Posted by: gcarkner | October 30, 2012

Faraday Film & Faculty Panel

Faraday Institute Film & Faculty Panel on Biological Origins

Wednesday, November 14 @ 4:00 p.m, Woodward IRC Room 5 (UBC Gate One)

Reading Material: Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies. 

UBC Regent & TWU Live Panelists (moderator Martin Barlow)

  • Bart van der Kamp, Professor Emeritus and Former Head of Forestry, UBC
  • Iain Provan, Professor of Ancient Hebrew Literature, Regent College
  • Judith Toronchuk,  retired Professor Biopsychology, Trinity Western University 

Distinguished Participant in the Faraday Institute Film on Origins and Evolution Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Public Lectures, Science Reflections, Seeker Corner

Posted by: gcarkner | October 29, 2012

First Things: a Unique Journal

  (http://www.firstthings.com/) is an ecumenical journal focused on creating a “religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society”.[1] The journal is inter-denominational and inter-religious, representing a broad intellectual tradition of Christian and Jewish critique of contemporary society. Published by the New York-based Institute on Religion and Public Life,[2] it is published monthly, except for bi-monthly issues covering June/July and August/September. Newsweek called First Things “the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world.”[3]

Founding

First Things was founded in 1990 by Richard John Neuhaus, a prominent Lutheran minister and writer, who converted to Catholicism and entered the priesthood shortly after the journal’s founding. Fr. Neuhaus served as the journal’s editor-in-chief until his death in 2009 and wrote a regular column called, “The Public Square.” He started the journal after his connection with the Rockford Institute was severed.[4]

Influence

With a circulation of approximately 30,000 subscribers, First Things is considered to be influential in its articulation of a broadly ecumenical and erudite social and political conservatism. George Weigel, a sometime contributor, wrote that after its founding in the early 1990s, First Things “quickly became, under [Neuhaus’s] leadership and inspiration, the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world.”[3] Ross Douthat wrote that, through First Things, Neuhaus demonstrated “that it was possible to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian.”[5]

Also see CRUX Magazine from Regent College

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Posted in Faith & Culture, Grad Student Strategies, Prayer & Spirituality

Posted by: gcarkner | October 29, 2012

Quality of the Will…6

Taylor’s Concept of Moral Horizon

Another important dimension of the moral self for Charles Taylor is the concept of horizon, a larger context for the self and its moral discriminations. Once the case is made for qualitative discriminations, Taylor continues to develop the case for realism by arguing that one has to make sense of these basic human moral intuitions. This means that one has to articulate self within a moral framework, in a way that makes sense of that experience. The various goods that vie for attention need to be organized within a defined moral worldview, a big picture of moral thought and action. This process involves the geography metaphor of moral mapping of a landscape, producing a map or making explicit the existence within the self of a map which can describe, contextualize and guide one’s moral experience and judgments, through a set of moral parameters. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture

Posted by: gcarkner | October 28, 2012

Language: Friend or Enemy?

Language: a Necessary and Sometimes Confusing Human Capacity

Language and text is the thing; those of us in the arts and humanities think much in terms of language. We all envy great poets who possess great skill in word craft. Language is power in university and in society. Many long to capture that articulate grasp of things, to enhance the capacity of their grammar, rhetoric, and story telling. In academia, we make a close reading of the text in order to have credibility in our work and to be taken seriously. But academics also deconstruct the language of those they oppose, or a previous philosophical regime. Can we give credit to the place and power of language without reducing all reality to a ‘linguistic universe’?  We ultimately cannot escape being homo linguisticus.
Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, GCU Personality, Grad Student Strategies, Stewardship

Posted by: gcarkner | October 28, 2012

T.S. Eliot Four Quartets II

Woman at left is painter Suzanne Valadon

Woman at left is painter Suzanne Valadon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The thrilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars. Read More…

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Posted by: gcarkner | October 26, 2012

Critical Alternatives to Scientism…Point 3

Recovery of a Thick View of Humans

In our next move, we want to transcend scientism’s caricature (reductionism) of human existence, towards a more whole and rich perspective. What are we to make of homo sapiens sapiens?  Beyond the initial exhilaration, nihilistic materialism offers a very empty paradigm for how we are to live together. It starts in nothingness and offers naked choice. When we accept a view of other humans that takes them as nothing special, we head down a very treacherous road. Reductionistic anthropologies have led to much political oppression and abuse in the twentieth century, where the government became the pirate of the people. History cannot deny that scientific materialism has morphed into political-economic exploitation, with massive human suffering. We strongly resist this impoverished, thin model of persons in search of an alternative–a thick view. This is not merely academic, but an urgent quest in our age of global terrorism, corrupt business leaders, shrinking resources, global warming and political flash points. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Science Reflections, Seeker Corner

