Tag: epistemology
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Just Because You’re Cynical Doesn’t Mean People Aren’t Self-Interested
What does it mean that I disagree with this book enough to laugh out loud and spill my coffee? …
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Assumptions, Questioned and Un-
What counts as knowledge – that is, knowledge of reality? This is a question for the philosophers, in the end; but, as Gramsci said, everyone is a philosopher, so it’s a question for all of us. And while Gramsci’s point was that everyone has a philosophy, one they live by, some philosophers are better than…
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Cultivating that Same Mind
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Philippians 2:1-2 We get hung up, our pastor pointed out, when we think…
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Irrelevant?
It’s commonplace in academic religious studies to take a “phenomenological” approach to the study of religion. This is an example: The academic study of religion requires the courage and compassion to empathetically understand the diverse worldviews of others and the willingness to learn from each. Its goal is not to show one religion is ‘right’…
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Reasonably Foolish Trust?
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. George Orwell, 1984 (https://genius.com/George-orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-book-1-chapter-7-annotated) On my mind: the fundamental difficulty in discerning when, and about what, to trust what we might want to call “special revelation” in preference to “general revelation” – that is, the…
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Noticing Social Constructionism
Social constructionism is on my mind. In part because I’m working on the class that starts in May. I’ve learned from experience that it helps to explain, right from the start, that I come at things from a social constructionist point of view. College freshmen don’t necessarily share that perspective. And because I’ve learned recently…
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Meeting the Cloud of Unknowing in the Union Hall
Finishing up the first chapter of Awake to the Moment1, “What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? Context and Questions,” here are my summary notes and comments: It is difficult to know anything, but particularly difficult to know God, who is infinite and mysterious. The doctrine of revelation doesn’t eliminate the need…
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Past Ways of Knowing
Still engaging with Awake to the Moment1 and still looking at “what resources and ways of thinking we might bring to bear” on addressing the central questions of theological knowledge from a constructive theological point of view (26); the third “suggestion” on this score is “Learn from Others in History Who Have Thought about Knowing”…
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Pay Attention to the Relationship between Knowing and Power
Slowly making my way through Awake to the Moment, here are my summary notes and comments on the next couple of sections of “What Do We Know and How? Context and Questions”: Still looking at “what resources and ways of thinking we might bring to bear” on addressing the central questions of theological knowledge from…
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So Temporary
In this morning’s reading, in Genesis 50:11 the Canaanites rename the place of the Egyptians’ mourning for Jacob “Abel-mitzraim,” “because it was a place of deep mourning for the Egyptians.” The mitzraim part refers to the Egyptians, so the Abel part has to be mourning, which got me thinking about Abel in Genesis 4 –…
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“Make Room for Skepticism”
Here’s another tiny bite of theology – my summary notes and comments on the next few pages of Awake to the Moment, which include the first couple of sections of the chapter on epistemology, “What Do We Know and How? Context and Questions” (19-34): Summary Notes: The authors start out talking about the end of…
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Easter Sunday
[A sermon on one of the Uniform Series texts for today, Sunday, April 16: John 20:1-10.] The church’s Easter greeting, for centuries, has gone like this: one says “Christ is risen!” – in whatever language – and the other responds “He is risen indeed!” We have been saying this for centuries, maybe almost since the…
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Epistemological Question
Wanted: help with contemporary epistemology! I think that the popular “correspondence” theory of truth has been more or less abandoned in thoughtful circles these days, replaced by things like “coherence” theories, assessed by criteria like “comprehensiveness.” I think I understand that, although I’m no expert. I think I partially understand the notion of “warranted true…
Matters of Interpretation 