though we know it not

a poem

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/11/herder-on-the-dream-of-life.html

and a question

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2009/03/fred-sommers-abandons-whitehead-and-metaphysics-for-logic.html

finally

It's quite gratifying to get good marks occasionally. My last two (in both senses - I probably won't be doing any more philosophy for a while, if ever) philosophy courses gained me A+s to help drag my grade point average up a little. I feel an A+ in philosophy is somehow particularly noble, though am not sure why. I finally feel too like I might finally be almost living up to my potential in philosophy. But to balance this, I know I didn't put a huge amount of work in to the courses, particularly the second one. Lectures were missed and revision largely consisted in me trying to reinvent the field with the help of the internet, as that was more interesting. I didn't have much background in it for a stage 3 course and to be honest, it seems I snuck in between the academic cracks using my native intelligence; competing against people who, as interested as they may claim to be in philosophy, have been blessed with less of this as well as with less interesting ideas (i.e. I know how to be controversial without going too far) and of course, along with everyone else I've been taking advantage of general grade inflation. I find it hard to believe that high marks in advanced courses have always been given out so easily as they would seem to be now, particularly in Arts courses.

Comparing all this with my molecular biology papers is potentially a little depressing, but to some extent the same goes there, in that I don't have much background in this field either - the difference is that in that realm, it actually shows up in my marks. I can start to see the stereotype of an Arts degree kind of course in my philosophy papers; pity I've only really just got used to the art of intelligently bullsh*tting as that part of my degree comes to an end. Of course, I tend to believe what I write, but I know full well that it isn't particularly rigorous or even, usually, novel - I just also know that it's better than what my classmates are writing.

Taking another tack, I particularly enjoy getting good marks for defending Christian orthodoxy in fields which are generally presumed to have 'gotten over it'. Perhaps I have postmodernism and the tolerant pluralistic society to thank, but I'm seeing that Christian faith stands up well when articulated clearly and when in critical dialogue with other options on offer in the marketplace of ideas.

Where, o death? Pike River

So it turns out the the miners trapped at the Pike River Coal Mine have died, perhaps en masse - in the recent second explosion if they weren't already killed in the first.

Thousands of people around New Zealand prayed that they might be discovered alive; from the prime minister downwards - but it looks like this hope won't be fulfilled for any of the remaining miners. Were these prayers pointless? Is it time to shrug in confusion and continue life as usual, or reassess how we're going about it all? "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die"?

Is prayer just a futile attempted exercise in wish fulfillment? Is it necessarily silly? Is the universe ultimately a giant fluke of many atoms, bizarrely ordered; and occasionally heart-wrenchingly disordered, with no-one pulling any strings - or somewhere out there is there someone who cares? Where's the evidence? What kind of evidence do we want?

Why do people die? Why do many die 'before their time'? What is a life well lived and what is robbed from those who die early; and if there is any such thing, by whom is it stolen? If life is not perfect, or if we are not, what is the cause? Where do the ideals we have come from and do they hold any real value?

Death comes for all of us. Some of us are killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, others by an explosion, others by cancer, car crashes, drowning, heart attack, murder or chilling accident. Life matters. I hold too, that the ending of a life is truly significant. It's not just a subtle shift in the configuration of a particular collocation of atoms. But why might I think this?


I commend to your attention and study 1 Cor: 15, particularly from verse 12 onwards. I like the option this site gives you to 'listen' to the scriptures; why not check it out?

to keep up a theme - may as well stay true to the blog's subtitle

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

In my travels I've met a number of committed people of faith from non-Christian families, in some of the most unexpected places, like the Anglican Church - now I've almost come to expect it when out and about in churchy circles.