Posted by: gcarkner | October 23, 2012

Quality of the Will…5

Some Important Qualifications on Quality of the Will

Some important qualifications are in order for Taylor’s qualitative distinctions, or what Harry Frankfurt calls second order desires. He is not suggesting that each and every choice is subject to strong evaluation. This is clearly not true of the choice of flavour of ice cream or style of clothing. Secondly, individuals are not always aware of the hierarchy that is in play; it can be held pre-articulately or tacitly as a background to moral understanding. Thirdly, the language of strong speaks more about quality than force or power. Fourthly, Taylor believes that all individuals are strong evaluators, but does not believe that they all value the same things strongly. He is quite aware of plurality. Read More…

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Posted in Apologetics, Faith & Culture, Seeker Corner, Stewardship

Posted by: gcarkner | October 22, 2012

Top Christian in Continental Philosophy

Donn Welton, Professor of Philosophy

Ph.D. Southern Illinois University, 1973

Harriman Hall 247A
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3750
Tel: (631) 632-7579
dwelton@ms.cc.sunysb.edu

Areas of Specialization

Phenomenology, epistemology, philosophical psychology, theory of the person, Husserl studies

Having studied with Ludwig Landgrebe in Köln and Gillan at Southern Illinois, Donn Welton’s initial focus was on German and French phenomenology in general and the thought of Edmund Hussler in particular. This resulted in two book-length studies of Husserl, the first on his theory of meaning in the context of his accounts of perception and language, the second on the range of his static and genetic phenomenological method in the context of his relationship to Heidegger, arguing that Husserl’s thought has a systematic scope and methodological resources that many critics think were excluded by his approach. Moving beyond an historical account, the second study also develops the beginnings of a viable theory of context and back ground, one of the most pressing issues under consideration today. Along with these two studies, he has edited an anthology of Husserl’s writings and, most recently, a critical reader on his philosophy. With further research at the Universities of Tübingen and Oxford and ongoing collaborative work at the University of Marburg, Welton’s current focus is on theory of person and semantics of psychosomatic symptoms. Read More…

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Posted in Faith & Culture, Grad Student Strategies

Posted by: gcarkner | October 21, 2012

The Lost Art of Compassion

Grad Identity: Is Charity a Lost Art?

In the rough and tumble of  academic life, high achievers are not often challenged to work on their skills of compassion, or to develop a caring heart. The hyper-concern for brilliance wins hands down. In this post, we want to problematize a fear and avoidance, yes even a distaste for commitment to the Other in the West (Global North).  A self-constructing outlook has great currency among today’s university culture. For instance, one survey suggests that a good percentage of undergraduate students think that they should be given a B Grade just for showing up to class. Recently a friend visiting from Cambridge University noted among students there the intense obsession with science alone, a refusal to think about anything else. Tough Question: Does academic achievement also foster an indifference, or a perceived  freedom from responsibility for the Other, and an obsession with self-interest? Is one’s commitment calculated first and foremost in favour of oneself and one’s own growth and advancement, to the exclusion of the needs of other fellow travellers? Under social pressure, this posture can easily be adopted and sanctioned by Christian postgrad students. Can we be brilliant and compassionate at the same time? That is the question. Read More…

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Posted in GCU Personality, Grad Student Strategies, Prayer & Spirituality, Stewardship | Tags:

Posted by: gcarkner | October 19, 2012

George Egerton, Professor Emeritus, History UBC

PUBLIC RELIGION IN CANADA FROM MACKENZIE KING TO TRUDEAU:

ENTERING THE AGE OF PLURALISM

1945-1982 George Egerton, UBC History, December 2009

This is an article I wrote for an encyclopaedia.   It studies the history of public religion in Canada from the period of the Second World War to the patriation of the Canadian Constitution of 1982 with its Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Through these years, Canada would be transformed from a self-proclaimed ‘Christian democracy’ of denominational pluralism, through an interval of religious pluralism, to a secularist pluralism, based on how courts and politicians have applied the Charter. Although attention will be given to the spectrum of world religions represented in Canada, the analysis focuses primarily on the predominant Christian churches to which most Canadians, including aboriginal peoples, belonged. Until the 1970s, Christianity, in its national denominations, presented the only religion with public functions beyond the private realm – in culture, social institutions, law and politics.[1] Read More…

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