What does believing in three impossible things before breakfast have to do with the transformative possibilities of a life in touch with that base reality we call God? What does Google Maps have to do with the Pacific Ocean? And can can Astronaut Mark Watney help?
This blog post is part of a series (starting here) exploring what Charles Taylor can teach us about how faith and secularity interact in his (enormous) work A Secular Age. One of Taylor’s main points seems to be that there is a big story in our culture that Science inevitably replaces Faith. Matthew Arnold’s poem On […]
I was recently blown away by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty. From the huge, decadent party in the opening scenes during which Jep Gambarella, writer and aging roué, is revealed grinning mischieviously at the camera, king of the high life, through the crisis caused by the discovery that the only woman he ever […]
What is doubt? What are its good and bad points? Why is it such a big issue in faith circles anyway? There is so much to say that it is really hard to know where to start. However, I was a philosophy student first, so it is most natural for me to start there, with […]
So, there I was. Grief, loss, suffering: a reasonable stab at Frankl’s Tragic Triad. But, as I’ve previously said, I don’t want to stop there. I don’t trust theology – or indeed people – who jump right to the happy ending without the journey. But what is the journey? Do I have to do it […]
One of my issues with the liberalism of someone like Peter Rollins is that I feel like it doesn’t create anything positive. Doubt is a powerful solvent, which is good and right, and some things need to be dissolved. The whiteboard needs to be wiped clean before something new can be created. But something new […]
Alister Pate