Here's one I haven't met, a New Zealander who's associated with people I have. Here he briefly talks about marriage and what it might mean, a topic on which I have no clue but am also starting to develop some views. I'll leave the discussion to him. The blog is a collective one called 'kiwifruit' as it's about bearing fruit of the gospel here in New Zealand.

http://www.kiwifruitblog.org/2010/11/dont-hide-distinctives.html#more

women of the reformation

struggling to find something to post here - too much to do and rather little motivation

this was interesting tho: http://theresurgence.com/2010/11/14/awesome-women-of-the-reformation

nano to meet you

it seems to me that out of Christians involved in the upper echelons of science, a disproportionate number are involved in Nanotechnology. Why is this? Is Nanotechnology not real science or is it particularly good science, is it coincidence, or am I quite wrong in my supposition?

I think, at least, of James Tour, Cees Dekker, Richard Smalley (deceased, Nobel Prize), Jeff Tallon (NZ) and a couple of British professors at Oxford and Imperial College whose names I can't remember.

Soon I'll write an article of some kind vaguely relating to this kind of thing.

In the mean-time, for some pretty pictures, here's a project relating to one of these people:
http://ceesdekkerlab.tudelft.nl/art-of-science/

yet, I see

A piece of prose from Jack Kerouak, turned into free-flowing poetry of sorts by moi
(apparently this section provides the context)

Yet I saw the cross
just then
when I closed my eyes
after writing all this.
I cant escape its mysterious
penetration
into all this brutality.

I just simply
SEE it
all the time,
even the Greek cross
sometimes.
I hope it will
all turn out true.

random quotes, sayings and stuff like that

"Anyone who can say with a straight face that Hitler was a Christian.. overdid the plastic surgery." - me

"abortion is highly questionable" - an atheist philosopher from a top UK university

"Wenn du dass glaubst, werdst du mich sehen und verstehen was ich mein wenn ich sag ich will Frei sein." Xavier Naidoo

[Christianity] “was dreamed up by illiterate goatherds 2,000 years ago” – AC Grayling

"If you don’t like the fact that God has intentions for your life, I suggest you simply do not know what those intentions are." - me

[my name] isn't rich

but Google's sponsored links seem to think so. I sent an email to a friend mentioning "the economics of energy markets" and Google gave me an ad on the sidebar for a BMW dealer in NZ. That was kind of them. Sending emails about science or philosophy (or God!) don't seem to have the same result.

Perhaps this is a hint that I really should keep going with the economics if I want to make money. Fortunately for my sanity, I've given up the "make lots of moolah" plan. I'd probs go with a Porsche anyway.

sermon draft: the beginning of the Church; radical Jesus community

picture of a model of the 2nd temple in Jerusalem, courtesy of Wikipedia

(From the NET Bible):
Acts 2:42 They were devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 2:43 Reverential awe came over everyone, and many wonders and miraculous signs came about by the apostles. 2:44 All who believed were together and held everything in common, 2:45 and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need. 2:46 Every day they continued to gather together by common consent in the temple courts, breaking bread from house to house, sharing their food with glad and humble hearts, 2:47 praising God and having the good will of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.

---

If you know much about the book of Acts, you may have noticed that today’s passage gives an account directly following the event of Pentecost, in Jerusalem. I wonder though, does anyone know what the original Jewish festival was about? Why were people celebrating it and why was it called ‘Pentecost’, for instance?

..

It celebrated the giving of the law on Mt Sinai, after Israel’s central event figuring and prefiguring salvation – the Exodus from Egypt. God had saved his people from slavery in Egypt, the time partly covered in the movies “Joseph, Prince of Dreams” and “Moses, Prince of Egypt”. This was celebrated yearly at the time of the Passover. And then, after Egypt, God gave a framework for his community; the law, including the 10 commandments. The feast of the law, or the feast of weeks as it came 7 weeks after Passover, was the feast of Pentecost.

Jesus was crucified at the time of the Passover festival, we find in all 4 gospels – and in the light of this new, final salvation event, God creates a new community, at the feast of Pentecost. It’s over simplifying it, but we could say that while the old community of Israel was centred on the Law of God – the new Israel, was a community of the love of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The new community is the Church, a vibrant, attractive, missional community. Let’s look at what this passage says about what it means to be a part of this community.

