Long time, no blog

Several months ago I started checking out imgur on a regular basis, and then I created an account. Pretty soon I wrote some posts about philosophy (and other things). But with the political situation right now it's just become a bunch of people throwing around their hatred left and right. I sometimes commented on this, but I found myself becoming tempted to troll. And then I had an epiphany: why the heck was I writing posts about philosophy on imgur when I have a blog? So I'll just start posting some of the things I posted over there, with alterations as I see fit. Maybe that'll kickstart things back up.

Update (30 July): I just realized there was a backlog of comments that I never saw. Like, going back a year and a half. So if you left one and were wondering why it hadn't been posted, it's because I'm a lazy spud, and they're now in place.

It's been a while

It's June and this is my first post since January. It's weird because I have a backlog of posts that are 95% done, and I'd like to get them up and running. For now I'll just tell you a story: last Wednesday night I started having some severe abdominal pain. By 3 or 4 in the morning I'd finally had enough and went to the ER where they promptly did an ultrasound and an MR scan and then took out my gall bladder. It was my first time having surgery and I lost a freaking organ. Anyway, I'm doing OK, trying to take it easy, so I'll start finishing those posts for y'all.

Here's a joke I made up in the ER: Why was the liver so nice to the testicle? Because he wanted to make the ball gladder.

Uh, sorry

On the sidebar is the blog archive. I started out strong, but then settled down into around a hundred posts a year. In 2011 and 2012 I managed 88 posts each year. But starting in 2014, the number of annual posts dropped dramatically. Finally, this year, I got back into the swing of things. And as I entered December, I had 82 posts, with a good chance of breaking 90, and very good odds I would at least reach the 88 posts that I had in previous years. I already had a few meaty posts that were mostly written and just needed another short paragraph or so before clicking "Publish." But then, for no readily apparent reason, I kept finding other things to do. So with this post, I'm at 84 posts for the year. Not too shabby, but I had such high hopes. So, to apologize for hardly posting anything this month, I'll link you to Dave Barry's 2017 Year in Review. Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year.

What I'm reading

The Goodreads widget on the sidebar has the books that I'm currently reading, and I try to keep it moderately up to date. However, in the coming months much of my reading will be more focused on journal articles, so much so that I expect there will be fewer books. Having said that, I'm trying to start a habit of reading about ten pages per day of a book by either C.S. Lewis or Dallas Willard. And since I'm listing the science-fiction books I'm reading now too, there should still be a few books listed on the sidebar.

Oy

OK, I can finally exhale. I was going to start blogging more, then I had to review the proofs and compile the index for a book that's coming out in a couple months, and the stress was ... considerable. Actually, I still have a couple weeks before the end of the term, then I correct final exams, and then I can exhale. In the meantime, for your reading pleasure, I present you with "Pray the Lord My Mind to Keep" by Cornelius Plantinga.

Restored posts

For those of you listening at home, I took three posts offline a year and a few months ago because an article I wrote was being published in an academic journal, and I wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety. I figure it's been long enough now, so I've just restored them. The posts were:

The Central Issue; or, Location Isn't Everything
Size Doesn't Matter, part 2 (if you want to start with part 1, which wasn't taken offline, click here)
"The alien who lives among you", part 1

All three are on science and religion. The third one was meant to be the first in a series (obviously) but I never wrote any more posts on it. Even though I'm on a blog-break, I'm planning to restart the franchise and write a series of posts on what the discovery of extraterrestrial life might mean for religion. Stay tuned. In the meantime, you can check out some of my more interesting posts.

OK...

...so I guess I'm taking a break from blogging. For whatever reasons, I'm finding it very difficult to find the motivation to blog. I'm certainly busy, but I was busier during my Doctoral studies and I managed to blog fairly consistently then. I expect I'll start blogging again when fall term starts.

So there's a lot of stuff going on in the world right now, but rather than go into all of that, I'll just provide you with a list of things I have been / am / will soon be reading:

Elizabeth Asmis, "Free Action and the Swerve," Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1990): 275-91.

