Like a dethroned boxing champion, traditional Christianity just wants to get its belt back.

What's the belt?

Secondary thought. More specifically, the narrative.

Traditional Christianity insists it will set the world right again when it regains its belt and rules the world via its system of secondary thought. ...

“Nicene Christianity perhaps needs to posit a motive for creation – a motive for God creating rather than not.”

The suggestion is Dr. Charlton’s, and I believe it draws attention to the gaping chasm present in what falls under the umbrella of classical/traditional/conventional ...

…dies by secondary thought.

Secondary thought refers to the process and state of being informed.

In that sense, it is not a form of thinking or, at best, a low-level of thinking. From the perspective of human consciousness, being informed involves receiving, interpreting, and internalizing external ...

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the temporal gap between the Old and New Testaments is the time it took for Yahweh to become incarnate

the sacrifice of Isaac was a test of obedience. Abraham failed, because he obeyed what was obviously an immoral and even nonsensical request, given all that had come before. the proof is that neither Abraham nor ...

I've been harping-on about the vital importance of "motivation" since I began daily blogging in 2010 - and repeating that this, our age is characterized by extremely (historically) low levels of motivation. So it's maybe about time I clarified what I mean, and what I do not mean, by "motivation"...

Motivation needs ...

After months of fruitless exchange that Kristor of the Orthosphere triggered here, I finally asked him what his motivation for initiating the discussion had been.

Kristor, what was your motivation behind initiating this whole fruitless, months’-long exchange via comments on my blog back in September?

I only ...

I think it is a mistake when Christians present the faith as ascetic, world renouncing, world-rejecting; as if this mortal life was merely a matter of (whether patiently, or not!) waiting for death and resurrection.

This makes no sense to me, because if mortal life is about rejecting this world, then we would die as ...

Ask some classical theists what God did before Creation, and they will protest that you cannot take such liberties and argue from the absurdities that result from such a line of thinking.

Yet the same classical theists consider it perfectly acceptable to challenge assumptions about the “infinite” ...

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The UK retail company (shops, and later a mail order web site) called Past Times, was very much a phenomenon of the 1990s and early 2000s.

It was a kind of gift shop that specialized in nostalgia; and it did a pretty good job of both fuelling and supplying it; with modestly priced reprints and ...

Assumption:

Creation has a beginning, and it may have an end. The Beings in Creation, however, have no beginning and will have no end. They did not begin with Creation, nor will they end with Creation.

Because Creation has a beginning does not imply that Creation is the only or ultimate beginning. The Beings in ...

Please forgive me but I am going to talk about myself. But then what else can we talk about? Isn't everything we perceive and experience filtered through the self? We can know nothing except through that self. So really every post of every blog is about the self of the writer. More, every book written, every ...

A while ago, I wrote a post about the determined optimists of "the Right" (especially people who still, falsely, believe there is such a thing as "the Right") - who busily build their optimism from "fake straws" they have clutched from the maelstrom of a collapsing civilization.

Following the US election results, I ...

"Greg" is a engineer/ pilot tech vlogger whose aircraft stuff is second to none. He also does things about cars, which I don't usually look-at - but I took a look at this one, about a new Ford Mustang.

Specifically, it is about the data that the car collects from the vehicle, the driver, and what the driver does in ...

Note: This is my final post on the Kalam Cosmological Argument and other "laws" aimed at discrediting and disparaging my assumptions.

Kristor has responded to one of my posts about the Kalam Cosmological Argument. In his response, he insists that I am honestly mistaken about KCA and classical theism and that pretty ...

We cannot develop a habit of "following Jesus", any more than I could develop a habit of loving my wife/ kids/ siblings. Insofar as it is a habit, it isn't love.

This is because the best analogy/ metaphor for the Christian life (the best, because literally true); is that of family and love.

Family and love are ...

For the past couple of years I have been reading considerably about what Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight (and other ritual magicians of their kind) call "contacts" - or sometimes "Masters". The experience is of individual communication, or sharing of consciousness, with a spiritual being.

The phenomenon seems various ...

I'm taking a break from blogging for a bit, exact timetable undetermined. In the meantime, feel free to contact me by email.

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Once again, for your reading pleasure, the illustrious Kalam Ontological, oops, I mean Cosmological Argument!

If you are wondering why I am expending my precious time on this rehashed argument, thank Kristor of the Orthosphere, who insists that my assumptions pass the “scythe” of this argument—an ...

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i'm incautiously pessimistic. life's too short. take some risks.

a God we can fully understand is not the true God. just like every other person.

your heart is broken. you fix it. now it doesn't move.

i get it because i also give it.

the woman is meant to harden the man. and man to soften the woman. not the ...

Just a reminder, eight years on - referencing the current environment of optimism among the self-styled "based" online - that we live in a totalitarian civilization; and that to desire for its revitalization by the results of an election is the kind of sin implied by the Antichrist phenomenon - to place one's hope in ...

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Cool threads Bish!...

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Separated at birth? The Archbishop of Canterbury (top) and Walter the Softy from the Beano (below)

I see that the egregious Justin Welby - surely the most completely-mediocre and corrupt individual ever to hold the position so far - ...

When I had to choose a cover for By No Means Equal I followed my usual course of looking at pictures of places where I had lived. My first book showed Beachy Head lighthouse on the Sussex coast. I didn't actually live in the lighthouse, though I did once climb up the ladder that is attached to the outside which was a ...

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From what I can gather (and assuming other people are telling the truth!) what elicits numinous experiences varies between persons - and in this sense the numinous is subjective.

Yet for each person there seems to be an "objectivity" - in that particular places and people can sometimes be (more ...

I have for decades had a strong interest in those moments of experienced "numinous significance"; those times and places where - either at the time, or in retrospect - we have a conviction that something-has-happened which is of relevance to our life, generally.

It seems that many people have these "peak ...

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Carl Gustav Carus - Nebelwolken in der Sächsischen Schweiz -ca.1828

If you consider the nature of the kind of totalitarian society we inhabit in The West, it can be seen that it is inevitable that churches - including Christian churches - will be parts of The System.

This to the same extent that these churches exist in the public realm as legal/ economic/ financial/ employing/ ...

In our discussions, I’ve shown why the perpetuity that you and Bruce advocate is problematic, not because it disagrees with classical theism, but because it fails the test of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. I have not mentioned that it fails also the test of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, though it ...

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A blast from the past (11 years ago) - I remembered this today and enjoyed it as much as ever.

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Last night, I ran across this very odd post on /x/:

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The post asks, in verse, whether God has teeth, and the accompanying image is a photo of a child's skull with two rows of teeth.

In my October 7 post "The Book of Tooth," I discussed Dr. Seuss's The Tooth Book, which is also written in rhyming ...

What is life "for" - it it to be happy - which implies a continual "timeless" state of bliss.

If happiness is rooted-in the elimination of all suffering (which is the emphasis in some major religions); then there can be no needs, no desire, no "wanting"*.

All Just Is, and what is, is good.

Or else is life ...