I’m fairly convinced that the Church is worth being committed to. Christian community is worth my time, worth our time. The early Church agreed; we see in our passage in Acts that they met every day, fellowshipping together, praying, eating together and devoting themselves to the doctrine, the teaching of the apostles.

But the modern world disagrees with me; if you agree with me about the importance of Christian community, it probably disagrees with you too, tho perhaps in different ways. Many of you have been around longer than me, so you know what it’s like. Sometimes it disagrees emphatically, but generally apathetically; sometimes I’d also say just pathetically. What we don’t see so much in the modern world is what we read about in this passage in Acts. A little while after Jesus’ death and resurrection the number of people identifying themselves as following Jesus in community in Jerusalem had just grown from 120 to 3000plus people and it was still growing. People joined up on a daily basis.
In New Zealand, how many churches could claim this? None, let us be honest. Now some tell us that in fact we see a trend towards disbelief that can only continue; we see atheists loud and proud, in certain areas anyway, including some populist billboards. Atheists are a real phenomenon and I think most of the church has ignored them for too long. It seems to me that we see people asking questions that have already been answered (to some extent) by the Church, but they don’t know it because the Church is not, unlike the Church of Acts, saying anything in public. We see other religions increasingly prominently in our country as well – if we cede the public sphere further in favour of some kind of privatised religion, we will probably see people converting to these other religions because they claim to offer something the secular world does not. I think we’ve seen this for quite a while in things like the popularity of psychics, crystals, horoscopes and other New Age phenomena. But all of this is not the whole story; the extent to which Christian faith is widespread and maybe even growing, under the secular and pluralist surface continues to amaze me sometimes – I could give various examples. It’s not all bad news for the Church, by any means.

We do have a Church in New Zealand and we will for many years to come, of some sort. Yet frankly what I think we, the reasonably affluent western Church of middle class suburbia, lack in comparison to Acts is the devotion in this passage. If we were actually committed to living out the things in this passage, we would be more visible. Devotion in combination with sound understanding is a powerful mix. On a related note, I love vocal atheists, for instance I really like billboards which try to be clever about religion; and one of the reasons is that they help to clarify things, including, by the way, how dull the ‘New Atheist’ movement really is. The masses in New Zealand float around the middle somewhere, interested in Jesus but not too close to the Church, pulled in one direction or another by popular culture and if the Church’s doors are open, maybe God will yet pull many more in.

Ok, so I’m advocating devotion, but devotion to what? Clearly devotion to God is important for a people claiming to be God’s people; a Church, but this should have practical, visible outworkings and we need devotion to living these out. I can’t tell you what commitment to Jesus should look like for you. I can tell you something about what it looked like in the early church and some of the consequences the world saw of that commitment. I’m told it’s traditional to have three main points in a sermon, so here’s an attempt:

*Firstly it’s commitment to the teachings of the apostles – those who had been with Jesus and were sent out as teachers.
*Secondly these people are committed to fellowship and hospitality; to each other and building up the community
*Thirdly, commitment to prayer.

The rest of what we see happening follows from these. I’ll let you think about some of those details and I’ll focus on the three points.

But first, note that these weren’t self-initiated. This community wasn’t a nice idea a few people had – it only existed in response to what God had done and particularly it was in response to a single sermon which the apostle Peter had preached at the time of Pentecost.

So, a quick look at the first point of commitment; the teachings of the apostles:
Peter was a rock on which the Church was built – the way he built up the church was through preaching through key passages of hope in the Old Testament, relating them to Jesus. Public proclamation of God’s word to a receptive audience bore fruit. This was what I was trying to get at earlier – the Church was visible as a community, it made sure the truth about God was heard – this is still important today. This fruit was developed through further study of the word and the apostles’ teachings, inspired by the Holy Spirit, which we have collected in the New Testament.

