Farrellmedia

Augustine and the Evolution of the Soul

2013-05-12T13:08:00.001-04:00

By the term 'soul' (anima) Augustine meant the highest immaterial element in man, the art of man to which mind (mens, more rarely animus) is but a function. Exactly what 'soul' is and how God creates souls he regarded as beyond human knowledge. It would make for simplicity, he once remarked apropos of infant baptism, if all Adam's posterity derived souls as well as bodies from their first parent

Good Friday

2013-03-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

“Now the kind of acceptance that Jesus offered created around him a commune of people who were liberated, able to love one another, able to accept one another. There are many things to be said about this little group, but one of the most obvious things is that it posed a threat to the established society -- whether the Roman colonial set-up or the established religion. It was bound to pose a

Fisking ENCODE

2013-02-23T09:50:00.001-05:00

A recent slew of ENCODE Consortium publications, specifically the article signed by all Consortium members, put forward the idea that more than 80% of the human genome is functional. This claim flies in the face of current estimates according to which the fraction of the genome that is evolutionarily conserved through purifying selection is under 10%. Thus, according to the ENCODE Consortium, a

The Limits of Natural Law

2013-02-16T11:53:00.000-05:00

In abstraction from specific religious or metaphysical traditions, there really is very little that natural law theory can meaningfully say about the relative worthiness of the employments of the will. There are, of course, generally observable facts about the characteristics of our humanity (the desire for life and happiness, the capacity for allegiance and affinity, the spontaneity of

The Middle Ages ... and Your Latest Laptop

2013-02-08T13:14:00.003-05:00

Those rules of argument became increasingly complex. Many, after several centuries, now seem almost banal: it is perhaps a testimony to the effectiveness and importance of the foundations laid down in the twelfth century that stages in argumentative processes which then had to be carefully thought through and elucidated are now taken for granted, with stages in the process being skipped as not

The Return of Traducianism?

2013-01-16T06:48:00.001-05:00

In the doctrine of the soul [Origen] was faced by a choice between three possible doctrines: (a) the Creationist view that God creates each soul for each individual as conceived and born; (b) the Traducianist view that the soul is derived, like the body, from the parents; (c) the Platonic Pre-existence theory, according to which immortal and pre-existent souls temporarily reside in the body.

Medieval Dinner Conversation

2013-01-15T16:40:00.000-05:00

I have amused myself while writing this book by trying to identify which, if any, late antique or early medieval writers (that is, those whose personality we can recapture, at any rate in part, with least mediation) I could imagine meeting with any real pleasure. It comes down to remarkably few: Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Gregory the Great, Einhard, maybe Braulio of Zaragoza -- and, with less

The Problem of the Soul

2012-09-23T14:37:00.001-04:00

A similar uneasiness with this kind of distinction has appeared more recently within Roman Catholic theology, due no doubt in part to a sense that the notion of a self-subsistent soul is non-scriptural and/or that the notion of God's immediately creating each human soul does not fit easily into the continuum of living beings that marks the theory of evolution. We have already seen that Pope John

Deor in HD

2012-08-29T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm following up my Caedmon's Hymn video with this presentation of Deor. This one took a lot longer to memorize. I wasn't going to dress in period costume, but it was fun to work simple wood structures into the background....

Aquinas, Evolution and Double Agency

2012-06-19T15:12:00.001-04:00

Here again, scientific work on the story of life has shown that it is a narrative permeated with stochastic processes governed primarily by serendipity. To put it another way, evolution is a sequence of chance events, a series of accidental intersections of two causal chains. For instance, a recent scientific paper published in the prestigious journal, Nature, argues that one or at most two

They Pay People to Do This

2012-06-10T07:31:00.002-04:00

Do corporate recruiters have to take an illiteracy test for their jobs? In the past couple of weeks I've received 4 pitch emails from HR 'specialists' claiming they've reviewed my resume at Monster and telling me that I would be a good fit with companies like Fidelity and Aflac. Seriously. Do they even bother to read? Or does some moronic search engine just flag my resume because the words '

Christopher Lee and Charlemagne

2012-05-29T11:13:00.000-04:00

Christopher Lee turned 90 on May 27th, and I had a chance to do a little video Q&A with him to celebrate.

Science and Islam: the Kickoff

2012-05-25T11:50:00.000-04:00

My post at Forbes, on the recent University of Iowa panel on Islam and Science. I'll be posting video from the event soon.

Quote of the Week

2012-05-21T12:18:00.000-04:00

I know it's only Monday, but Jason Rosenhouse gets Quote of the Week: If you ask a theistic evolutionist where eyes came from, he will reply that eyes evolved gradually by natural selection, just as scientists say. If you ask him what scientists should be doing differently in their professional lives he will reply that they shouldn't change anything they are doing. If you ask him whether

Taking a Cue from Siris

2012-05-19T09:30:00.000-04:00

As I have to devote so much time to the Forbes blog, I hate letting this one grow moss. So I'm going to take a page from Brandon Watson's playbook and post passages from noteworthy books, poems and quotes (and videos).

Thoughts for the Week

2012-03-31T13:09:00.000-04:00

Via David Hirst, erstwhile Facebook friend and no slouch in the philosophy dept: I'm tempted to say that if one holds that there actually is a "problem of evil", one's already made a big step towards religious belief... and if one isn't, then one's faced with the Herculean task of passing from case-by-case 'intuitions' to some coherent understanding of "ethical behaviour". No-one said it was

Aerobics or Anaerobics in Martial Arts?

2012-03-22T11:36:00.000-04:00

I had fun with this post at Forbes. Included a video of my instructor from the Malkin Athletic Center at Harvard.

Is This a Turning Point?

2012-02-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

My post at Forbes on Pope Benedict's recent founding of a new institute dedicated to examining the implications of science for philosophy--and theology. I think this is really good news. (Now, if I can just get some of the key players to talk about it some more ...)

The Experience of Reading Moi...

2012-01-27T11:57:00.000-05:00

Well, I suppose it could be worse...

The Tree Nobody Wanted

2011-12-20T11:23:00.001-05:00

Boston author Tom McCann's Christmas story, The Tree Nobody Wanted, is available in hardcover and now as an eBook. It's a poignant (but non-schmaltzy) tale, great for kids and for their parents. If you'd like to sample it first, his new, engaging blog, Real People, is featuring it now.

Stem Cells...

2011-11-25T18:39:00.002-05:00

My post today on Wesley Smith's rant at the Weekly Standard.

Christoph Clavius

2011-11-02T12:46:00.000-04:00

At Forbes, I pick up on Tony Christie's Ode to Clavius.

Fond memories of high school?

2011-08-19T09:17:00.000-04:00

We shot this on a nice Nikon Super8mm film camera during the 1979/1980 (senior) school year. Remastered with Final Cut Pro and music from GarageBand.

Adam (Eve, not so much) and the Vatican

2011-08-17T22:17:00.000-04:00

My two posts on genomics and the challenges to traditional theology, here and here.

The Science of Tequila

2011-07-22T16:00:00.000-04:00

And yes, there is some. At Forbes, the results of painstaking research (and a little imbibing...).