Michael Bergmann, Justification without Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Walter G. Englert, Epicurus on the Swerve and Voluntary Action. American Classical Studies, 16. Atlanta, Scholar’s Press, 1987.

Brain Leahy, "Can Teleosemantics Deflect the EAAN?" Philosophia 41 (2013): 221-38.

Tim O'Keefe, Epicurus on Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

David Sedley, "Epicurus' Refutation of Determinism," in Συζήτησις: Studi sull’epicureismo greco e romano offerti a Marcello Gigante, G. Macchioroli, ed. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1983: 11-51.

Feng Ye, "Naturalized Truth and Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70 (2011): 27-46.

Update: Perhaps, if time allows (which it probably won't), I'll soon be reading these books too:

Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Karl Ameriks, Kant’s Theory of Mind. Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.

Apologies

Sorry for not posting much of late, I have a lot going on right now. I'll get back to what's important as soon as I can.

Updating the sidebar

When I started this blog I wrote posts describing most of the categories on the sidebar, and made the title of each category on the sidebar link to the corresponding post. But I've decided to rewrite them because I've made enough changes to justify it. I wrote a new post for the Ministries category , and I just updated the Posts of Interest category on the sidebar to include more links but making it more concise. Just so you know, I'll be doing that for the other categories in the coming months.

Ministries

I have put a short list of ministries at the top of my sidebar. The reason they're at the top (except for the brief explanation of what my blog's title means) is because they're more important than anything else. I won't be adding more ministries to this list, for the simple reason that there would be no justifiable stopping point. There are simply too many worthy ministries, and I would always be guilty of excluding very deserving ones. For example, while I recently mentioned Heifer International, I didn't put them on the sidebar because it would just open a floodgate. The sidebar list is just a few ministries I knew of and was (and am) encouraged by when I started this blog. However if you want to mention some more ministries in the comments (with links if possible) have at it.

The first is International Justice Mission. I love these guys. They go to countries where child prostitution is illegal but the laws against it are largely unenforced, and work together with the local authorities to rescue children out of it. In other words, they go in and get the children out. They walk the walk. And it's not just with child prostitution; they work against manual slavery, and other forms of violent persecution. Several years ago I read a book by the president of IJM, Gary Haugen, entitled Terrify No More about a particular project in which they freed dozens of children. If you have some extra cash, you might want to consider donating it to IJM. Organizations like this are what money is for.

Second and third are Medical Teams International (formerly Northwest Medical Teams) and Mercy Corps. I know these organizations because they're both based in Portland, where I'm from. They go all over the world getting people the food, medicine, and amenities they need. Ditto with the money thing.

Finally, the Hunger Site. You might already know about this: you simply go to the site, click on the button, and food will be donated (by advertisers) to people all over the world who need it. You can only click once a day. I had it as my homepage on my old computer, and that made it very easy to remember. I've fallen way out of the practice over the last few years, and part of the reason I'm writing this post is to shame myself into getting back on board. If you're wondering whether it's on the up-and-up, here's a Snopes article on it. The Hunger Site also has a topbar linking to similar sites, which you can also click once a day, focusing on literacy, breast cancer, animal rescue, etc. You can click on each one of them once a day, and it only takes a minute out of your time, so there's no reason not to do it.

Self-edit

I have temporarily removed the content of three posts because they have some similarities with an article I wrote that is being published in an academic journal. Both the article and the blogpost share the same origin, a paper I wrote in my graduate studies. Even though a blogpost probably doesn't count as having previously published the material, I'm taking them off the blog in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. I'll put them back online in a year or so.

After Aristotle

I just added After Aristotle to the sidebar, under the "Site Seeing" rubric. It's a blog written by a philosopher, and going over what he's posted so far impressed me mightily. Check it out.

Update: I just added Edward Feser's blog as well, something I should have done a long time ago. Thanks to Pedro Erik in the comments for pointing it out. You might want to check out Feser's summary of his posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. It's really outstanding.

