What Is the Quality of Art Based On?

Walking into an art gallery can be a confusing experience. I think Thomas Sowell helps explain the cause of this confusion when he writes: 

Unlike great cultural achievements of the past, such as magnificent cathedrals, which were intended to inspire kings and peasants alike, the hallmark of self-consciously "modern" art and music is its inaccessibility to the masses and often even its deliberate offensiveness to, or mockery of, the masses.[1]

As I read this, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain and Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit immediately come to mind. I would also add that "inaccessibility to the masses" applies just as well to contemporary art. I recall an acquaintance telling me about an exhibition where the artist sat in a chair while a bunch of children ran around the room. Apparently the children running around was the art. It's difficult not to simply laugh at the thought of this, but if I were to be charitable, maybe the purpose of the exhibit was to locate the artistic within the ordinary. I understand the attraction of adjusting one's way of seeing the world in order to make it more interesting, but showcases such as this are overly theoretical and perhaps even elitist.

Having said all that, I wouldn't be so quick to pit modern (not to mention contemporary) art against that of the Middle Ages. I don't mean to dismiss the grandeur of Europe's Gothic cathedrals. (I wouldn't mind seeing some of them in person someday, after all!) And of course, they're much more impressive than the previously mentioned works by Duchamp and Manzoni. But not all modern art is so lacking in quality.

As Francis Schaeffer points out, being more attached to the past than we have to be is to our detriment:

There is no living language which does not undergo constant change. The languages which do not change, Latin, for example, are dead. As long as one has a living art, its forms will change. The past art forms, therefore, are not necessarily the right ones for today or tomorrow. To demand the art forms of yesterday in either word systems or art is a bourgeois failure.[2]

Consider these modern works in the collage to the right: In Blue by Wassily Kandinsky, Errand Boy (Ausläufer) by Paul Klee, The Frog by Rufino Tamayo, and Le Corsaire (The Pirate) by Giorgio de Chirico. These are good paintings. They're imaginative, not needlessly offensive, and they're also interesting in terms of the colours and shapes used.

So what does the quality of art ultimately rely on if realism has been ruled out? Some people like to say that modern and contemporary art isn't beautiful, and that's what makes it bad. Is good art necessarily beautiful? I don't think so. Francisco Goya's The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is frightening (without being distasteful, I might add), yet it's still a technically impressive print that communicates an important message.

I think that the quality of art ultimately depends on its being interesting to look at. Perhaps the reader will roll their eyes at me for such a practical and unsophisticated answer, but it is the visual arts we have been focusing on in this article, after all. If I were to guess the main cause of failure within modern and contemporary art, my hunch would be that it is so theoretical and activistic to the point where there is hardly anything interesting to see.

Notes

[1] Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p. 546.

[2] Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, p. 73.

Praise and Blame

If we cannot blame those who do terrible things, then we should not praise those who do excellent things either.

Defining "Woke"

What makes something or somebody "woke"?

While ideas and people belonging to the left are much more likely to be labelled "woke" than those on the right, I don't suspect it's as simple as saying that "woke" is a synonym for "left-wing politics." Chris Hedges, who is not particularly friendly to the right, interviewed Christian Parenti on his article “The Cargo Cult of Woke.” Based on a brief skim of Hedges' interview, both him and Parenti seem very left-wing and also very uninterested in wokeness.

So if "woke" isn't just shorthand for "left-wing," then what exactly does it mean? I would put forward the following definition: For something or somebody to be "woke" is for it/them to contain the most superficial, self-congratulatory, and intolerant aspects of left-wing politics.

Western culture abounds with wokeness. Whether it's a research paper on the relationship between queerness and parkour or a rabble-rauser in a public library cursing at a senior over offensive words used in a quotation, woke ideas and behaviours are running at full speed and don't appear to be slowing down any time soon. These two examples belong to my province, Saskatchewan, by the way, which is hardly a bastion of progressivism. Most people don't even know that Saskatchewan exists (a fact that is perhaps slightly buffered by the occasional cultural phenomenon like Corner Gas).

Dream Sequence

You dream that you have gone to church. The service ends, and you walk around the parking lot looking for your car. You can't find it. You walk around again. No luck!

Then you realize that parking the car was never part of the dream. How could you have possibly found your car when you had never parked it in the first place?

