“Hello, my name is Simon, and I like to do draw-rings.” It’s one of my favorite skits of Mike Meyers on Saturday Night Live. I like to do draw-rings, too, as my returning reader will attest. Sometimes just a seemingly minor tweak of a diagram can part the veil and show me something I hadn’tContinue reading “Checking In”
Tag Archives: provident universe
Meditation on the Snow Cone
In Religion and the Snow Cone Universe (October 2014) I offered this simple image as a way of understanding the relationships among science, spirituality, and religion. The ball of our snow cone, I suggested, can stand for the great cosmic environment arching overhead and surrounding us. This is the realm of scientific research, also calledContinue reading “Meditation on the Snow Cone”
Where is God?
As an advocate of post-theism I stand in an interesting space, with suspicious theists on one side and suspicious atheists on the other. As they debate the literal existence of god, I want to know what god means – not what did god mean by this commandment or that Bible story, but what the mentalContinue reading “Where is God?”
What We Really Want, and Why We Settle for Less
For many millenniums humans have been trying to figure out the secret to wellbeing. Various philosophies and numerous religions have arisen with answers, methods, and sophisticated programs said to be “the way” to this elusive goal. Before we get too far, we need to put some definition around the term “wellbeing.” What does it meanContinue reading “What We Really Want, and Why We Settle for Less”
Whole Picture, Whole Brain
I’ll start with a proposition, and then work it out in more detail below: The meaning of life is an ongoing construction project involving two parallel processes, communion and knowledge. Communion refers to an experience of no-separation, where your existence is felt as not just connected to but as “one with” the rest of it.Continue reading “Whole Picture, Whole Brain”
The Weights of Truth
Most of us, most of the time, don’t really grasp the fact that we are continually constructing the meaning of life. A naïve perspective assumes that meaning is something ‘out there’ in reality to be searched out, discovered, and assimilated into our view of things. So, even though constructivism has been in our cultural consciousnessContinue reading “The Weights of Truth”
The Examined Life
It was Socrates who said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” He is a key figure in the history of Western consciousness and its growing fascination with the self. At that time, Socrates and others were searching out the individual’s place in the comic and moral orders; only later did the obsession collapse into theContinue reading “The Examined Life”
Time and Eternity
Our preferred orientation in reality is centered in the mental location called ego (‘I’), from which we look out and appraise things according to the standards of “me” and “mine.” The ego is at once insecure, defensive, possessive, and ambitious – and not a little conceited for regarding itself the center of reality. But even thisContinue reading “Time and Eternity”
Paths Into Reality
Although I spend a good amount of time defending the role of religion as the “system of utilities” that translates our spiritual intuitions into the structures of meaning in everyday life, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that intuition precedes the structures which translate it, and that meaning is secondary to theContinue reading “Paths Into Reality”
The Flow of Being
The most important discovery we can make as human beings – infinitely more important than how to win friends and influence people or think and grow rich – is that we exist. While that may sound much less interesting than the quest for wealth, status, and fame, the discovery of our existence – the fullContinue reading “The Flow of Being”
Tracts of Revolution 