06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus

 Of All Times in which to Live, You Would Choose Today

I don't think in terms of one year, but I can tell people what I genuinely believe, which is that if we take responsibility in being involved in our own fate if we participate, if we engage, if we speak out, if we work in our communities, if we volunteer, if we see the joy that comes from service to others, then all the problems that we face are solvable despite all the terrible news that you see, despite all the genuine cruelty, pain, and hardship people are experiencing all around the world...
Folksonomies: optimism
Folksonomies: optimism
  1  notes
 
18 MAY 2012 by ideonexus

 The Bible Tells Us to Look at Nature

The prohibition of science would be contrary to the Bible, which in hundreds of places teaches us how the greatness and the glory of God shine forth marvelously in all His works, and is to be read above all in the open book of the heavens. And let no one believe that the reading of the most exalted thoughts which are inscribed upon these pages is to be accomplished through merely staring up at the radiance of the stars. There are such profound secrets and such lofty conceptions that the night...
Folksonomies: nature religion
Folksonomies: nature religion
  1  notes

For god's majesty is in all his works.

24 APR 2012 by ideonexus

 It is Wrong to Compare Man's Pettiness to the Majesty of ...

It has become a cheap intellectual pastime to contrast the infinitesimal pettiness of man with the vastnesses of the stellar universes. Yet all such comparisons are illicit. We cannot compare existence and meaning; they are disparate. The characteristic life of a man is itself the meaning of vast stretches of existences, and without it the latter have no value or significance. There is no common measure of physical existence and conscious experience because the latter is the only measure ther...
  1  notes

Because we are comparing existence and meaning.

04 SEP 2011 by ideonexus

 NOMA - Non-Overlapping Magisteria

The text of Humani Generis focuses on the Magisterium (or Teaching Authority) of the Church—a word derived not from any concept of majesty or unquestionable awe, but from the different notion of teaching, for magister means “teaching” in Latin. We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express…the principled resolution of supposed ‘conflict’ and ‘warfare’ between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a legitimate magisterium, or dom...
 1  1  notes

Stephen J. Gould's argument that science and religion do not conflict because they explore realms of knowledge that are completely separated.

17 JUN 2011 by ideonexus

 Terrors Flee Reason

As soon as your reasoning, sprung from that godlike mind, lifts up its voice to proclaim the nature of the universe, then the terrors of the mind take flight, the ramparts of the world roll apart, and I see the march of events throughout the whole of space. The majesty of the gods [4] is revealed and those quiet habitations, never shaken by storms or drenched by rain-clouds or defaced by white drifts of snow which a harsh frost congeals. A cloudless ether roofs them and laughs with radiance l...
  1  notes

When you recognize the natural laws of the universe, superstitious fears leave you.