Tag: religion

• Why is Wonder?

  Sometimes I am accosted by the strangest questions; they remind me of the unanswerable ‘why’ questions that so often bubble out of 3 year olds -the only difference, I suppose, is that I would no longer be satisfied with the unadorned ‘just because’ answers I’m sure I used to get from my frustrated parents. But […]

  gozzter

  May 5, 2021

  Uncategorized

  Aeon.co, art, City University of New York, emergent phenomenon, emotion, experience, gratitude, Jesse Prinz, knowledge, Paul TIllich, prayer, purpose, questions, religion, René Descartes, retirement, Science, signatures, spiritual, Wonder

• Does the love of heaven make one heavenly?

  Why do find myself so attracted to articles about religion? I am not an adherent -religion does not stick to me- nor am I tempted to take the famous wager of the 17th century philosopher, Pascal: dare to live life as if God exists, because you’ve got nothing to lose if He doesn’t, and everything […]

  gozzter

  December 16, 2020

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  Alain de Botton, BBC Future, Catholicism, Charon, Christianity, Constantine, Edict of Milan, Edict of Thessalonica, God, Hinduism, Karl Marx, Linda Woodhead, Pascal’s Wager, polytheism, religion, Sigmund Freud, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, the River Styx, Theodosius, University of Lancaster, Voltaire

• Lying down in green pastures

  I suppose I should admit something from the start: I’m not particularly religious, and I certainly do not have anything but the most superficial knowledge of Biblical writing. Still, I have come to appreciate the glory of metaphor and how it is able to transmute otherwise ineffable concepts into words. Feelings. Poetry, of course, aspires […]

  gozzter

  January 1, 2020

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  ‘Old Testament’, Aeon.co, ancient Hebrew, Bible, Biblical scholarship, Hebrew bible, language, metaphor, poetry, Psalm 23, religion, Robert Alter, sound-play, the prophet Isaiah, University of California Berkeley, word-play

• The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

  Religious writings usually serve a special function amongst their adherents -not the least of which is to convey the beliefs and principles in a way that allows them to be used as a reference. They may be regarded as sacred if believed to be divinely revealed, or merely special guides to expected behaviour. But whichever, […]

  gozzter

  November 13, 2019

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  abridgement, acolytes, African slaves, Apocrypha, Bible, Biblical books, British Missionaries, Caribbean slaves, Christianity, ethics, expurgation, historical revisionism, laity, Martin Luther, missionaries, Museum of the Bible, Protestantism, religion, religious writings, sacred, scripture, Slave Bible, slaves, smithsonianmag.com, Sola Scriptura, The Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves

• She wears her faith but as the fashion of her phone.

  Everything is a matter of time, isn’t it? Everything changes. Like the apocryphal monkeys typing away infinitely, everything will be written. Everything will be transmogrified somewhere. Some time. Somehow. I suppose that should be a comfort, but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that there is something unrequited in all that: an imbalance between now […]

  gozzter

  October 3, 2017

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  Age, Al-Quran, apps, BBC news, Bible, change, Christianity, Codec Research Centre for Digital Theology, Durham University, evolution, God, hijab, moralistic therapeutic deism, Much Ado About Nothing, Pew Research Centre, religion, reverend Peter Philips, Shakespeare, smartphone, T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Time, Wikipedia