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The first couple of the Ten Commandments (numbering is non-trivial, traditions differ): You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship [...]

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To finishing this particular blog arc on “God”, I thought we’d take a look at the God(dess) of Deacon Duncan from Evangelical Realism. His patron deity is “Reality”, which he names with what he says is the Greek word for reality: “Alethea”. A baby names website defines Alethea as follows: The girl’s name Alethea \a-le-thea\ [...]

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About four weeks ago, Theo Geyser introduced me to Peter Rollins — unfortunately not personally, he just mentioned his latest book. At home, I immediately took a look at Peter’s blog. One of the first posts I read, as it caught my eye and resonated with my ways and thoughts: To be an atheist you [...]

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I much enjoy the Evolving Thoughts blog. One reason is John Wilkins’, um, what would you call it, let’s go with “philosophical sophistication”. See for example his thoughts on the whole Wafergate issue. Or my growing collection of Evolving Thoughts bookmarks. Relevant to the discussions on my blog, Wilkins’ “random thoughts” from a recent post [...]

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I wrote about Dan Dennet’s TED talk on memes before. Right now, I want to talk about a 25 second section out of it, between 5:00 and 5:25: I myself am a philosopher, and one of our occupational hazards is that people ask us what the meaning of life is. You have to have a [...]

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It’s 2:45am, I’m back from a long conversation with a good friend, who’s been thinking/seeking/investigating/philosophising for some time, following a religious experience, in the context of a Christian background and culture and possessing an open and inquiring mind. Very philosophical, and digging down to the very basic axioms of meaning and value in life. The [...]

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People don’t realise the extent of human irrationality. We are emotional creatures. Our emotions are a part of us. Our emotions shape us. Yes, we also have rationality, but emotion and subjective experience is not controlled by rationality. The interplay between the two is complex. Much of human fighting and disconnectedness results from a lack [...]

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A previous post on “What is God?”: What is God?: The Personal God. A long long time ago, but not in a far away galaxy, tribalism was the order of the day, and it was good. Some insist that tribalism is the natural state for humanity. Borrowing a paragraph from Wikipedia’s article on Tribalism: According [...]

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First post in a series… I am not theologically trained, I’m just an electronic or software engineer that turned amateur theology into my official thesis procrastination project. (This was a part of the process of deconstructing and defeating the harmful memes that had lodged themselves in my mind, as well as figuring out how best [...]

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In the context of heated arguments between Dawkins fanboys and freer thinkers : can I request that everyone taking part in such debates first read Terry Eagleton’s review of The God Delusion, titled Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching? There is much material in it that is relevant to this kind of discussion. I would much love it [...]

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