Posted by: gcarkner | September 27, 2013

Ann Voskamp Discovers Gratitude

Quotes from Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

for the Curious of Heart

Gratitude-Gifts-Grace-Glory-Goodness-Joy-Fullness-Meaning-Blessing

Eucharisteo: Ann’s Unique Hermeneutic on the Spirituality of Everyday Life

Eucharisteo (thanksgiving) always precedes the miracle. And don’t we all long for a miracle of grace.

See also Brene Brown TED Talk on Vulnerability 

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lXYZ6s3Dfk Louie Schwartzburg, Nature, Beauty, Gratitude

Kari Jobe, Revelation Song

Book of Philippians

“Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.”

“Humbly let go. Let go of trying to do, let go of trying to control, let go of my own way, let go of my own fears. Let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy’s fire. Leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. Bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love and whisper a surprised thanks. This is the fuel for joy’s flame. Fullness of joy is discovered only in the emptying of will. And I can empty. I can empty because counting His graces has awakened me to how He cherishes me, holds me, passionately values me. I can empty because I am full of His love. I can trust.”

“We don’t see the material world for what it is meant to be: the means to communion with God…. There is a belief missing, that God is good and that he gives good gifts.”

“When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?”

“He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).”

“The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live…. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything…. Saying Yes to God’s graces is the linchpin of it all.”

“Thank You, God, for the bread of now …

for your Son and sacrifice …

for the love song You keep singing, the gift of Yourself that You

keep giving …

for the wild wonder of You in this moment.”

“I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done–yesterday.”

“I have to seek God beauty. Because isn’t my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? …. True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself. God is present in all moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on the hemlocks, the moon over harvested wheat. Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things …. Nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature.”

“It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can’t see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us …” Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 25, 2013

Alvin Plantinga, October 2nd @ UBC

Alvin Plantinga

Dr. Alvin Plantinga, former John O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, Notre Dame University;

currently Jellema Chair in Philosophy, Calvin College.

Topic:  Science & Religion: Where the Conflict Really Lies

 Wednesday, October 2, 2013 @ 4:00 p.m.    Scarfe Building Room 100, UBC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pUF82TZFCs&feature=youtu.be

Abstract

Taking Christian belief as C.S. Lewis’s ‘Mere Christianity’, I’ll argue that there is no real conflict between science and Christian belief. I’ll go on to argue that there is a real conflict between science and naturalism, the thought that there is no such person as God or anything like God.  So if we take naturalism to be a religion or a quasi-religion, then there is indeed a science-religion conflict; it’s not between Christianity and science, however, but between naturalism and science.

Like any Christian (and indeed any theist), I believe that the world has been created by God, and hence “intelligently designed”. As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution, the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution. But the scientific theory of evolution, sensibly enough, says nothing one way or the other about divine guidance. It doesn’t say that evolution is divinely guided; it also doesn’t say that it isn’t. Like almost any theist, I reject unguided evolution; but the contemporary scientific theory of evolution just as such—apart from philosophical or theological add-ons—doesn’t say that evolution is unguided. Like science in general, it makes no pronouncements on the existence or activity of God.

Biography

Dr. Plantinga is professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, was described by Time magazine in 1980 as “America’s leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God.”  He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including God and Other Minds: the Rational Justification of Religious Belief (Cornell 1967), God, Freedom and Evil (Eerdmans 1974), Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford 2000) and Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford 2012 from which he draws this lecture).  Among many honors, Plantinga is the past president of the American Philosophical Association, Central Division, and the Society of Christian Philosophers, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. With a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University, Alvin Plantinga is widely known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics and Christian apologetics. He delivered the Gifford Lectures three times, was a Guggenheim Fellow, 1971–1972. In 2012, the University of Pittsburgh’s Philosophy Department, History and Philosophy of Science Department, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science awarded him the Rescher Prize.

