The Golden Investigator 

I made a blog for my personal search for Truth in my study of scripture and my interest in Christianity. You can read about it on my blog:

A “Golden Investigator” is a term that missionaries use for someone who is genuinely searching for truth (in the LDS Church); who takes an active interest in reading scriptures and trying to understand them, and who wants to know the truth and to do God’s will. My fiancée said that this would be a good title for my blog because she said that I am that kind of person.

I’ve always had an interest in religion. I was brought up in the Catholic tradition and went to Catholic school from K-12. I’d always been interested in seeking the truth and meaning of things. That being the case, I still wasn’t really all that Christian. I didn’t go to church and I thought my interpretation of Christian teachings was good enough. In grade 12, I took philosophy and my teacher, Mr. Hill, was amazing and made me realize how “un-Christian” a lot of my beliefs were. He made me want to be a better Christian (a better Catholic) and helped realign my search for truth. After that, my faith started to grow and my relationship with my Heavenly Father started to develop and become stronger and deeper. I prayed more, and more sincerely and I was passionate about learning more and more about Christianity.

Read the rest →

@4 months ago
#Christian #Christianity #Christ #religion #God #LDS #Mormon #Church #truth #philosophy 

What, philosophy?! Why Philosophy?

Philosophy interprets the narrative of life. It searches for meaning in it. Its use is as a guide through life, not as a symbol of high-intellectualism. What would be the point of philosophy if it were just used to win arguments or to carry out thought experiments? Who really cares how profound something sounds or how deeply you can think about something if there is nothing real in what you come up with? There is no point to philosophy if it’s not true…that is the point of philosophy — truth. The word literally means “love of wisdom”. Philosophy only counts when there is meaning to it, and philosophy has meaning to it when it is used to find meaning in our lives.

Which philosophers do you love more, the skeptics and existentialists? or the more ‘practical’ ones who talk about morality? The Thomas Hobbes’s and the Jean-Paul Sartre’s? or the Socrates’s and the C.S. Lewis’s? The ones who despair? or the ones who hope? And why do you love them?

@1 year ago with 2 notes
#philosophy #writing 

That might take a little too long to explain. But I wonder what you mean when you say “happiness”? If you mean “true happiness”—which, I think, is more along the lines of what the Greeks called eudemonia than what is generally thought of as happiness now—then I don’t think it’s a secret.

(… I wasn’t going to write a lot in answer to this, but now I’m pulling all these things together in my mind and I think this might take a while now… This is what you get when you ask a philosophy major a question like this.)

Read part (a.) if you care about some background stuff, or skip to (b.) if you want to see Aristotle’s explanation, or skip to (c.) if you just want me to answer your question :P (but I think part (a) is pretty interesting…)

(a.) Maybe I shouldn’t go there yet though. So, Aristotle, who was the master of common sense, thought that there were only four questions that you can ask about anything. He called these the four causes. They are, (1) the formal cause, (2) the material cause, (3) the final cause, and (4) the efficient cause (where he uses “cause”, we would use “why”; so these are the 4 “whys”).

For anyone who hasn’t taken philosophy, or studied Aristotle, these are, in common terms,

(1) What is it? What is its nature, or essence? 
(2) What is it made of? 
(3) What is it for, or what does it lead to, or what is its end/purpose? 
(4) Where did it come from? What is its cause? Who made it?

(Yeah, OK, this is definitely going to take a while…)

Read More

@1 year ago with 6 notes
#Happiness #philosophy #joy #God #Jesus #Bible #virtue #living #life #purpose #end #meaning 

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

C.S. Lewis
@1 year ago with 7 notes
#C.S. Lewis #CS Lewis #friendship #philosophy #art #value #life #survival 

There is no scientific explanation for why matter comes together to create life; for nonliving matter to form living beings. For matter to become mind. If there is something more than matter in the effect, there must be something more than matter in the cause as well. Life begets life, and you cannot have life come from anything but life; something cannot give what it does not have so if something does not have life, it cannot give life.