It appears that even in dreams the sequence of events matter. You can't necessarily add in important details retroactively. Dreams are not just some colouring books of the imagination, where sections can be filled in any order.

The Vices of Virtue Ethics

Last year, I read Moral Theory: An Introduction by Mark Timmons. While I came away appreciating divine command theory, and especially natural law theory, the impression I received of virtue ethics was not particularly positive. I might even go so far as to say that utilitarianism is more cogent—at least it's practical! Heck, even boring old Kantian ethics might have an edge over virtue ethics for being more objective.

Virtue ethics, by contrast, begins on shaky ground, as its "primary focus of moral inquiry is on questions of what sort of person to be: excellence of character rather than right conduct is of primary concern here."[1]

I don't like this framing; it's causally confused. Virtue ethics gives special attention to character instead of right conduct, yet character has no meaning without right conduct, for character is expressed and perceived through action. It's difficult to imagine what the former would even be without the latter.

To be fair, later in the chapter Timmons writes that "virtue ethics does provide an account of right action," delineating obligatory, wrong, and optional actions.[2]

Despite this, when the emphasis is on "cultivating virtues and avoiding vices," in which duties and obligations take a back seat, virtue ethics has that same wishy-washy, subjective ring to it that moral relativism so clearly possesses. You can practically hear radical individualists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau cheering from the ponds of New England in the background!

If there's one thing I do like about virtue ethics, it's the doctrine of the mean. According to Aristotle, virtue exists between two vices, one being deficient and the other being excessive. For example, courage (virtue) lies between cowardliness (deficient vice) and rashness (excessive vice).[3]

This seems pretty reasonable. Of course, it sort of has that same "I don't pick sides, I pick between them" attitude that we see in centrist politics. It's not exactly self-evident what it is about choosing the middle option that makes it correct.

I realize I'm sort of shooting from the hip with this post. Perhaps I'll come to appreciate virtue ethics more in the future. The next author I plan to read on ethics is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who at least seems adjacent to virtue ethics, as he "sees judgments of character and not action as fundamental to moral evaluation."[4]

As well, in an article comparing a Christian version of intelligent design psychology with a naturalistic version of evolutionary psychology, J.P. Moreland writes that "humans will be strongly inclined toward deontological and virtue ethics,"[5] on the assumption that the former version of psychology is true. I do appreciate intelligent design, so I guess that's a point in virtue ethics' favour!

But if I had to pick an ethical theory that offered either universal or context-specific morality, the former is the clear winner, as it's more consistent and reliable. When the zeitgeist of the West is a mixture of moral relativism, truth relativism, and liberalism, where our only principles seem to be "happiness," "authenticity," "consent," and "freedom," it is perhaps in our best interest to endorse a more rigid ethical theory to keep at bay the distortions that these principles so easily produce.

Notes

1. Mark Timmons, Moral Theory: An Introduction, p. 211.

2. Ibid., pp. 220, 223.

3. Ibid., p. 218.

4. Douglas Huff, "Dietrich Bonhoeffer," Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

5. J.P. Moreland, "Intelligent Design and Evolutionary Psychology as Research Programs:  A Comparison of Their Most Pluasible Specifications," included in Robert B. Stewart (editor), Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue, p. 119.

Authority

Authority without wisdom soon becomes tyrannical; but to reject authority altogether is to succumb to a youthful anarchy.

Religious Diversity

Christians who celebrate interfaith dialogue and religious pluralism are not so much motivated by the Bible as they are by the multicultural societies they live in.

Intellect

Intellect is predisposed to thievery and pride. A reader of an admirable author soon becomes a plagiarist. The reader then goes on to write and appreciate his "own" work, mostly because it resembles the author he so enjoys.

What happens when the reader becomes acquainted with more authors? Initially, his prose style takes on a form that's more akin to changing costumes than consistent thinking. But as he reads more and more books, having formed specific interests, he begins to realize that there is not as much diversity of thought between authors as he once anticipated.

And so he wonders, "Why should I write at all?"

Dreams

Sometimes dreams are a paradox; you dream about not being able to sleep, for instance. Other times dreams are factories of fiction, the contents of which even a manic writer would be hard-pressed to imagine during a creative writing session. The absurdity and creativity of dreams puzzle the normal contents of our waking lives.

