There was a time during the early twentieth century when Albert Einstein was a virtual celebrity. His work created buzz, his public appearances were characterized by mobs of adoring fans — he was like a rock star before rock stars were even a thing. Those days have seen something of a resurgence. Neil deGrasse Tyson […]
Category: Postmodernism
Agnosticism for Dummies Christians
I am kicking around this idea for a book called Agnosticism for Dummies Christians. Who knows if it’ll ever see the light of day, but I think the idea deserves a few posts (if for no other reason than to see if it strikes a chord with anyone). I would like to offer a suggestion: […]
Nihilism, Grace, and the Religion of the Rose
I just returned from a Caribbean cruise (my life is hard), and I brought two books with me: Chuck Klosterman’s The Visible Man, and John D. Caputo’s Hoping against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim. The former is a novel and is the one I was planning on reading (to be honest I wasn’t expecting to crack […]
Is God Dead?
I have been reading a bit of Irish philosopher/theologian Peter Rollins recently, as well as listening to some of his talks on YouTube. His reading of the Christian tradition is quite radical and subversive, and I am not convinced I have really “gotten” him quite yet. In an effort to further that along, then, I […]
I Am an Agnostic
(And so are you.) Here’s what I mean: Agnosticism refers to what we can claim to “know” (gnosis being the Greek word for “knowledge”). An agnostic, then, is simply someone who doesn’t know something about a particular subject. The Latin equivalent of agnosticism is “ignorance” — if someone asks you whether you agree with the […]
Scientists and Superstitious Simpletons
I am sick and tired of hearing about the supposed “objectivity” of science and scientific inquiry. The claim goes like this: Belief systems, whether religious or secular, deal in supernatural issues like the afterlife, morality, and the state of the soul. Science, on the other hand, deals in brute facts, and therefore needs to be […]