There is more to life than matter, and because matter is not living, it cannot be the cause of life, so whatever the cause of life is, it must be living. It has to have a soul itself, because (by definition) the soul is the life of the body. Then we see that there is more than just “life” in a body, there are things that make up what “life” is. So there must be something that is the cause of its thoughts and emotions, its desires and allows it to reason and to choose. When you see that how can you think that all that “life” came out of inanimate matter? Why? Why should inanimate matter come together to create life, and all the consequential things that life brings? That sort of order requires a mind behind it, and if it does there must be some first being that initiated life — someone who put the universe in order. Life is not matter, it is souls and souls are not material, they’re spirits. Matter and spirit are two different things, and spirit does not come from matter.

@1 year ago with 7 notes
#matter #spirit #God #creation #philosophy #life #universe #science #soul #writing 

Peter Kreeft: Suffering

I think great good, and great evil—great pleasure and great pain—always give us a choice. We can be more wise, and hopeful and good in the presence of either one, or we can be less. Let’s first take great good. A wonderful thing happens: “Oh, now I can relax, everything’s alright, no more questions.” No no no! A wonderful thing happens: “Where did this come from?! Thanks be to God. Wow!” This is a message from heaven. It’s a pointing finger. It points beyond itself. 

Similarly with evil. Evil just happens? Either evil happens, and the response is: “Shit…” That’s one answer to evil, but that’s counter-productive. That doesn’t do any good. But, on the other hand, this is evil. It shows me that evil is real, I am now wise. It shows me that I must have solidarity with my brothers and sisters in fighting it, so I become more courageous.

…Evil always rebounds. Evil always has some good fruit.

[Listen to the whole talk here]

@1 year ago with 8 notes
#Peter Kreeft #philosophy #suffering #good #evil #God #words 

fathershane:

Is religion really just about “being a good person”? Of course not!

Father Robert Barron on “Why What You Believe Makes a Difference.”

Love is a participation in God’s way of being! Total, absolute self-less-ness.

If you don’t think doctrine is important, and being a “good person” is all that matters, OK, I’ll grant you that. But what is your definition of what makes a “good person” based on? By what standard are you judging goodness by? What is your reference?

(via lifestwistandturns-deactivated2)

@1 year ago with 46 notes
#God #ethics #Love #behaviour #Kant #philosophy #doctrine #Christianity 
The Golden Investigator→

I made a blog for my personal search for Truth in my study of scripture and my interest in Christianity. You can read about it on my blog:

A “Golden Investigator” is a term that missionaries use for someone who is genuinely searching for truth (in the LDS Church); who takes an active interest in reading scriptures and trying to understand them, and who wants to know the truth and to do God’s will. My fiancée said that this would be a good title for my blog because she said that I am that kind of person.

I’ve always had an interest in religion. I was brought up in the Catholic tradition and went to Catholic school from K-12. I’d always been interested in seeking the truth and meaning of things. That being the case, I still wasn’t really all that Christian. I didn’t go to church and I thought my interpretation of Christian teachings was good enough. In grade 12, I took philosophy and my teacher, Mr. Hill, was amazing and made me realize how “un-Christian” a lot of my beliefs were. He made me want to be a better Christian (a better Catholic) and helped realign my search for truth. After that, my faith started to grow and my relationship with my Heavenly Father started to develop and become stronger and deeper. I prayed more, and more sincerely and I was passionate about learning more and more about Christianity.

Read the rest →

4 months ago
#Christian #Christianity #Christ #religion #God #LDS #Mormon #Church #truth #philosophy 

There is no scientific explanation for why matter comes together to create life; for nonliving matter to form living beings. For matter to become mind. If there is something more than matter in the effect, there must be something more than matter in the cause as well. Life begets life, and you cannot have life come from anything but life; something cannot give what it does not have so if something does not have life, it cannot give life.

