Physics If we begin to think of “nothing” as being, really, some sort of something, then we can convince ourselves that all of material reality came into being spontaneously. How? If the nothingness before material reality was really a kind-of-sort-of something, then the present universe could be only the result of a physical phase transition. […]
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Review: God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens
The late Christopher Hitchens worked the last years of his life as a professional atheist, going from debate to debate to catechize devotees of his brand of fiery, witty godlessness. Hitchens’ belief about the God he denied There’s a curious element to Hitchens’ debate appearances and to his writings on the subject of atheism as […]
Read more...Review (Part Six): The Experience of God – Being Consciousness Bliss, by David Bentley Hart
Having explained how we approach the natural only over the interval of the supernatural, Hart turns to the incoherency of materialism. Absolute truth The human longing for truth involves a loyalty to an ultimate ideal, and that ultimate ideal beckons to us from beyond the totality of beings. We would not care at all about […]
Read more...It’s not “nothing.”
The jump to materialism Here’s a curious phenomenon. Many Americans today come from a Christian background but become disaffected by it, for one reason or another, and then find “permission” in the culture to reject it altogether, saying they’re now atheists. Didn’t they skip a step? If we’re to come off the claims of Christianity […]
Read more...Is nothing something?
Analogy: the absence of light You’re in a deep cave. The tour guide directs you and those with you to find a comfortable place to stand, or lean, and to get ready for the sensation of total darkness. Then he switches off the lights. The darkness is so complete that you imagine it to have […]
Read more...Review, Atheist Delusions, The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, by David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart is a Christian author, and he’s made several valuable contributions besides this book, among them the excellent The Story of Christianity, an Illustrated History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith, and his newest, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (Yale University Press 2013). Atheist Delusions serves as a partial response […]
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