who is Thomas Nagel?

Thomas Nagel is professor at NYU and author of Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. He has the gall (or courage, as it were) to break with the philosophical naturalism (materialism) held by many modern evolutionists...

Excerpts below are from "The Heretic: Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him?" by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard.

"...when it comes to cosmology, scientists are just as likely to make an error of philosophy as philosophers are to make an error of science."

"As a philosophy of everything [naturalism] is an undeniable drag. As a way of life it would be even worse. Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn't just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath."

[Nagel writes...] “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

"Nagel believes this 'cosmic authority problem' is widely shared among intellectuals, and I believe him. It accounts for the stubbornness with which they cling to materialism—and for the hostility that greets an intellectual who starts to wander off from the herd. Materialism must be true because it 'liberates us from religion.'”

Nagel is seeking to come up with a third way between materialism and theism. It may end up being pantheism of some sort, as he postulates that perhaps something within matter (some inherent property) may cause it to produce life. This, of course, is a worldview choice made primarily on faith.

Read the full article here.

clement quotes hebrews

Clement of Rome wrote to the church in Corinth around AD 90. This is perhaps the same Clement, companion of Paul, mentioned in Philippians 4:3. Many hold him to be the first bishop / pope in Rome, aka St. Clement I. Clement quotes from the letter to the Hebrews. Origin suggested that Clement was in fact the writer (as transcriber or amanuensis) of Hebrews. Perhaps this letter began as a "word of exhortation" given by Paul at the synagogue (Heb 13:22; cf Acts 13:15) which then became a circular letter for the churches. Other possible authors of Hebrews include Luke, Barnabas, or Apollos. The theology is Pauline, but the transcriber is obviously second-generation (Heb. 2:3-4). At any rate, this early church leader in Rome, is already quoting Hebrews in his letter in AD 90: CHAPTER 36 ALL BLESSINGS ARE GIVEN TO US THROUGH CHRIST This is the way, beloved, in which we find our Savior, even Jesus Christ, the High Prie...

Howard Hendricks on OT books chronology

When I was in seminary, Howard Hendricks (aka "Prof") gave us a little card with the books of the OT chronologically arranged. The scanned copy I have was a bit blurry and I wanted to make something like this available for our church class in OT theology ("Story of Redemption"). A few minor edits and here it is...

sword and trowel

"From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me." (Nehemiah 4:16-18 ESV) The great London preacher, Charles Spurgeon, published a monthly magazine called The Sword and The Trowel; A record of combat with sin and of labour for the Lord. It was published from 1865 to 1892. The cover of the journal had a drawing taken from Nehemiah 4, which included both a trowel (representing the work) and a sword (representing the fight). The sword was necessary to protect what the men with trowels were building. These citizen-soldier-builders would successfully complete the wall aroun...

my burg

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