Last night, I listened to an interview with Gwern Branwen. Since he is an anonymous online writer, his identity was concealed using a computer-generated avatar and an AI-generated voice. He got me thinking, as I'm inclined to do, so I’m going to let my thoughts wander and we’ll see what appears on the page. Branwen’s writings cover a broad range of topics, but his main focus is the artificial intelligence…
Read MoreFascism & Pushing the Fat Man
Most people know the classic trolley problem: a train is hurtling toward five people on the track. You have the option to pull a lever, diverting the train onto another track where there is one bystander. Do you pull the lever, sacrificing the one to save the five? From a utilitarian perspective—where the focus is on maximizing the greatest good or happiness—the answer is yes. One life lost is deemed preferable to five…
Read MoreDavid S. Terry’s Life Before the Trigger was Pulled
I recently stumbled upon an article about David S. Terry, a 19th-century California judge. He was an intriguing figure, so I looked to see if there were any books written about him. There were four non-fiction texts. One, written when he was only thirty-three years old, is titled ‘Trial by the Committee of Vigilance’ (1856). This book is essentially a court transcript which details a particularly harrowing chapter in Terry’s life, which I will cover…
Read MoreArguing the Bible
The communication breakdown here has to do with purpose. What was the purpose of the biblical text when it says X or Y? We’re taught in seminary that the Bible is not so much a book, but rather a library, and within this library are different genres, some more historical in nature, and some more poetical.
Read MoreSimply Listening
I chose to sit in the backroom of our house; it’s a multifunctional room, primarily the dining room, secondarily my wife’s office. When you’re really listening, just sitting for a moment, the fact that your house is in North Carolina becomes abundantly evident.
Read MoreReflecting upon ‘The Image of The City’ by Kevin Lynch
Published in 1959, it was the seminal work of Kevin Lynch, an MIT professor in the school of Architecture and Planning. His book is about the way cities look, or rather the mental picture that we all form in our heads of cities. His book looks at three American cities: Boston, Jersey City (Part of the New York metropolitan area), and Los Angeles. So, we are surveying the city much like an artist might survey a piece of art, it brings to mind the Goethe quote that architecture is like “frozen music”. It differs however, in that unlike the semi-quaver on the page, or paint on the canvas, cities lack such controlled parameters; they vary, being affected by time, weather, and the interactions of those who populate them…
Read MoreThe Aesthetic of the Hike
The obvious question – ‘Why would one want to undertake the Appalachian Trail hike?’
I’ll avoid the trite/clichéd answer, as the George Mallory quote goes, “because it is there!”
Instead, I will lean on my own academic of choice and quote Carl Jung, “people don’t have ideas, ideas have people.”
This quote comes much closer, I think, to how I experienced making the choice to walk the trail. I watched some videos. I watch a lot of videos about a lot of things, but the videos on the trail spoke to me, the idea captured me. This was about five years ago, and ever since then, the question has not been whether I will walk to Appalachian Trail, but when.
Read MoreWhat is the Gospel?
Here is a talk I gave at my church, Watershed Charlotte. The topic was on 'What is the Gospel?' As in, what do I personally understand the Gospel (the good news) to be?
The word ‘Gospel’ first conjures up for me what I consider to be the American evangelical meaning. That being, that the Gospel (the good news) is that Jesus died for you, for your sins, and that if you believe in him, you will have eternal life (which is to say you will earn your heavenly reward). It’s all about that utopia we will reach at the closing of the day - the pie in the sky when you die by and by…
Read MoreThoughts on Transcendentalism from a recovering Fundamentalist
I did my first degree at a conservative Bible college. In my first year I would have assented to ‘The Fundamentals’ (the set of essays written from 1910 to 1915) from which ‘Christian fundamentalists’ derive their label. In my second year I began asking awkward questions; these questions slowly drew me away from fundamentalism (or evangelicalism) down broader avenues of enquiry. A question arises in the mind, an unknowing, an opening, and our initial impulse is to find the answer…
Read MoreNot quite a dream, not quite awake
I’m driving out along North Graham Street on the Sabbath; I pull into a parking lot in front of a non-descript building. Buildings here in Charlotte, and perhaps in America generally, are coy to reveal what human behavior transpires within; the architecture rarely offers up much of a clue. But there is a sign out front, a truly hideous and slightly pixilated sign…
Read MoreWater into Wine
Water into Wine
In this article I am going to discuss Jesus’ water into wine miracle. By way of introduction however, I’m going to discuss the following quote by C. S. Lewis: “Either this man (Jesus) was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse” (Mere Christianity, pg. 56). In this exceedingly reductive argument, Lewis gives us three options, and compels us to choose one. This argument is evidently fallacious as there are not three options, there are many many more…
Read MoreThe Bookman: Walt Whitman 1919
I am publishing on my website this Walt Whitman centenary edition of The Bookman (May 1919) as a PDF, as I believe it is not otherwise available in the public domain. The Bookman was a literary monthly magazine based in London.
“A still quickening pulse beats in his writings, and the mystic charge he gave – “this is not book; who touches this, touches a man” – serves to point to an occult and present survival in his pages of what a Sufist might teach us to call “the liberated essence” of himself.”
Read MoreThoughts on Grief
On Halloween Day, October 31st 1998, my mother died. I was ten years old. There can be no doubt that this event shaped me unlike any other, in ways which are entirely evident to me, and in ways that remain unknowable. The death of a parent has a peculiar effect on a child; it creates an unresolvable question, an inability to know oneself apart from the grief suffered. Because of course, no ten-year-old knows who they are, they don’t know where life will take them, and they don’t know who they will become. All of which is to say…
Read MoreEmpathy, Pity, and Compassion
Part of what I identified in my previous post was our need to discover common ground, or perhaps to put it in a better way to simply understand, or, as it were ‘put on’ the other. In this post I’m going to run with this idea and see where it takes me.
It feels like compassion closely relates to this. The desire to not just reach across the divide into the lonely lives of the other, but also to bring healing. I think this is a strong motivator for me…
Read MoreInclusive to a Fault?
Just finished watching ‘American Heretics: The Politics of the Gospel’, a very interesting and inspiring documentary, which focused ostensibly on the ministries of two social action churches, namely, the Mayflower Congregational UCC Church and All Souls Unitarian Church, both in the state of Oklahoma.
Although I find the ministries of both churches to be courageous within their context, I found the liberal and inclusive approaches…
Read More“Totemic Nounals”: a retrospective
For lack of a better term, I fall into the “anti-woke” camp, an easy space to occupy if I were some reactionary conservative - that would make things so much easier - but I’m not. For good or ill, I’m a card-carrying liberal. For some time I have wanted to write something that explored “wokeism”, but given the weightiness of the subject, I have struggled to find the right words and a suitable approach, but perhaps this will suffice…
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