V. THE NATURE OF GOD: Part One This final section of my World View, in two posts, could have as easily been titled The Nature of “Ultimate Reality” or a “Supreme Being” or, in John Claypool’s attractive phrase, “The Great Mystery,” because I have reached that point where my intellectual humility—my reverent agnosticism—is at high…

IV. THE NATURE OF NATURE In some sense, I have already been speaking of nature, since persons are, at least, a part of nature. But on any definition, there is a great deal more to nature than humanity. Anyone who happened to be reading my blogs two years ago might well have noticed a series…

III. THE NATURE OF PERSONS I suppose this could be titled, “The Nature of Humanity,” but that seems too generic and, well, impersonal, or “The Nature of Man,” although it’s hard to cleanse that of its sexist overtones. In any case, I have already said more about persons in the two previous posts than anything…

This blog briefly interrupts the sequential appearance of the several sections of my Personal World View, but for what I believe to be a good reason. As with virtually all of my blogs, I write them because they deal with some subject that I care about, something that has been fermenting in my brain for…

II. METHODOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK My world view begins with persons.  That is the humanistic side of my “label.”  My reason for that position is quite clear to me—I have nowhere else to begin.  A human “person” is who I am.  I am bound by what can be called a “spatio-temporal continuum”—that is, all of…

INTRODUCTION This is, in part, a sketch of a philosophical landscape with which I am mostly comfortable and, in part, a mental/emotive/spiritual autobiography.  It is also—even at my advanced age—still a work in progress, which means, by the way, that the sequence of posts that will comprise the content of my world view may, or…

I’ve chosen to address in this last post the topic of paradox for two reasons. The first is that I’ve been fascinated with this concept for many years—the notion that two statements or ideas that seem to be self-exclusive, inconsistent—”on the one hand, on the other hand”—may, on reflection, come together to provide a glimpse…

As indicated in the last post, this one will look at the topics of Tradition and Ritual, and  Egalitarianism—Paradox, regretfully, will have to wait— as they are practiced and utilized in brief reviews of the first three religions we studied, then in more careful reflections on the last four, plus a nod to the Primals….

This fourth post “from the hiatus,” similarly to the third post, offers some reflections on our study of Taoism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—with a brief nod to what Smith terms “the primal religions” and a “final examination”—and some comments on how these four major religions weigh in on two of the topics, ideas, practices, beliefs,…

This third post “from the hiatus,” now over two months since the second one, marks the beginning of the end of this longer-than-expected seven month break from my usual custom over the past three years of posting a blog every couple of weeks or so. Once I’ve put a “button” on this study of world…