The following are snippets from posts of some religious
import; click on the link for the full essay.
I am not saying that numbers are ideas. Or if they are that, they are that in
addition, where they keep such scruffy company as the Idea of a Unicorn and the
Idea of a Ham Sandwich. They are, rather, facts as hard as baseballs, packing
quite as much wallop. (Also, admittedly, we are interested in the Pitcher …)
Now Solly got thoughtful. “Y’know… Just indulge me here, okay? Because I heard a rumor there’s this, some kind of Church doctrine, in this general area -- I won’t even try to quote it, I’d just screw it up: but something along the lines of, like, a woman and a man, yadda yadda, and they get hitched up by God, in just the right way: and from then on, it’s like trying to yank a horseshoe loose from the hoof -- or no: more like, trying to yank the blue right out of the sky.”
Murphy
raised a respectful eyebrow.
“That’s pretty much it, Solly.
That’s very well put.”
He nodded again, and savored. The blue, right out of
the sky.
Sober orthodoxy of each camp would doubtless concede that
the others “believe in” the “same” God (whatever it means to “believe in”
something ultimately unknowable
this side the grave, and whatever “same” means when comparing finitely described infinites); adding simply,
that they worship Him amiss.
But now here is the key -- and it is a key to Christianity
as well, that faith that embraces paradox …
Sidenote on theologoumenon.
It is not every day that Dr. J. learns a new word; this one’s a
doozer.
Sin has a certain dignity,
as only upon a foundation of Morality can it raise its head. Chimps in their lubricious oestrus
cannot be considered “adulterers”.
In this sense, we are not certain that M. Hollande has actually
committed any “sin”.
Such creatures are needful, lest the scala naturae wane at
its base.
Age-old Theological Conundra cheerfully solved by Dr J
We are sweaty, dust-caked survival machines -- that has been shown -- much like the cockroach
and the rat. Are we anything else
as well ?
This frame of clay which Thou hast shaped
and quickened with Thine inblown Word,
a cloak about my spirit draped:
Mold it a little
longer, Lord.
I may well have much more free time after I die. (No more dealing with the Department of Motor
Vehicles! Free at last, Lord -- Free at last !!!)
“Gödel turned out to be an unadulterated Platonist, and
apparently believed that an eternal ‘not’ was laid up in heaven, where virtuous
logicians might hope to meet it hereafter.”
Tares planted in the Endarkenment (humorously known as the
Enlightenment) have sprouted to weeds that choke the vacant lots where atheists
briefly couple and depart …
I believe I have successfully defended C.S.Lewis against any
suggestions that he was either a prude or a scold; but what of his
original suggestion that the sexual instinct in modern man has somehow gone wrong? That is indeed a
startling thesis -- and utterly at variance with the contemporary climate
of right-thinking opinion that anything goes and that’s just dandy.
Whether the evidence of the Apostles for all that they saw
and sensed and heard, was indeed no greater than that whereby we announce,
“Hullo! A penny-bun upon the table.” -- the testimony of the senses, the
notoriously wayward senses -- I cannot say. Wasn’t there; only read
the book.
On this Landscape question, Hawking notwithstanding, I’ll go
with the Pope.
Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht …
We know, on scientific grounds, that penguins cannot
exist. How, then, to explain the persistence, among the unlettered, of a
belief in these fanciful creatures?
Desecrating a sacrament is, no doubt, protected “speech”, in
the greatly and sometimes grievously distended sense that that simple word has
gradually acquired in secular law;
but that doesn’t mean the Church
has to put up with it.
Erdős sees the Deity, not exactly through a glass darkly,
but under some distortion -- perhaps a projective transformation.
That God is simply the sum
of All that Is, is mere pantheism.
We shall posit rather, that He is its Stone–Čech compactification.
What makes a movie moral is by no means that the ultimate
verdict of Judgment Day shall be anticipated here in this life -- as it so
manifestly is not, despite the hype and come-ons from certain motivational
evangelists outside the discipline of the Historical Church.
Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” does not come from this
world. It’s less a traditional film
than a passion play, a ritual re-enactment. If you weren’t well versed in the Gospels, most of it
wouldn’t even make sense
There is something prelapsarian about the penguins, a thing
that indeed tugs at us like a
magnet the filings, we in our
fallen state.
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