Category: Philosophy
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WikiCritic review: Unmoved mover
This is a sample encyclopedia article review written to support both Seminarium Theologico-Philosophicum and a new project I am working on for the Knowledge Standards Foundation. This page should illustrate what a fairly complete review of a Wikipedia article would look like, according to the recommended standard of the new WikiCritic system I am building.…
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“There is none else beside him”
This is an essay on whether there are multiple gods, according to the Bible. Suffice it to say that there were strong opinions about the May 18 previous version of this; the following day, I revised it, removing the name of a certain Bible scholar. This is just a blog post, not my final word…
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Seminarium Theologico-Philosophicum: Update and Invitation
We are well into our study of Aristotle in the Seminarium Theologico-Philosophicum (STP), my reading group in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. This is hard, but essential to our task. But, you might ask, what is our task? Why would anybody spend weeks reading Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics? What we are doing I have…
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What is Plato’s positive argument from self-motion?
This is the longest answer I wrote, in the first month of writing for Seminarium Theologico-Philosophicum, commenting on Plato’s Laws, Book X, 893b–899d. We’re about to start Aristotle’s two arguments for a Prime Mover. (First chunk to read: Physics II.1–3.) [The Seminar is currently closed, but may reopen at a later date.] This may also…
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Why should Christians read philosophy?
Yesterday, I launched an online seminar in which we will read a bunch of philosophy of religion, as well as the more philosophical and apologetic parts of theology. When I told my wife that there were a lot more people willing to share the news than actually sign up (although we did gain 25 members…
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In Praise of Small Bars of Soap
There is a kind of person—and mood, and outlook on life—for which slow-to-disappear bars of soap are a problem. You know what I mean. You start a new bar of soap. A week later, it is half its original size. It takes just a couple more weeks to become positively small. After that, it takes…
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A Historical Bibliography of Philosophy of Religion (according to LLMs, edited by humans)
This was generated by LLMs with a few additions and corrections by me (and you, I hope). I looked it over and corrected anything I thought wrong and improved anything needing improvement; but I cannot vouch that it is absolutely right. Philosophers and theologians! Please look over the figures you know about. Please post corrections…
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Plan for a Public Notebook
Some background My strange career began with academia and a little college teaching, and then a series of knowledge and education startups and consulting stints. I have rarely been short of interesting opportunities, from which I have been able to choose what I think is most worthwhile. The most worthwhile, on my view, were not…
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On W. L. Craig on whether God can learn
A friend of mine has pressed me to respond to William Lane Craig’s defense of Molinism, so here is a small contribution. Recently, I found an occasion to do so. Craig’s X.com team posted this video, a snippet of a longer interview; click and watch it, it’s only 94 seconds. Craig is being provocative, and…
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Zobot: A Third Kind of Self-Sustaining Being
Philosophy and theology posit two kinds of self-sustaining beings: God, who is eternally self-sustaining, depending on nothing outside himself for his being; and living beings or organisms, consisting of many interoperative systems that function to sustain the whole, and which give rise to rough copies of themselves. Advances in robotics and AI now make feasible…