Equality

Achieving equality—a brave endeavour with regard to contingent injustices, but a chimeric fool's quest with respect to necessary differences.

The State as the Absence of God

Artwork by Edward Rowen

Among Christians, there are several perspectives on what the proper relationship is between the church and the state. In this post, I want to briefly discuss a few ideas from two political theologies, Christian anarchism and Christian nationalism. I will then offer an evaluation and propose that aspects of the two theories can be reconciled to create a more coherent political theology.

Christian Anarchism

Christian anarchists posit that Christ and the state are fundamentally opposed to each other. The Sermon on the Mount is central here. Whereas Jesus says not to resist evil, that judging others is wrong, and that one should love their enemies, the state does the very opposite, Christian anarchists maintain.[1]

To elaborate on just one of these points, Alexandre Christoyannopoulos writes about Leo Tolstoy's beliefs about not judging others:

However startling this may seem, Tolstoy therefore insists that Jesus' instruction not to judge further condemns all earthly tribunals: if we are not supposed to judge and condemn our fellows, then neither can that be done through courts of justice. Our judicial system is unchristian not only because it resists evil, but also because it involves judging—both forbidden by Jesus. As a result, a Christian can neither be a judge, nor take part in any trial, nor take a fellow human being to court. Christians must stay clear of human courts.

Christian anarchists also tend to oppose Christians holding office, voting, paying taxes, serving in the military, and working for or relying on police services. Of course, not every Christian anarchist addresses each of these issues in exactly the same way, so there is some nuance within this general opposition.[3]

To summarize, on the Christian anarchist view (at least, the Tolstoyan version), it is not just that the church and the state should not intermix, but they cannot even begin to do so coherently, as the values of Jesus and the values of the state are at odds with one another.

Christian Nationalism

In stark contrast to Christian anarchism is Christian nationalism. Stephen Wolfe defines Christian nationalism as “a totality of national action consisting of civil laws and social customs conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.” The idea that the state is an instrument used by God to punish wrongdoing, borrowed from Romans 13:4, is also important to this perspective. On the Christian nationalist view, it is good for the state to be informed by the church.

Evaluation

The Christian anarchist wants nothing to do with the state, while the Christian nationalist wants to claim the state for himself.

For my part, I appreciate the seriousness with which the Christian anarchist takes the words of Jesus. There is a certain bravery to eschewing that which is established and practical. Having said that, at face value Christian anarchism appears highly impractical at best and utopian at worst. 

While there are some Christian groups like the Hutterites and Amish who prioritize separating themselves from modern society, there are many other Christians who do not. The Christian anarchist almost seems oblivious to the practical benefits of the state. Paying taxes, for instance, helps fund important institutions and systems, such as healthcare, infrastructure, and police services.

While it is hypothetically possible that every Christian could withdraw from modern society, it seems far from realistic. It might be responded that Christians immersed in society are just taking the easy way out and not living the way they ought to because it's exceedingly difficult. Perhaps. But it could just as well be argued that the imagination and morality are fountains of infinite aspirations. In the actual world, people are limited in their decisions, often settling for the best option among a number of imperfect ones.[4] The moral perfectionism of Christian anarchism eclipses this important fact.

As for Christian nationalism, I appreciate its recognition of the state as an instrument used by God to punish wrongdoing. However, as a Canadian, I don't see my country moving towards an understanding of itself as a Christian nation anytime soon. Although it's true that about half of Canadians consider themselves Christians (53.3%), census data shows that this percentage has decreased over time. In 2001, 77.1% of the population identified as Christian, while in 2011 it was 67.3%. By contrast, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh populations are growing. Over one-third of Canadians report having no religious affiliation whatsoever.

The State as the Absence of God

Christian anarchism and Christian nationalism are unrealistic in different ways. The former rejects the state to an impractical and irrational degree, while the latter is overconfident about the feasibility of the state being Christianized.

Both theories get something right, which is that God is in a sense absent from the state. But the Christian anarchist makes the mistake of believing this divine absence is absolute and will continue to be so, while the Christian nationalist mistakenly believes that the divine absence is relative, but will (or at least ought to) become absolute in the future.