Subject lables

This is an update of this post. To reiterate: My theory on labeling my blogposts is that labels should be broad rather than specific. This is partially for the benefit of my readers, so they don't have to negotiate an endless list of labels, and partially for my own benefit so I don't have to compose and keep track of such a list. For example, I have labels for Religion and Science, but not for the Anthropic Principle or Big Bang Cosmology. Occasionally I've found it necessary to be more specific. So from Culture and Ethics I made labels that dealt specifically with Homosexuality and Abortion; from Books I made a label for Quotes; etc. And while, thus far, I have a label for Philosophy, but not more specific labels for philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, epistemology, etc., I suspect I'll have to break it down at some point in the future. I'm putting this off, because I will want to be consistent, and this will require going through my whole oeuvre and relabeling everything.

Anyway, I had also been avoiding breaking down the Labels sidebar into separate lists for subjects and people, but I finally went ahead and did the deed. The only person label that's still in the subject label list is the Historical Jesus, and that's because those posts are often dealing with him as a subject of research rather than a person being referenced.

Sorry

for the lack of posts. I've been travelling around, and had a lot on my plate. I still do, actually, but I'll try to post more. I haven't run out of things to say.

Folks,

once again, I apologize for not posting much of late. I have PhD stuff going on. I'll probably experience a burst of activity once I turn in my dissertation.

What I'm Reading

For anyone paying attention, I've just re-added the Goodreads widget to my sidebar that shows what books I'm currently reading. I'm still writing my dissertation, but I really am in the final throes at this point, so I'm able to take my focus off of individual journal articles and book chapters. In fact, one of the two books has absolutely nothing to do with philosophy: Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free by F. F. Bruce. I may not be able to really get into it until I actually turn in my dissertation, but I read a few pages every few days. The other book is Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga, which my library just got in last week. This is his most recent book where he argues that there is superficial conflict between Christianity and science and superficial concord between naturalism and science; but there is deep-seated concord between Christianity and science and deep-seated conflict between naturalism and science. Not that he's trying to be controversial or anything.

Site Seeing

I've decided to combine three elements of my sidebar into one, and economize them a bit, under the title Site Seeing. These are simply websites and blogs that I find interesting. Some of the sites, blogs in particular, cover politics, but the fact that I'm linking to them should not be taken as an endorsement or agreement.

First are several philosophy websites and blogs. Dallas Willard is a professor at USC, and is an expert on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. His site includes most of his philosophical essays. But Willard has made a name for himself in the Christian community by writing some incredibly insightful books on spirituality and Christian living (I wrote about one here), and his site also includes a large collection of his essays on these subjects as well. If you're a Christian, I can't recommend strongly enough that you get to know his writings. Victor Reppert's blog, Dangerous Idea (derived from his book C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea, which defends the argument from reason) is where he writes about philosophy, theology, C. S. Lewis, politics, etc. Dangerous Idea 2 is dedicated exclusively to the argument from reason. Just Thomism is an absolutely outstanding philosophy blog, one of the best around. It's written by James Chastek. Bill Vallicella's blog, Maverick Philosopher is equally outstanding in this regard. The Prosblogion is a group blog written by numerous philosophers of religion and very interesting. Another link is to William Lane Craig's site Reasonable Faith, although you have to have a username and password to access much of it. If you don't want to do that, his old site is still up, and has most of the stuff available from the new site. Craig's contribution to academia is primarily in defending Christianity. He has written numerous articles on philosophical proofs for and against the existence of God, as well as issues regarding the historical Jesus. I also link to a site on his debates. I'm also including the Philosophers' Carnival which links to various philosophical blogposts every three weeks, but is hosted by a different blog each time.

Next are some sites dealing with Christianity and culture that are definitely worth your time. Books and Culture is an online magazine, although its most recent articles are usually only available in print. Yet it's still very much worth checking out. Another excellent online magazine is First Things. Next is a purely online resource called Leadership U. They have plenty of articles on religion and culture, philosophy, science, etc. An excellent blog on contemporary culture is The Anchoress, written by Elizabeth Scalia, who also writes at First Things.

