Paul Revere for our time? On my reading, Yuval Noah Harari has made telling a deadly serious cautionary tale his mission. In his books, Sapiens, and Homo Deus,—full disclosure: I'm still reading through Homo Deus (I'm processing my provisional understandings of Harari's thought here on the blog in real time)—Harari paints a troubling picture of a … Continue reading No free will? →

  Sapiens (wise)? For illustrations in my two most recent blog posts I've quoted passages from a (NY Times bestselling) book by historian Yuval Noah Harari entitled, Sapiens. The subtitle is: A Brief History of Humankind. Any work so ambitious necessarily uses lots of shorthand. While I have no lack of instances where my view diverges … Continue reading Six+ kinds of humans →

  Problem with Or? Pioneers or settlers. Thinkers or feelers. Introverts or extroverts. So forth or so on. If there are only two kinds of people, then the list of possible iterations for those two kinds must be endless. Some divisions possess extraordinary power, e.g., accepted or rejected, rich or poor, esteemed or reviled, and, … Continue reading Language gap →

  Multiple universes? I don't understand the math on it, however, at least one stream of string theory postulates that there are infinite universes all happening now. They don't say, but I imagine all the universes are operating within the same Eternity. Perhaps there are infinite concurrent eternities, too, and they just haven't worked out the … Continue reading Gyrations? →

Now fifteen years on  Last week I broke out a piece of my credo from seminary ['E X P E R I E N C E']. It seems my credo sent me a note across time. We'll come back to that.   Reverse engineering These past eight weeks we've been (loosely) considering the problem of … Continue reading Eat a peach →

G-d in experience? An essential piece of any conception of mysticism is experience. What are we talking about when we use the word experience? Because objections to mystical religion often quickly surface—e.g., the perennial difficulties with experience: discernment and falsifiability/authority. What of enthusiasm?   Nuts and bolts Drawing heavily from Randy Maddox's work concerning John … Continue reading E X P E R I E N C E →

'Mysticism,' so what? [pt. 2] The institutional form[s] of second-hand religion may fittingly be thought of as a "dead man walking." Please allow me to explain.   'Forms' and being/doing church Sadly, in my lifetime the Church (the one on the ground in ordinary neighborhoods near and far) has essentially ignored much, if any, teaching, or even … Continue reading Second-hand religion? →