I'd like to return to the idea of the state as a means by which God punishes wrongdoing. Gregory Boyd observes that in Scripture "God's judgment or 'wrath' [is frequently equated with] the withdrawal of his protective presence or, as the OT [Old Testament] frequently puts it, with God 'hiding his face.'"[5] Framed in this way, the punishment administered by the state can be understood as the absence of God.

God's absence perhaps applies to other dimensions of the state as well. As Christian anarchists are correct to point out, in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13 Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness by offering him the kingdoms of the world, which Jesus of course rejects.[6] On a Trinitarian understanding of God, then, perhaps we could say that God withdraws his presence from the state in terms of ruling directly over it.

Does this mean that God is completely absent from the state? I think not. As discussed earlier, the state affects practical things many of us benefit from, and it would be ungrateful to overlook them. Hospitals, roads and bridges, and social order are good things for humans to have. These contribute to the quality of both life and morality, and so, we should think that these things are of some relevance to God, who is morally perfect.

Notes

1. These tensions are covered in detail in chapter one of Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos.

2. Ibid., pp. 48–49.

3. Ibid., pp. 165–167.

4. Thomas Sowell (Intellectuals and Society, p. 95) has written persuasively on this point:

"Solutions," are not expected by those who see many of the frustrations, ills, and anomalies of life—the tragedy of the human condition—as being due to constraints inherent in human beings, singly and collectively, and in the constraints of the physical world in which they live. In contrast to the vision of today's anointed, where existing society is discussed largely in terms of its inadequacies and the improvements which the anointed have to offer, the tragic vision regards civilization itself as something that requires great and constant efforts merely to be preserved—with these efforts to be based on actual experience, not on "exciting" new theories.

5. Gregory A. Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, p. 821.

6. Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel, p. 75.

Bonhoeffer on Nonresistance

Plough published this excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm sharing it rather late. (The article was published last year in August.) However, I think it's a helpful piece of the puzzle in making sense of the relationship between Christianity and politics.

If we took the precept of nonresistance as an ethical blueprint for general application, we should indeed be indulging in idealistic dreams: we should be dreaming of a utopia with laws which the world would never obey. To make nonresistance a principle for secular life is to deny God by undermining his gracious ordinance for the preservation of the world. 

If Intelligent Design Is "Pseudoscience," Then Neo-Darwinism Might Be Too

If you've ever read anything about intelligent design (ID) online, you're sure to have noticed that it is dismissed by many elites as "pseudoscience." Wikipedia has a terrible track record of shoehorning this term into every article that mentions ID.

Why? A big part of it, as far as I can tell, is that ID does not adhere to methodological naturalism (MN). Philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer, one of ID's architects, defines MN in this way: "a principle that specifies that scientists must explain all events by reference to materialistic (non-intelligent) causes whatever the evidence."

ID breaks the rules of MN by inferring an intelligent source from things like the irreducible complexity (i.e., you take one piece out of the system, and it won't function anymore) of bacterial flagellum or the biological information contained in DNA. The main idea that drives ID is that complex systems and information have an intelligent cause.

Now perhaps I can see the appeal of MN. It's parsimonious in its ontological commitments, as it only makes room for material things.

Suppose we accept MN. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to classify ID has a scientific-philosophical research program, instead of as a purely scientific one.

But the criticism that ID is a "pseudoscience" could just as well be levelled against neo-Darwinists like Richard Dawkins, who writes in his book The Blind Watchmaker that "Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view."

Dawkins steps outside the boundaries of MN here. While ID theorists infer a designer from information encountered in the natural world, Dawkins infers that no such designer exists, all while providing an anti-metanarrative for natural selection. This is not just methodological, but also ontological, naturalism.

Selective Separation of Church and State

In a previous post, I wrote about a psychological consequence of the separation of church and state: if church and state are separated entirely, this creates a rift in church members' thinking about the state, for they cannot refer to their religious beliefs when thinking about the state. This is impossible, especially regarding moral issues involving the state (e.g., abortion laws, drug policies, military decisions), for moral beliefs belong to religious beliefs.

Consider some sentiments from left-wing Christians. Brenda Davies from the God is Grey YouTube channel says in this Jubilee discussion that "universal healthcare is the most Christ-like thing I can imagine." Exodus 23:9 is also often repeated by left-wing Christians with regard to immigration policy, so it's not surprising that social-justice magazine Sojourners includes it in their article "22 Bible Verses on Welcoming Immigrants."

