Pointed Musings

Dear Atheists, Please don’t let others define God for you…

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak (1740-1810) told the town’s proud, self-proclaimed atheist: “You know, the God you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in him either.”1 It seems to me that an atheist is a person who accepts other’s definitions of God, then disbelieves that. There are many different views of who/what/how God is. Many different people …

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Lactose “intolerance”

Some folks may accuse me of being “politically correct,” and yet, I insist that how we discuss issues reveals and shapes how we perceive these issues. Case in point today:  Lactose “intolerance” I’m guessing that some European-descent person came up with this label. On a Google Image Search for “lactose intolerance,”  I received some diagrams …

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Total Eclipse

2017 Total Solar Eclipse

I now understand why many people have religious experiences during a total solar eclipse. My almost-five son and I trekked up to the Tennessee/North Carolina border, camped in the Tellico River area. Plan “A” was to watch in a wonderful spot known as Whigg Meadow. After seeing the enormous crowds and multitudes of cars parked …

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To be an American?

What does it mean to be an American? We used to think that to be an easy question, back when a more narrow group of people were defining what is means: Apple Pie, baseball and Chevrolet (all of which can trace their roots to pre-America). Our country was never just a single monolithic plain white …

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Seek Serendipity

William Foege at 2016 Emory Commencement

William H. Foege says: “Seek serendipity. We often think of serendipity as a random good fortune, but the origin involves three princes and Serendip, the Persian name for Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. A professor at Emory, Marion Creekmore was once ambassador to Sri Lanka or Serendip and the original story tells about a lost camel …

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God is the fact that the universe exists.

I do not exactly know what the title of this post means, but this thought occurred to me while I was studying the ideas of Spinoza tonight. Spinoza wrote of essences and modes and more complications that probably lose much in translation and post-modern framing of such issues. Spinoza was on the right track, but went wrong when he decided that there is nothing in creation worthy of awe. Anyway…

A possible answer to gun violence

More gun control is opposed by many conservatives – the same people who often espouse market-driven solutions to problems. I say “fine.” Let’s implement a market solution to the gun problem here in the United States. . . .