One of the disadvantages of growing up in church, particularly Evangelical churches, is that from the time you step foot in Sunday School classrooms, you are inundated with Bible stories: Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Sarah, Joseph’s coat of many colors, the Plagues of Egypt, the Parting of the Red Sea,…
It’s Christmas, and if you have grown up in church (and probably even if you haven’t), no doubt you are familiar with Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.” Matthew 1:23 quotes this verse and claims…
Fruit Flies, Transformation, and Eternity Since I’m on the topic of fruit flies, let me make another point. Due to the short life span of fruit flies, scientists can observe generations upon generations of them in a short period of time. Typically, a fruit fly’s entire life is about 30 days. Let’s put that into…
In a recent Facebook thread on one of the sites I follow, a question was raised regarding the creation/evolution debate, specifically, on whether or not there was anything out there that actually celebrated how science, philosophy, and theology could inform one another. Well, in the last chapter in my book, The Heresy of Ham, I attempt…
The High Catholic Age didn’t just give the world monasteries, advances in technology, universities, revolutions in philosophy, the foundation for the natural sciences, and free markets (as if that wasn’t plenty enough). No, while all these advances were nothing short of world-changing, we would be betraying history if we didn’t also point out the era’s…
In this next to last post about the High Catholic Age (aka. “The Middle Ages”), I want to focus on something that may come as a surprise to most people—indeed I was surprised when I found out about it. What is the “it,” you may ask? Well, it’s something that still is often in the…
I want to note that what much of what is contained in this post was covered in a few previous posts I wrote in my series about Richard Dawkins. Still, for what should be obvious reasons, I wanted to have this material at this point in this series as well. Enjoy. Thomas Aquinas is most…
The ground-breaking achievement in philosophy during the High Catholic Age was the revival of the study of Aristotle. Throughout the Byzantine Age, Christian theologians and philosophers gravitated toward interacting with the philosophy of Plato. His teachings on the idea of universals, the world of forms, and this material world of particulars being a shadowy reflection…
In my last post, I made it a point to show that one of the distinguishing features in the universities during the High Catholic Age was their fascination with and commitment to studying the natural sciences. That being said, it almost must be made clear that there was also a clear philosophical understanding in the…
As we continue our overview of what has been traditionally called “The Middle Ages,” but what I have chosen to call “The High Catholic Age,” we now come to the topic of the monastic movement and its impact on the culture, and the emergence of the university. Perhaps the most impressive achievement during the supposed…