Perhaps I'm being speculative here, but I believe there's a certain kind of person who claims to endorse the separation of church and state and yet has no problem if religion is used to inform certain laws and policies, so long as religion informs those laws and policies in their preferred way. This group I am imagining would of course include progressive Christians, but it could also include non-religious progressives who didn't mind getting the political ends they wanted by religious means.

What does the separation of church and state apply to for this type of person, then? It seems to me that it applies mostly to matters of a sexual nature, such as divorce, gay marriage, abortion, and trans rights. This is selective and inconsistent.

As far as I can tell, "the separation of church and state" is usually shorthand for not applying certain ethical standards of a religious community to those outside who would find those ethical standards unpleasant.

So it's not really about separating the church and the state at all. It's about removing any obstacles that might get in the way of one's preferred laws being commenced or policies being enacted.

Authenticity Is Bipolar

When I ponder the age I live in, I come away thinking that the quest for authenticity is forged in opposite directions. Allow me to explain.

On the one hand, there is an aspiration for augmentation, particularly of the self, and sometimes to the point of absurdity. An example of this would be someone of one sex believing that their "true self" is actually the opposite sex, which I have previously suggested is as misguided as denying one's birthplace or biological parents.

On the other, there is an aspiration for limitation, this time not of the self, but of the things one encounters. Hobbies and entertainment immediately come to mind. We might have several streaming platforms with a near-infinite amount of songs, but there has also been an interest in CDs and vinyl in recent years. Three of the malls in my city have a Sunrise Records, for instance. CRT TVs are also trending; the CRT Collective group on Facebook has over 261,000 members. Many people want fewer songs, smaller screens, and less customizability. This is an understandable response to choice overload.

Mars ILL - Monotone

I have been thinking about this song a lot lately. Mars ILL is perhaps my favourite music artist, and there's plenty to enjoy about "Monotone." The sampled piano sounds with the vinyl crackling in the background is one of its charming characteristics, as is the first verse with its use of assonance. The scratching is also very impressive. But perhaps the best thing about "Monotone" is verse two, which includes 20 initialisms. This song is truly a lyrical feast.

2025 Reading List

I should admit from the outset that I did not read all of these in their entirety. I expect that there will be more literature on 2026's list, but only time will tell...

Books
Jerry Z. Muller - Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Letters and Papers from Prison (edited by Eberhard Bethge; translated by Reginald Fuller, Frank Clark, and others)

The Bible (NIV translation)

Charles E. Moore (editor) - Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

Mark Timmons - Moral Theory: An Introduction

John W. Cooper - Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present

Thomas Sowell - Dismantling America

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment (translated by Constance Garnett)

G.K. Chesterton - The Works of G.K. Chesterton

Journals and Magazines
Grain - Vol. 52.2, Winter 2025

First Things - April and May 2025 issues

Chapters and Excerpts
Huston Smith - "Hinduism" chapter from The World's Religions

Edmund Husserl - The Crisis of European Sciences (excerpt from The Examined Life: Readings from Western Philosophers from Plato to Kant, edited by Stanley Rosen)

Essays
Henry David Thoreau - "Civil Disobedience"

What Happens When Someone Becomes a Christian?

Why should anyone become a Christian? What happens when someone becomes one?

In addressing this topic, I would like to first turn to the Affirmation of Faith on behalf of the General Baptist Conference of Canada, the denomination I've been immersed in throughout my life. Here is what that statement says about regeneration:

We believe that all people are sinners by nature and by choice and are, therefore, under condemnation (Romans 3:10-19, 23, Eph. 4:18, Rom 5:12; 6:23). We believe that those who repent of their sins and trust Jesus Christ as Saviour are regenerated by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 5:17, Titus 3:5, Eph. 1:13-14).

This statement cites several passages from Scripture, perhaps too many to adequately cover in a single blog post, but the main themes are easy to identify: sin, repentance, Christ as Saviour, and the Holy Spirit's transformative work in a person's life.

It seems to me that these four themes can further be divided into two categories: that which falls on our side, and that which falls on God's side. Our side includes sin and repentance, for humans are the ones who sin, yet also have the opportunity to repent. God's side includes Christ being our Saviour and the Holy Spirit's transformative work, since Christ and the Holy Spirit are two of the three persons who constitute the Trinity, along with God the Father. Our side is based on rules, duties, and obligations, while God's side is based on mercy. Both sides are of an ethical quality and maintain an equilibrium between imperfection and human reality on the one hand (our side), and perfection and ultimate reality on the other (God's side).

