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April 2026

April 01, 2026

Making the Truth Laugh: An April Fools Day Reflection

I know that today is Wednesday in Holy Week, but it is also April Fools...

October 2025

October 05, 2025

He Who Increases Knowledge Increases Sorrow

Last week I posted an essay called “In Much Wisdom There is Much Grief,” inspired...

September 2025

September 21, 2025

What If I’m Wrong?

Starting college at age eighteen, three thousand miles away from home, might have been daunting...

June 2025

June 25, 2025

The Most Important and Influential Literary Character

Some time ago I read the first few pages of Greg Epstein’s Good without God....

June 01, 2025

On the Art of Discussion

I'm currently reading through my book Nice Work If You Can Get It for the first time...

May 2025

May 27, 2025

What Mitch Albom Taught Me About the Gospels

Truth be Told A week or so ago Jeanne needed to go to a department...

April 2025

April 29, 2025

Being a Philosopher and a Christian

There may be no need to reconcile all one’s beliefs with all one’s other beliefs—no...

September 2024

September 15, 2024

Comfort is vastly overrated

In the interdisciplinary, team-taught course I am participating in this semester, we spent our second...

July 2024

July 21, 2024

Okay, fine. I’m a heretic.

I've spent significant time over the past fourteen or fifteen months immersed in the Bible....

April 2024

April 30, 2024

The Word is a Person

In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh,...

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...

September 2023

September 20, 2023

Abortion and Faith Discussions: Part Three

As I prepared to be a panelist at the “With Mutual Respect” event, I unexpectedly...

August 2023

August 24, 2023

The Problem with Wisdom, Part Two

Last week I posted an essay called “The Problem with Wisdom, Part One,” inspired by...

June 2023

June 27, 2023

Why Don’t You Just Admit that You’re a Heretic?

One of my favorite passages from the Gospels is when Jesus is asked “Which is...

April 2023

April 17, 2023

Drops Upon the Heart

In the interdisciplinary program I teach in and used to direct, the first semester faculty...

March 2023

March 02, 2023

Getting Back to the Basics

This coming Sunday's gospel gets us back to the basics. Sports fans old enough to...

February 2023

February 09, 2023

Why I am Triggered by Trigger Warnings

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace....

January 2023

January 01, 2023

Hope in Unexpected Form—A New Year’s Day Reflection

Every New Year’s Day for the past decade—the amount of time I have been writing...

October 2022

October 16, 2022

Mapping Ghosts and Believing Things that Aren’t True

Over the years that I have been writing this blog, those who describe themselves as...

July 2022

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 09, 2022

What They Don’t Tell Us About Wisdom–Part Two

A couple of weeks ago I posted an essay called “What They Don’t Tell Us...

July 05, 2022

When People of Good Faith have Incompatible First Principles on the Abortion Issue

I had an unusually positive experience a couple of days ago—amazingly enough, it was in...

May 2022

May 23, 2022

The Story I am Willing to be Wrong About

My political scientist Dominican priest friend and colleague, who was my teaching partner in our...

February 2022

February 10, 2022

No One Cares if You are Comfortable or Not

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace....

January 2022

January 02, 2022

In the Beginning was the Word

In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was made flesh,...

December 2021

December 13, 2021

Pursue the Truth, Even if You Never Catch It

The premise of Sue Monk Kidd's 2020 novel The Book of Longings is simple, and will...

November 2021

November 16, 2021

Facts and Faith–Do They Go Together?

I am always encouraged when I find that various topics and issues that I obsess...

September 2021

September 23, 2021

What if God exists, but isn’t very nice?

Three weeks ago, I posted an essay that described a new course called "Faith and...

September 16, 2021

Is Ignorance Just as Good as Knowledge?

A continuing theme of my various classes over the first three weeks of the semester...

September 12, 2021

The Stories We Tell and the Lies We Believe

As always, this past summer was a season of eclectic reading. I am team-teaching a...

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