Albert Camus, the famed author of philosophical absurdism, was certainly not the first to propose that life is absurd. The author of Ecclesiastes beat him to it by several centuries. “Vanity of vanities, everything under the sun is vanity,” goes the famous repeated line. I remember the shock I felt reading Ecclesiastes for the first…
Boredom is one of those self-defining words. For me, the experience of ‘bore-dom’ feels like something boring a hole through my soul, like a hand drill boring a hole through wood. Boredom is a suffering, yet a suffering caused not by something happening, but by nothing happening. (Just as I am editing this article to…
For me the role of philosophy in Christian faith has always been something like Anselm’s famous motto: “faith seeking understanding.” When applied to the faith, Philosophy is just faith seeking understanding, useful for synthesizing with reason those things initially accepted by faith. Philosophy offers the chance to know those things which the faith preaches. Didn’t…
Why have the Jews suffered so much persecution throughout history? This is a typical question that comes up after one realizes just how constant the persecution of Jew has been, and history offers no shortage of scholars to answer it. Admittedly I am no such scholar. At best I am a cursory observer of the…
“No one can be wholly and indivisibly in the present,” writes Kierkegaard, “before he is finished with the future.” With this single line Kierkegaard exposes profound implications of both faith and how to conquer anxiety. In Kierkegaard’s most spiritual works, the “Upbuilding Discourses”, he battles with the question, “How do I know I have faith…
“Cognito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), set the tone for Western thought for the last 400 years. When Descartes first penned these words in 1637 he meant to establish a sure ground on which to develop a method for finding truth. What could be more beyond doubt than the phenomenon of one’s own…
“Can you think of anything more frightful,” writes Kierkegaard, “than that it might end with your nature being resolved into a multiplicity, that you really might become many, become, like those unhappy demoniacs, a legion, and you thus would have lost the inmost and holiest thing of all in a man, the unifying power of…
In political discourse (if such a thing still exists) one often hears various religious groups claim that atheism is just another religion and therefore the removal of God from the public square is the same as instituting yet another religion, atheism. Though I understand this sentiment, the fact is atheism is anything but a religion.…
I’ve been thinking about writing on this topic for a long time. I hasten to write it now while the thoughts are still fresh on my mind. I need to get it down, no doubt, more for myself then for my readers. Over the years I have witnessed some of the most frustrating and, in…
“Human” itself is an interesting word. One possible etymology is from the old-Latin rendering of “homo” (man) and “humus” (earth) combined to describe mankind as “earthly beings” distinguishing them from “heavenly beings,” i.e., the gods. Today our challenge is much different: rather than confusing ourselves with gods we have a tendency to confuse ourselves with…
To begin, I would like to tip my hat to Sam Harris. He is an all-star neuroscientist and fantastic author and speaker, but more than that, he’s brave! Brave? Yes, brave. Any scientist willing to commit to a strict philosophical naturalism and not allow the element of human thought to escape its clutches has attempted…
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced" -Kierkegaard
Doctrine Matters
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