Secondly, the early Church was committed to radical hospitality. The Greco-Roman world saw the way that these people treated each other and it showed up as different. The same opportunity exists in today’s individualistic society. Many people want to be able to rely on the state, I suspect because they don’t trust their family, neighbours and community to be reliable. The Church can offer a different kind of hospitality and generosity; I hope that this stands out. The early Church realised that their resources were not their own; they sold them as resources were needed by the community. Not for the sake of some communist or communitarian ideal but because of need and the simple realisation that assets are generally not given to you by God to be sat on. By common consent, these people lived sacrificially.

The Jesus community straight after Pentecost, which had just seen 3000 people added to their numbers could easily have been self-satisfied or triumphalist about their situation. Instead, they committed to prayer as a community. How much more is this necessary in situations like ours today?

Devotion is hard work and it hurts. It’s not the same thing as hype. I’ve seen Christian hype, you probably have too; and I’ve seen it fail - but I’ve also seen the real effects that people genuinely excited for Jesus can have. So there’s a balance there I guess. If there’s one thing the early Church in this passage models that the Church could do with more of, it’s commitment. Not commitment to structures or buildings, but to the unchanging sound truth of the apostles’ teaching, to a way of living that is painful; costly and joyful – and to prayer, which binds it all together.

The challenge I see in this passage is to ask: am I committed to working out my commitment in these three ways? I think so. If we want to see salvation come to people around us, these things are worth working on, in God’s community.

polytheism, monotheism, atheism and the number of husbands

It's fairly frequently said that much as 'Religion' developed from polytheism to monotheism, we can expect intelligent members of society to catch on to the trend, adopt atheism and for society to gain commensurate benefits.

To my mind, this blatantly commits something like the "xkcd extrapolating fallacy". This should be avoided.

http://xkcd.com/605/

Naturalism is a drastic cure searching for a disease. The bogeyman of 'Religion' does not cut it.

Get rid of God and you lose a lot, including some of your own footing. The phrase "self-defeating" is one which avid naturalists need to learn, relearn and check their thoughts against before they're verbalised too vocally. The turn to monotheism prevented the worship of nature and self - attempting to remove God seems to just result in retrogression. Let's not go there.

a quale of quail

Yesterday, I had the quale (experience) of, whilst it was quiet and I was walking up my street, seeing two female (I think) quail on a rail (fence top) - it was quite exciting and quaint really. We used to get quail, including baby quail quite frequently wandering up and down our street, until all the neighbours got cats and the good old days switched over into the 21st Century.

I partly write this as I'm studying the philosophy of mind, a course in which I'd like to learn more about qualia (the plural of quale) and free will but won't, maybe because the course has a bit of a physicalist bias and maybe also because these topics can soon get horrendously complex. As a side note, I half-expected the course would turn me into a physicalist (presumably a Christian one - there are some VERY good philosophers in this category) and we'd read lots of stuff by Dennett and maybe I'd do really badly or have to pretend to be a Dennett fan, but it didn't turn out that way (or hasn't so far anyway). I actually got an A+ (93%) for a blatantly theistic essay promoting dualism (not because I felt particularly attached to it so much as just cos I saw a possible gap and wanted to be controversial and run for it) - not a particularly great essay by any account, I had thought. Sooo, that's a bonus. I also partly write this as I'm meant to be writing an essay and am trying to work out how to fit qualia into it, which reminded me of the quail, 'as you [they] do [would]', as they say.

This was just a ramble, but it might encourage me to post more frequently at this blog again. I've been genuinely busy recently, but much of the busyness was probably closely related to the act of being slouched in my chair absent-mindedly scrolling through facebook late at night rather than reviewing lectures on topics I don't really care about; so its value as an excuse is small, a bit like the non-existent baby quail in my street.