modern.gods

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070809/ap_on_re/religion_today Long story short, the Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Nashville is establishing an MA in homemaking and "traditional" women's roles. Quoth the president, "We are moving against the tide in order to establish family and gender roles as described in God's word for the home and the family." The funny thing is, no matter what your cultural or hermeneutical background may be, you would be hard pressed to find any actual examples of this "Biblical model" in the Bible. What sort of families and gender roles does God's word describe? My guess is the the Southern Baptist Convention would abhor any of the actual families in the Bible (let's see, we've got adultery, murder, rape, theft, incest, driving tent-stakes through people's heads, etc.) Sure, there are shining examples of women in the Bible (Ruth and Esther for example), but none of them look like the "Biblical Wife...

I overheard a conversation today with a student who was deeply trouble by a suggestion in class (probably not a strong one) that the stories in the Bible never really happened, but are important because of what they represent. What is the response of someone who believes that the things in the Bible did happen? Is inerrancy the only way (either it did or didn't happen the way it says it does)? I feel that much of this problem arises from some combination of modernity attaching independent ontological significance to the sort of statement, "E happened", and the romantic notion that there could be some inner quality or essence which may never be revealed by outside action. Together these lead one to the conclusion that true significance comes from an event happening, and the meaning of the event is derivative from this first fact. Now that we have dissolved ourselves of an ontology based on formal logic, we may more clearly see that there is no such thing as "just ...

The theory of quantum mechanics is no more friendly to top-down causation (a seemingly necessary process for upholding both volition and physicalism) than Newtonian determinism. First, volition. The notion of free will has become such a burdened term that arguing for its existence requires much more than top-down causation. Volition, on the other hand, is more readily apparent to ourselves. Basically, it is the idea that when I move my hand, I am causing the muscles to contract, etc.; rather than my hand moving because of an ancient series of events, and the thought "I am moving my hand" being drug along after. Top-down causation is the process by which "moving my hand" actually moves my hand. Within a Newtonian paradigm, there is really no room for top-down causation. Any apparent "TDC" can be dissolved with an appeal to a larger system. A bouncing ball moving "ball particles" can be explained by the history of effects on the indiv...