How Not to Critique Christianity: Reply to a Skeptic
The below was written for a gentleman with whom I was having a rather heated discussion concerning whether the Church Fathers were deliberate frauds. Enjoy!
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Reverence (Written for My Sister)
There's a book by a classics scholar named Paul Woodruff, focused on an intellectual virtue he calls "reverence," translating the Greek word eusebia, or piety. It seems odd to say that an atheist could be pious/reverent, but I think in Woodruff's sense, Eusebia knows no creed, and needs no gods. She (and yes, Piety was a divine being in Greek myth) visits anyone who is patient enough to slow down and pay attention. Humans are odd, loud, lumpish things, but we occasionally have our moments of grace, when our tongues don't clang like New York traffic and our egos are (for once) asleep. I am a person, not a planet. Yet from all the attention I pay to the whiney community of my psyche, you'd think there were no world outside, no vast and colorful sea that this very small fish swims in. What holds me up? A whole polis of Being in which I am the most ignorant citizen. And so, as an ignoramus, I have to ask others for news of city doings: "What is the business o...
Ten Shots, Ten Misses: Replies to "Top Ten Signs You’re a Fundamentalist Christian"
So, a couple of years back, the webmaster of a site called EvilBible.com posted a list of Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian. Just for grins, I thought I'd write a reply to it. 10 – You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours. Actually, no I don't. I just happen to believe that the Triune God of Christianity is the one, absolutely simple, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipresent creator and sustainer of all reality. My position would be that other gods – though I tend to believe they exist – aren't "God" in the full classical theist sense of the term. 9 – You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt. No, I don't feel "dehumanized." I'm a theistic evolutionist, not a ...
The Saints of God: St. John the Short, Part 1
"A brother was jealous of [Saint] John the Short as he was sitting, teaching the brothers in front of the church. So he said, 'John, your cup is full of poison.' John answered, 'Yes, Abba, it is. But you said that when you could only see the outside. I wonder what you would say if you saw the inside.' " ~ Sayings of the Desert Fathers
