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October 2025

October 19, 2025

“Hello, God!”

You can either think of the creeds of the great traditions . . . as...

March 2025

March 09, 2025

A Lenten Time Change–How are you doing?

For many of us, Daylight Saving Time began this morning at 2:00 am. This year's...

December 2024

December 08, 2024

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

I was saddened to hear a couple of days ago that Fr. Wilfred Thiesen died...

September 2024

September 24, 2024

How to Make God Interesting

It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, supposedly...

August 2024

August 30, 2024

Getting Comfortable with Paradox

It is standard fare for Christians to believe that human beings are made of body...

May 2024

May 06, 2024

When Life Feels Like an Afterthought . . .

Today's "golden oldie" was first posted here in early 2013, just a few months after...

February 2024

February 06, 2024

Who Am I? How to Build a Person

In one of the essays assigned for my honors colloquium on Michel de Montaigne this...

January 2024

January 02, 2024

Continuing the Task of Self-Construction in the New Year

My first post of the New Year on this blog often goes in the direction...

November 2023

November 16, 2023

Is Confirmation Bias a Bad Thing?

Commenting on a new blog essay that I wrote while on retreat last summer, a...

November 05, 2023

Time Change Distress is a First World Problem

In the wee hours of this morning, the time changed from Daylight Saving Time to...

October 2023

October 12, 2023

Jesus and Schrödinger’s Cat

This summer's blockbuster movie "Oppenheimer" has caused me to return to matters that used to...

May 2023

May 04, 2023

Various Ways of Saying “Hello” to God

You can either think of the creeds of the great traditions . . . as...

February 2023

February 21, 2023

A More Interesting God through Evolution

It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, supposedly...

October 2022

October 20, 2022

The Best Answer for Unanswerable Questions: “I Don’t Know”

Natural disasters have been on my mind recently. Perhaps it's because of the fury of...

October 04, 2022

Persons, Humans, and Souls

What it means to be a person, and how that is different than being human,...

September 2022

September 27, 2022

Why Aren’t Red Maples Blue, and other random autumn thoughts

Autumn is my favorite season—not even a close contest. I grew up in northern Vermont,...

September 18, 2022

How Many of Your Gods are Dead?

One of my greatest joys as a philosophy professor is that I get to be...

July 2022

July 26, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence....

July 20, 2022

The Webb Telescope Images and Confirmation Bias

I had an unexpected and very interesting exchange concerning science and faith on Facebook the...

July 18, 2022

Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream

I’ve been thinking a lot about end of life issues lately. Really. They seem to...

June 2022

June 23, 2022

Problems with the Soul

Last week I posted an essay called “Left-Brain Christianity or Right-Brain Faith?” which discussed the...

May 2022

May 17, 2022

An Evolving Faith: It’s About Survival, not Progress

To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes...

December 2021

December 11, 2021

What I am Thankful For at the End of the Semester

As I write this essay on Friday afternoon, it is the last day of regular...

November 2021

November 07, 2021

How to Survive the Time Change (and other first world problems)

In the wee hours of this morning, the time changed from Daylight Saving Time to...

October 2021

October 05, 2021

The Moral LIfe of Dogs

Over the years I have developed dozens of strategies for getting students to participate in...

September 2021

September 20, 2021

Is God More Like Ella Fitzgerald or Ludwig van Beethoven?

Autumn officially begins this week, which is wonderful news. Autumn is by far my favorite...

September 14, 2021

Is Happiness Overrated?

It is the happy life that asks more of us than we realize we have...

August 2021

August 08, 2021

Charles Darwin and the Creator of the Universe Walk Into a Bar . . .

I'm currently reading Shankar Vendantam's Useful Delusions; one of his continuing points throughout the book is...

May 2021

May 09, 2021

A Mothers Day Reflection: Her Children Rise Up and Call Her Blessed

I once learned something interesting about giraffes from one of my colleagues. He was lecturing...

March 2021

March 13, 2021

I Like Time Changes! So sue me.

For many of us, Daylight Saving Time begins tomorrow at 2:00 am. That's "spring forward,"...

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