Integrity in Science
Fri 13 Mar 2009 by Cherie Harder
Human experience is larger than science can describe
Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder reflects on ideology and science. Scientific integrity includes a recognition of the limits of an analytical approach to life.
‘I Have Got the Courage’
Fri 13 Mar 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Robert Musil
An excerpt from The Man Without Qualities: Volume 1 (Volume 2 is here), as used in our curriculum When No One Sees.
Trinity Forum President Cherie Harder introduces the excerpt here.
The picture that he had been drawing relieved him, like the successful conclusion of a work of art; it was not he who had brought it forth, but outwardly, linked with a mysteriously successful beginning, word had followed word, while inwardly something dissolved without his becoming conscious of it. By the time he had finished, he realized that Ulrich was the expression of nothing but this dissolved condition that all phenomena are in nowadays. . . .
“A man like that isn’t really human at all!”
Clarisse had finished chewing. “That’s just what he says himself!” she declared.
The Selfish Gene Delusion
Mon 23 Feb 2009 by Nicholas Beale
Science and Religion in a Post-Dawkins Phase
Nicholas Beale, co-author of a new book with John Polkinghorne, looks at the climate for public discussion of science and religion (and how they hope to change it) as Richard Dawkins moves into retirement.
Are Thoughts Material?
Mon 23 Feb 2009 • Responses: 2 • by John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale
A selection from Questions of Truth (Westminster John Knox, 2009).
I viewed a recent discussion on the topic of whether our thoughts are material. The Christian holds that the process of thought is material but thought itself is not. Atheists generally hold that all processes and outcomes of thought are solely material. They claim that all neuroscientists would agree. What are the implications for the Christian if our thoughts are wholly material?
Beale: This is a complex topic that we address in some detail in an appendix to the book. Let’s try and give an outline of our position here.
Sunday Mornings
Thu 19 Feb 2009 by Al Sikes
Save your suspension of disbelief for novels and the theater
Trinity Forum Chairman Al Sikes reflects on two forums that are active on Sunday.
McClay on Lincoln
Wed 11 Feb 2009 by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow Wilfred M. McClay has the cover story for the January/February 2009 issue of Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The piece is titled “Lincoln the Great (Though He Didn’t Look That Way at the Time).”
In the 1950s, this country-boy Lincoln had morphed into the wise, prudent leader who steered the ship of Union between the wild excesses of ideologues: abolitionists on the left and proslavery fire-eaters on the right. In the 1960s, Lincoln was at first thought of as a civil-rights pioneer, but soon became criticized, even reviled, as a racist and a proponent of timid half-measures, a forerunner of the pragmatic liberalism that was so thoroughly drubbed by the New Left. Today, Lincoln is revered for his combination of faith and epistemological modesty, a skeptical believer who sought to do God’s will without ever claiming to know it—a view that requires one to overlook the fierce and relentless way he conducted the war that defined his presidency.
We too will have our own Lincoln, or Lincolns, and there is good reason to believe that ours will be as partial as anyone else’s. But we should not be content with such easy relativism. Out of respect to the man, we should at least try to recover a sense of both the grandeur and the contingency of the history that he lived through, and helped to shape.
Citizens of the World Unite?
Wed 11 Feb 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Pete Peterson
Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy by Natan Sharansky (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008), 304 pages.
Seed Corn and Spiritual Capital
Thu 05 Feb 2009 by John Seel
Remembering the Prerequisites to Wealth
John Seel offers a review essay on Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, which speaks to the root of the world economic crisis.
Inaugural Day 2009
Fri 23 Jan 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Al Sikes
The opportunity for more than a transitional moment
Trinity Forum Chairman Al Sikes reflects on the Obama Inauguration.
Obama’s Election, Race, and the Bible
Thu 15 Jan 2009 by Vishal Mangalwadi
Through Indian Eyes
Vishal Mangalwadi looks at one of the underlying reasons that Barack Obama was elected: the American cultural DNA derived from the Bible is what makes it “self-evident” that all people are created equal.