A few passages from Romans display this dynamic nicely. Concerning our side, Romans 3:20 reads: "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin." This verse expresses the contrition one experiences of not meeting the ethical standards they know they ought to. Romans 6:19, however, speaks of moral improvement as a consequence of following God: "Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness."

As for God's side, Romans 6:23 says: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Notice the contrast between the words wages and gift. Both are economic in the sense that they denote the giving of resources, but the former is owed, while the latter is given without obligation. It is the Father's mercy that saves us from death, made possible by his Son's work on the cross (Romans 6:6). The Holy Spirit is not excluded, for Romans 15:13 tells us that the Spirit has the power to impart hope to believers.

That we should find such profound thoughts about salvation and regeneration in Romans is not too surprising considering the life of its author, Paul, also known as Saul. (Paul is the Greek name, while Saul is the Hebrew. In Romans, only Paul is used, while in Acts both names are used.) As we read more about Saul's life in Acts 9, he had intentions of imprisoning Christians. When we turn back to chapters 7 and 8, we see that Saul had even approved of the killing of a Christian man, Stephen, on the basis of his beliefs.

But as we continue reading chapter 9, Saul has a mystical experience while traveling to Damascus, where he's overtaken by light, hears Jesus's voice, and goes blind for three days. Verse 18 mentions that "something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes" and that he regained his sight, and by verse 20 Saul is preaching that Jesus is the Son of God.

Not every Christian's conversion experience is quite as dramatic as Paul's. But similar to him, when someone becomes a Christian, they are offered a brisk break with reality as they've known it. Ephesians 1:13-14 explains the beginning of salvation in this way:

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

This passage speaks to God's reliability concerning salvation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this topic. As theologian Gregory Boyd points out, "the New Testament describes salvation both as a past act, a present process, and a future arrival point." Indeed, New Testament scholar Mark Allan Powell, referring to Romans 8:19-22, writes that "Paul maintains that all creation is in bondage to decay and yearns for the freedom and glory of God's salvation."[1]

When someone becomes a Christian, they begin to come to terms with ultimate reality, God. It is a sober realization of one's own sin and the limitations of self-reliance, but it is also a hopeful response to Christ's saving power. Becoming a Christian enlarges meaning in a person's life, for with ultimate reality in the picture, a person has something to direct every aspect of their life towards.

Notes

[1] Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey (2nd edition, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 283.

World Philosophy Day

World Philosophy Day took place on November 20. I didn't have as much time to celebrate as I might have preferred, but I did manage to watch a few minutes of a lecture from Michael Sugrue on Edmund Husserl.

Last Saturday, I also took advantage of an Amazon Warehouse Deal on William Lane Craig's book God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism—a decent excuse to celebrate in advance, no? It's the first book I own by Craig, even though he's one of the very first philosophers I became aware of.

Are Some Realities Mind-Independent?

Pardon the acerbic introduction, but what would happen if everyone in the world were to suddenly die?

There is no doubt that human consciousness would disappear, though there is some doubt that some of the things humans are conscious of would not.

Take trees, for example, which populate most of the Earth and can survive without humans caring for them. If everyone in the world disappeared, trees would still exist, even though none of us would have any thoughts about them or do anything that affected them. Trees are a mind-independent reality.

But some people perhaps think human consciousness, subjectivity, experience, etc. are more fundamental than I have wagered. They might say, for instance: "You're thinking about trees right now as you write this, so your ontological speculations about them existing without human consciousness to think about them folds upon itself."

Have I been backed into a corner? I do not believe so, and the reason is this: people die every day. Returning to the topic of trees, there were people who once knew about them who no longer exist and are no longer aware of trees (at least, not in the same fashion that a living person is). Yet I, as an existing person, am aware of trees.

The sum of human consciousness is not a static entity. It fluctuates, as some people are born, continue living, or die. We cannot afford to be Wanderers above the Sea of Fog or Ralph Waldo Emersons in all circumstances. Human individuality is not the most fundamental element of reality, as there are shared or public realities that outlast human individuals.