Handout for the Lecture: Science and Religion- where conflict handout

See also new book by David Bentley Hart called The Experience of God: Being ,Consciousness, Bliss

https://ubcgcu.org/2012/09/15/alvin-plantinga-where-the-conflict-really-lies/ Book review by Dr. Olav Slaymaker

https://ubcgcu.org/2013/09/24/where-the-conflict-really-lies-chapter-10/  Summary of argument on the Conflict between Science & Naturalism.

 Sample of Plantinga’s talk and good humour 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbjp9PrtPS8 Where the Conflict Really Lies Biola U.

See Thomas Nagel’s book which has fuelled much current debate: Mind and Cosmos: why naturalistic neo-Darwinism is almost certainly wrong.

Also see the detailed scholarly work on the subject of natural theology by Alister McGrath called A Fine-Tuned Universe.

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 24, 2013

Where the Conflict Really Lies, Chapter 10

Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies. Chapter 10 Summary.

Again the following contains summary notes on our GCU discussion last fall of the concluding chapter of Plantinga’s important and immensely challenging book. The provocative title of this chapter is: “The Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism”. Having demonstrated that the so-called conflict between Christian theism and science is rather superficial and that there is deep concord between science & theism, Plantinga goes a step further. He reveals the deep unease, discord, even conflict between naturalism and science. P(R/N&E) is low (the probability of reliability of our rationality, given an embrace of naturalism and evolution is low). https://ubcgcu.org/2013/08/17/alvin-plantainga-ubc-october-2013/

Many of our colleagues take naturalism and science as appropriate intellectual bedfellows, working “hand-in-glove”. But Plantinga argues that naturalism (which includes materialism) is in conflict with evolution, a main pillar of contemporary science. The argument centers on the status of our cognitive faculties: those faculties, or powers, or processes that produce beliefs or knowledge in us (e.g. perception, memory, a priori intuition, introspection, testimony, induction). His argument concerns the question of the reliability of  cognitive faculties (reliability of cognitive content) if we espouse naturalism and unguided evolution together. The probability is very low. Can we get to true belief, reliable knowledge by this path? Again it is an argument from coherence (or rather, in this case, incoherence). One of the philosophy PhD students in the group astutely noted that the philosophical argument reductio ad absurdum is also at play. We recommend that you read the entire chapter to get the full impact and clarity of his articulation on the matter.  This was the cutting edge of Plantnga’s talk on October 2 at Scarfe 100 UBC. It is helpful to note that Plantinga is considered one of the top twenty Christian scholars in the world. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 24, 2013

Where the Conflict Really Lies, Chapter 9

Where the Conflict Really Lies: Concord Between Science & Theism (Imago Dei) Summary of Chapter 9.

Below are some summary thoughts by Alvin Plantinga  from his book Where the Conflict Really Lies, Chapter 9. We encourage you to read the whole chapter, in fact the whole book to get the full impact of this brilliant philosopher. Specifically he is using an argument from coherence in this chapter. Plantinga speaks to graduate students and faculty at UBC, Scarfe Building Room 100 at 4:00 pm on Wednesday, October 2nd on this topic. Sponsored by Graduate & Faculty Christian Forum (with assistance from the Murrin Fund) https://ubcgcu.org/2013/08/17/alvin-plantainga-ubc-october-2013/

Thesis: God created both us and our world in such a way that there is a certain fit or match between the world and our cognitive faculties: adequatio intellectus ad rem (the adequation of the intellect to reality). For science to be successful, there must be a match between our cognitive faculties and the world. These are his main points.

1. Reliability & Regularity: For science to be successful, the world must display a high degree of regularity and predictability. It is an essential part of Christian theism to think of God as providentially governing the world in such a way as to provide that kind of stability and regularity. The world is due to a creative intelligence.