There is more to life than matter, and because matter is not living, it cannot be the cause of life, so whatever the cause of life is, it must be living. It has to have a soul itself, because (by definition) the soul is the life of the body. Then we see that there is more than just “life” in a body, there are things that make up what “life” is. So there must be something that is the cause of its thoughts and emotions, its desires and allows it to reason and to choose. When you see that how can you think that all that “life” came out of inanimate matter? Why? Why should inanimate matter come together to create life, and all the consequential things that life brings? That sort of order requires a mind behind it, and if it does there must be some first being that initiated life — someone who put the universe in order. Life is not matter, it is souls and souls are not material, they’re spirits. Matter and spirit are two different things, and spirit does not come from matter.

1 year ago
#matter #spirit #God #creation #philosophy #life #universe #science #soul #writing 
What, philosophy?! Why Philosophy?

Philosophy interprets the narrative of life. It searches for meaning in it. Its use is as a guide through life, not as a symbol of high-intellectualism. What would be the point of philosophy if it were just used to win arguments or to carry out thought experiments? Who really cares how profound something sounds or how deeply you can think about something if there is nothing real in what you come up with? There is no point to philosophy if it’s not true…that is the point of philosophy — truth. The word literally means “love of wisdom”. Philosophy only counts when there is meaning to it, and philosophy has meaning to it when it is used to find meaning in our lives.

Which philosophers do you love more, the skeptics and existentialists? or the more ‘practical’ ones who talk about morality? The Thomas Hobbes’s and the Jean-Paul Sartre’s? or the Socrates’s and the C.S. Lewis’s? The ones who despair? or the ones who hope? And why do you love them?

1 year ago
#philosophy #writing 
Peter Kreeft: Suffering

I think great good, and great evil—great pleasure and great pain—always give us a choice. We can be more wise, and hopeful and good in the presence of either one, or we can be less. Let’s first take great good. A wonderful thing happens: “Oh, now I can relax, everything’s alright, no more questions.” No no no! A wonderful thing happens: “Where did this come from?! Thanks be to God. Wow!” This is a message from heaven. It’s a pointing finger. It points beyond itself. 

Similarly with evil. Evil just happens? Either evil happens, and the response is: “Shit…” That’s one answer to evil, but that’s counter-productive. That doesn’t do any good. But, on the other hand, this is evil. It shows me that evil is real, I am now wise. It shows me that I must have solidarity with my brothers and sisters in fighting it, so I become more courageous.

…Evil always rebounds. Evil always has some good fruit.

[Listen to the whole talk here]

1 year ago
#Peter Kreeft #philosophy #suffering #good #evil #God #words 

That might take a little too long to explain. But I wonder what you mean when you say “happiness”? If you mean “true happiness”—which, I think, is more along the lines of what the Greeks called eudemonia than what is generally thought of as happiness now—then I don’t think it’s a secret.

(… I wasn’t going to write a lot in answer to this, but now I’m pulling all these things together in my mind and I think this might take a while now… This is what you get when you ask a philosophy major a question like this.)

Read part (a.) if you care about some background stuff, or skip to (b.) if you want to see Aristotle’s explanation, or skip to (c.) if you just want me to answer your question :P (but I think part (a) is pretty interesting…)

(a.) Maybe I shouldn’t go there yet though. So, Aristotle, who was the master of common sense, thought that there were only four questions that you can ask about anything. He called these the four causes. They are, (1) the formal cause, (2) the material cause, (3) the final cause, and (4) the efficient cause (where he uses “cause”, we would use “why”; so these are the 4 “whys”).

For anyone who hasn’t taken philosophy, or studied Aristotle, these are, in common terms,

(1) What is it? What is its nature, or essence? 
(2) What is it made of? 
(3) What is it for, or what does it lead to, or what is its end/purpose? 
(4) Where did it come from? What is its cause? Who made it?

(Yeah, OK, this is definitely going to take a while…)

Read More

1 year ago
#Happiness #philosophy #joy #God #Jesus #Bible #virtue #living #life #purpose #end #meaning 
1 year ago
#God #ethics #Love #behaviour #Kant #philosophy #doctrine #Christianity 
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."
C.S. Lewis
1 year ago
#C.S. Lewis #CS Lewis #friendship #philosophy #art #value #life #survival