I've also listed several sites that deal chiefly with religion and science. Bede's Library is the apologetics site of James Hannam, a philosopher and historian of science, and the author of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science (US title: The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. James's website explodes many of the myths surrounding the alleged conflict between science and Christianity, and I'm very pleased that he invited me, and a few others, to join him on his blog Quodlibeta (formerly Bede's Journal). The Counterbalance Interactive Library has a bunch of lectures and articles by leading scientists and philosophers of science, arguing most points of view. It really is an excellent resource. Another site is Reasons to Believe, a Christian ministry. I've belonged to a local chapter of it, and they also do an excellent job. However, they are critical of evolution, something I find unnecessary. Nevertheless, that is pretty much the only point where they conflict with contemporary science; most of the site demonstrates how modern physics, astronomy, and cosmology not only fit within the Christian worldview, but support it, often to the exclusion of other worldviews.

As for science simpliciter, I link to the Carnival of Space, which updates interesting stories and facets of space travel every week. Cosmic Log is a blog written by Alan Boyle and focuses on science, especially space science (something I'm very interested in), but also comments on other issues. It's a good starting place for scientific news and discoveries. A few sites that promote space exploration and getting permanent human colonies on other solar system bodies besides the earth are the Mars Society and the Moon Society. You can probably guess which bodies they have in mind. They are actually in slight conflict, since the Mars Society advocates their Mars Direct program to go directly to Mars without first setting up stations on the Moon. Two more sites along these lines are the National Space Society and the Planetary Society. Finally is Vintage Space, an excellent blog dealing with the history of space exploration.

Now for miscellanea: First is Homestar Runner. If you don't already understand why I'm linking to them, any argument would be futile. It's the source of my (former) nom de cyber, Tragic Clown Dog. Actually, it was a toss-up between that and Mushy Chamberpot, but my wife nixed the latter. Next, Things of Interest. I discovered this right before I started writing this blog. This guy writes all kinds of stuff, but the most interesting are his short stories. He is reminiscent, to my mind, of Fredric Brown, who I consider one of the better SF writers around in terms of short stories. I write short fiction too, and frankly I was starting to get a little impressed with myself before I read this guy's stuff. Some of the blogs from my old blogroll that successfully made the transfer include: Raskolnikov, Lost in the Cosmos, which I originally found by doing a Technorati search to see if anyone linked to my first blog. After reading him a few times, I was hooked. Besides, how can you not like a guy who names himself after a Dostoyevsky character? Wayfaring Stranger is written by Tyson, who I met him online a few years ago, after he linked to me. He's a father and a pastor, and has prayed for me during some hard times. Very nice guy. His blog is mostly concerned with religious issues from a specifically Christian perspective. Jacob Longshore writes the Wordverter blog. We know each other face to face, because we studied at the same school. Also a very nice guy, and an expert on C. S. Peirce (pronounced "purse").

Poster Boy

If you're interested in my posts I've added some interesting posts to my Posts of Interest post post hoc.

Wow

I have just spent the last week as sick as I've ever been. I had a high fever, severe dizziness, severe aches all over my body, cough, and was alternating between violent shivering and profuse sweating. Now I'm doing better: my fever's down, the aches are mostly gone, the shivering and sweating is mostly gone. The dizziness is still there, but not nearly as bad.

All this to explain why I haven't posted with my usual frequency of late. I'll try to get going again, but I had planned to use this week (and next) to finish the rough draft of my dissertation, so I'm behind and may not have as much time to post. Also, if you wrote a comment recently and were wondering why I hadn't responded to it, I just went through and answered several of the more recent ones.

Merry (cough) Christmas and Happy (bleaurgh) New Year.

More quotes a-comin'

I try to space out the Quotes of the Day and Thoughts of the Day, but because I've been reading a lot more lately in order to finish my dissertation, I keep finding interesting quotes I want to post. So I'm going to start doing it more frequently, maybe once a week. And just to be clear, I'm posting them because I find them interesting, not necessarily because I agree with them.