2. Law & Constancy: Albert Einstein “Every one who is seriously engaged in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that the laws of nature manifest the existence of a spirit vastly superior to that of men.” Theism offers important resources here: we can think of the necessity of natural law both as a consequence and also a sort of measure of divine power. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 23, 2013

Recovering Stewardship…5

Corruption and Environmental Costs of Wreckless Consumerism

When did we lose the enchantment of the world? When did we decide to sacrifice the future of our children and have them pay our debts? When did we decide to pollute to our hearts content with no thought for the flourishing of future generations? Who sold us this mythology of consumerism and growth without end, a carbon future with our end? How did we become so deluded, so corrupt? G. K. Chesterton, British social critic, was not far from the mark when he wrote: “A person who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt person, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. Christ said that to be rich is to be in a peculiar danger of moral wreck.” This should give us pause in our fast world. Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman (Thinking Fast and Slow) is asking us to slow down and think more deeply, more circumspectly, where we see things more clearly and make our best judgments. Al Gore and his research team have articlated six areas of vital concern for the future of human civilization in his important  book The Future: six drivers of global change. Now we have the communal vision of  a ‘new human narrative’ by Jeremy Rifkin in Zero Margin Cost Society: the internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism in 2014. Watch his lecture to get the summary theme:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-iDUcETjvo

It should be clear through this five part discussion that the possessive, consumptive attitude is corrosive of individual values of service and compassion toward humanity and the planet. There is no question that the utilitarian ethic of comfort and survival has destroyed our ability to love and respect our neighbour (both local and global). Love and a quest for the good (Charles Taylor, Iris Murdoch) is the foundation of any substantive ethic. Greed and acquisitiveness, on the other hand, are highly toxic forces in public ethics and relationships, promoting a radical breakdown in trust, and nasty politics. Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell strikes the jugular vein when he says that we are presently in a spiritual crisis, a crisis of belief, a crisis of perspective. Steven Bouma-Prediger calls it a lack of discernment about our home. We are alienated and at war with our own home–our fragile blue-green planet, earth.

Corruption: Wealth is a dangerous, heady wine if not handled with accountability. We have seen this in the lifestyle decisions of bankers, traders and Wall Street executives during the high rolling days before the 2008 economic crash that almost entirely crippled the whole global financial system. The power that goes with great wealth can be tremendously life-giving or incredibly death-dealing. The documentaries “Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room” and “Inside Job” reveal some shocking, narcissistic behaviours in the leadership of this and other corporations and government. Highly trained, otherwise intelligent people seemed to lose touch with reality; they bought into an operative cultural pathology, fuelled by greed and the ruthless vices of conquest. This has exposed a values vacuum in the governance of corporate society. Also see the movie The Corporation for some eye-opening insights  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHrhqtY2khc Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 19, 2013

Recovering Stewardship…4

Consumerism has its Personal Cost

Consumer Angst

As stated in the previous post in this series, consumerism is heavily motivated by a strong individualism. The corporate or common good is often far from the mind of the consumer. Individualism as a form of identity creates in people a sense of isolation. With this isolation, comes fear and insecurity. Many people today pursue acquisitiveness in order to control their private world and establish some sort of security for themselves and their family. This is a virulent combination. Strangely, this can lead to an even greater insecurity and tremendous stress related to the challenge of maintaining the consumptive lifestyle and keeping boredom at bay.

Legitimate needs (food, water, shelter) can be met, but illegitimate wants (laced with pride, envy, greed) are literally  insatiable. They create obsessive behaviour similar to that found in alcoholism or drug addiction.  The West invented shop-aholism. In this sense, the consumer ethos emerges as the opiate of the masses. Enough is never enough; there is always the craving for more. The boom in the therapy industry in North America has a lot to do with the resulting neuroses and boredom caused by crude consumerism. It turns out not to provide meaning and fulfilment, but the opposite, soul angst. We note the very sad example of the wealthy and eccentric aircraft billionaire Howard Hughes. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 14, 2013

Recovering Stewardship …3

From Whence Comes Consumerism?

