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This is a book of problems without answers—at least not yet. The central thesis is that Jewish philosophy can no longer be done as it has been for the past two centuries.1 I will begin by stating what modern Jewish philosophy is and then explain why it has failed. This argument will constitute the majority…
This exploration aims to resolve the fundamental split between two diametrically opposed worldviews in the present day: the critical disjunction between the evolutionary story of the universe as described by modern science since the time of Darwin (1859) and the traditional Gospel story of God’s self-communication in Jesus Christ that informs the lives of up to…
About twenty years ago, at the age of sixty-five, I wrote a kind of autobiography, entitled Confessions of an Original Sinner (published in 1990). It was fairly well received, and here and there is still in print. It was an auto-history rather than a routine autobiography. (I started it with two sentences: “This is not…
Thomas Henry Huxley, the Victorian biologist, was so vocal in defending Darwinism against its opponents that he became known as “Darwin’s bulldog”. In his essays, Huxley was often critical of both Christian theology and the church and even went so far as to coin the term agnosticism to describe his rejection of spiritual reasoning in…
Dawn Adrian is founder of Tapestry Institute on science and native wisdom. The following is from her opening plenary address at the 2009 Metanexus conference, “Cosmos, Nature, Culture,” held in Phoenix, AZ. The vision of “Cosmos, Nature, and Culture” I share with you this evening is multidisciplinary, as suits the nature of this meeting and…
INTRODUCTION The first true question we would propose is: can the manifestation of the human anthropology be exclusively explained in terms of brain actions, in extensive sense, or does it require the addition of new ontological essences that imply doubts about (even the destruction of) the monism principle? This complicate question, in my opinion, is…
Martin Luther once responded to a critic by saying, “Even if I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today.” Was this merely foolish bravado, or did Luther actually have a theological basis for his answer, which in large measure, we have forgotten today? In my response to…
Why do people turn to religion and spirituality? There is considerable cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental evidence that religion serves as a refuge from a number of negative psychological experiences or emotions, and compensation needs. All this evidence gives support to classic theorists who have emphasized the defensive function of religion against frustration, anxiety, fear, deprivation,…
To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.1 ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα hen oÌda hoti oudÈn oÌdaI(I know that I know nothing!2) – Socrates INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATION I open the reflections…
The creation of God is a unitary act, here is the reason for which the expression “created the Heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) does not reflect a dual reality, or, in other words, something undefined by unity. But this unitary reality has lost its primary meaning because of man’s intemperate character and behavior. That…