian charity in the process:

She still had a grip on Cliff’s hand. A crowd had started to gather around them, circling like sharks sensing blood in the water. Blanche looked up toward the ceiling, suspended acoustic tile punctuated with fluorescent light fixtures. So fervent was her gaze Cliff almost believed God must be on the other side of the tiles, hiding in the conduit and duct work, just waiting for the chance to bless a petitioner. Continue reading

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Six Steps to Perfect Humility – No Effort Required

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Two Approaches to Humility

Old Rusty Car The Hard One

Real humility is a virtuous ideal embraced by most religions and theologies. There are spiritual exercises and practices designed to engender humility in the individual seeking enlightenment and improvement. Humility is a virtue, a first step, a fundamental principle. Humility is the foundation for charity, piety, discernment, justice, and even faith. Continue reading

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When Lambs Lie Down with Lions

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Bobcat wearing a fedora and smoking a cigarette

Wildlife: Cool? For sure. Friendly? Not necessarily.

Nature Can Be Cruel

Periodically I run into people who claim to be spiritual rather than religious. They believe in a creator, but they do not believe that creator is to be found in any organized church. In fact most of them seem to believe that any form of organized religion is the antithesis of spirituality, and that adherence to the tenets and precepts of a particular faith is one of the surest ways to remove oneself from god’s presence…or to remove god from one’s own, whichever the case might be.

Although I understand where these people are coming from, and what they mean by that, I must confess that I almost always think that they are just making excuses for their inability to embrace their own essence as beings created by the creator they say they believe in.

Usually these irreligionists point to nature as the place where they feel most at peace and most in awe of the god of their understanding. They are not comfortable in church where too many rules and too much ritual and way too many people get in the way of encountering the divine. They see these things as impediments to experiencing the true creative genius of the god they are able to accept. Continue reading