What are the philosophical and historical roots of consumerism? What we now know as the Consumer Society is actually a fairly recent development–roughly since 1945. It is a post-World War II phenomenon. During this era, advertising exploded as an industry. Governments fuelled consumption in order to rebuild their Gross Domestic Product. Factories multiplied and consumer goods increased exponentially both in variety and number as did wealth. The advertising industry went into full gear, utilizing popular media as the means to promoting consumption. The result has been a phenomenal, unstoppable revolution in rising expectations (think cell phones today). And of course with this comes the voracious consumption of natural resources and fossil fuels (cheap energy). One of the reasons that consumerism is so virulent in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century is that many in the West have bought into a metaphysical naturalistic materialism as well. Material things are on the ascendant: only the physical world exists and matters to us. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 11, 2013

Creative Interpretation of the Immanent Frame

Charles Taylor & the Immanent Frame of the Secular

~Dr. Gordon E. Carkner~

 We are offered a particularly insightful analysis of our current cultural ethos by McGill Philosophy Professor Charles Taylor in his most recent prize winning tome A Secular Age. (2007). Richard Rorty spoke of Taylor as one the top twelve philosophers of our day. He captures the way in which we have located ourselves in the late modern world and the picture that has taken our minds captive: he calls it the immanent frame. This house of the mind and imagination constitutes a unique social imaginary (implicit understanding of the space in which we live) in human history. Our focus here in a series of blog posts will be to exposit the key insights of Chapter 15 in A Secular Age. In this critical analysis, he shows how religion has been philosophically and culturally marginalized in Western culture (even while it is experiencing a resurgence). Taylor leads us to think freshly about how we have arrived in this cultural space.

The core theme of this landmark book is (510) to study the fate of religious faith in the strong sense in the West, meaning:  a. belief in a transcendent reality, and b. the connected aspiration of personal transformation, which goes beyond ordinary human flourishing. He is deconstructing or calling into question the subtraction story or Western Master Narrative (one deeply embedded in modern consciousness), where science replaces religion after Christendom. Within this perspective, the growth of science entails the death of God or the recession of religion. Religion is seen to be replaced by science. Is this hermeneutically valid?, asks Taylor.  When and why did science become equivalent to secularism? This is the crux of the investigation that Taylor leads our thinking about contemporary Western culture. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | September 10, 2013

Advice to Young Scholars

Advice to Young Scholars

~Dr. Martin Ester, Computer Science, Simon Fraser University~

Hard at Work

I am Martin Ester,  a computer science professor at SFU. I have supervised graduate students for more than ten years. I am also a Christian who is convinced that my faith is relevant to all aspects of our world. I continue to enjoy this part of my job very much and have the impression that my students also do enjoy their studies, at least once in a while. Sometimes current or prospective students ask me for advice on how to succeed, and I have tried to distill the following short advice, which will hopefully be useful not only for computer science students, but for many others across the disciplines.

1) Make sure to know why you are doing this:

Make sure that you know why you are going to grad school. The monetary benefit of earning a higher salary with a graduate degree may be smaller than you think. And the reputation of your degree may also not be worth investing several years of your life. You may waste part of your life and will not even succeed with your graduate studies if you do not have a better answer. I believe that you need to have a passion for your thesis topic, an inner motivation to explore that helps you to overcome the inevitable hard times during grad school. On the other hand, your studies need a purpose that goes beyond your own interests, and you should have a realistic understanding of how your studies will help you to better serve humanity. Keep in mind that not every PhD graduate can have an academic career. Read More…

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Posted in GCU Personality, Grad Student Strategies

Posted by: gcarkner | September 8, 2013

Dr. Olav Slaymaker on Stewardship

UNIVERSITY SERVICE: an Emeritus Professor’s understanding of stewardship at a research university.

Screen Shot 2014-09-04 at 9.14.11 AM

When I was appointed to a tenure track position in 1968 I was told that the appropriate allocation of my time should be approximately 40:40:20 respectively to teaching, research and service. In this context, service was defined as anything from departmental committee work through university administration to continuing education and public lectures downtown and volunteer international development work. When I became Head of my Department in 1982 I soon realized that the balance had shifted from 40:40:20 to 30:60:10 (i.e. reduced teaching and service vis-à-vis research). My estimate of the current situation is that there has been a further drift away from teaching and service such that 20:75:5 describes better the balance of effort that is required in order to achieve tenure and/or promotion. Read More…

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Posted in Faith & Culture, Stewardship

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