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Essay

Room for God and Others

A narrative essay on science, higher education, faith, and making room for God and others in value-laden conversations.

Essay

The Illusion of Personhood: Generative AI and Simulated Communication

Generative AI systems imitate human dialogue, creating the illusion of personhood that can mislead users and distort perceptions of agency. Generative AI may unde...

Essay

Why I Am (Perhaps Not) an Evangelical

A personal essay on science, faith, evangelical identity, and the difficulty of sharing inherited labels.

Poetry

There once was a girl from Tallahassee

A poem beginning: “There once was a girl from Tallahassee”

Poetry

The Wounded Statue

A brief poem on pain, embodiment, and distance from the unhurt.

Poetry

The Pool

A poem beginning: “Most of the world”

Poetry

Something

A poem beginning: “Something is more than Nothing.”

Poetry

Sloppity Sue

A poem beginning: “I once knew a girl by the name (this is true)”

Poetry

Siren and Cephalopod

A poem beginning: “an aria spray caresses”

Poetry

Sheri

A poem beginning: “What fills this doll who walks with me?”

Poetry

Online dating, wholly in haiku

A poem beginning: “HER”

Poetry

Let Us Be Shallow Together

A poem beginning: “Come, let us be shallow together”

Poetry

Joseph, Brave and Extraneous

A poem beginning: “Bethlehem's Spring cradles”

Poetry

Inward Bound

A poem beginning: “Melinda Miller, inward bound,”

Poetry

Hair Grows

A poem beginning: “Hair grows”

Poetry

For Mandi, Who Loves Tennis

A poem remembering Mandi and the strange mercy of reunion.

Poetry

Emily Blue

A poem beginning: “What did the Loch Ness say upon that Wed-ness-day?”

Poetry

Commander Helmut Von Fred

A poem beginning: “Commander Helmut Von Fred”

Poetry

Cable Monopoly Haiku

A poem beginning: “Another two-hour block spent”

Poetry

Archimedes' Breakfast

A poem beginning: “When Archimedes ate his Wheaties”

Poetry

Anxiety Grins

A poem beginning: “Anxiety grins”

Poetry

After Reading Dostoevsky

A poem beginning: “I confessed I was a thief.”

Saying

Corporations are not people

I hold these truths to be self-evident. 1 Corporations are not people. 2 Money is not speech.

Saying

Faith is not credulity

Faith is the evidence of things unseen, not a refuge from what is demonstrable or inferred.

Saying

Faith is the substance of things hoped

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen, not a refuge from truths that can be demonstrated or inferred.

Saying

God is not honored by simplifying truth

God is not honored by insisting that the truth be simpler than it is.

Saying

If one can lie with statistics

If one can lie with statistics, just imagine the possibilities for data science.

Saying

Lord, make me a fool for Christ

Lord, make me a fool for Christ. And for no other reason.

Saying

Our wins are not the result of

Our wins are not the result of religious superiority; our defeats do not signal loss of God’s favor.

Saying

Understanding and expertise

Understanding is an intellectual submission to the truth of a matter.

Saying

We talk of a personal relationship with

We talk of a personal relationship with God.

Saying

Writing is the act of telling the truth

For me, writing is the act of telling the truth.

Reflection

A mountain of facts

When a mountain of facts cannot influence opinion, this is evidence that the opinion in question is not a matter of science, but a matter of faith.

Reflection

Another room for science method

A room is not a conclusion; it is a way of refusing premature closure.

Reflection

August 19 writing question

The question is not whether I have something to say, but whether I will make a form hospitable enough to receive it.

Reflection

Co-opting the flag

I have been amazed at the way the alt-right has co-opted not only the flag, but phrases such as totalitarian or Orwellian.

Reflection

Decolonializing science

Science is a human practice before it is an institution of authority.

Reflection

Democracy and the invisible hand

Can we really expect democracy to work when so many people are not even trying?

Reflection

Eco on fascism sounds to me like Trump

The other day I used the word “fascist” and midspeech I confessed that did not know what the word meant. Turning to Wikipedia’s definitions of fascism, most of my...

Reflection

Every wind of teaching

> Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of p...

Reflection

Following directions

Ms. _____, my 4th-grade teacher, passed out an exam that was impossible to complete in the time allotted.

Reflection

God forms ears

God forms our words by first forming our ears.

Reflection

How much is a shit ton?

How much is a shit ton? About three mother loads. 2013.

Reflection

I have been enjoying Timothy Snyder’s YouTube

I have been enjoying Timothy Snyder’s YouTube videos. In one of them, he introduced the term “totalitarianism” to a discussion of populism, oligarchy, and authori...

Reflection

I struggled to read as a child

I struggled to read as a child. I could follow the directions to build an Estes model rocket, but I had difficulty comprehending long-form texts. In second grade ...

Reflection

Institute of humanity

An institute of humanity would take persons, not products, as the proper unit of concern.

Reflection

Language and the desire to understand

Unless both parties are trying to communicate and understand one another, the attempts at making contact are destined to fail.

Reflection

Psalm 146ish - after Mel’s sermon on 2016 September 25

Do not trust in presidents and ideologies, traditions and institutions, creativity, ingenuity or goodwill. No human being or organization can truly liberate and h...

Reflection

Responsible faith

A responsible faith does not fear questions that are asked in love of truth.

Reflection

Room for God and Others is more vision than discursive thought

Room for God and Others is more vision than discursive thought. The book is not an argument, but a story.

Reflection

Science method third room

The question is not whether science leaves room for God, but whether our accounts of God and science leave room for truth.

Reflection

Scientism is Bad Religion

Science is a tried and true method through which we may learn about the natural world. Scientism is science that has metastasized into worldview, dogma, and ideol...

Reflection

The Blessing of T'Pau (A Dream)

I was coming of age, and having taken a long pilgrimage, the end of my journey was a demanding hike up a red mountain. I sought an oracle from T’Pau, the renowned...

Reflection

The ability to see goodness

When I worked at Learning Experiences, Inc., we sometimes took the students to the mall. I recall one afternoon when the students were having fun together, walkin...

Reflection

Three enemies

Confusion, fear, and pride are not just obstacles to thought; they are obstacles to love.

Reflection

Truth, not commentary

> God gave me my writing so that I might tell the truth. But the world does not need more opinions. The world needs balm, salve, and a dressing for the wound. The...

Reflection

Two mountains

Four decades ago, with a friend and a notebook, I looked across quiet waters to an awe-inspiring peak. While my friend read *Jane Eyre*, I thought of Lyell’s *Pri...

Reflection

What to write and the question of voice

What I see in these books is a person writing frankly from a personal perspective, including their professional identity, to clarify or comment on the world.

Reflection

Writing and open questions

Writing for me is not so much about making an argument, as it is about identifying open questions, seeking answers and understanding.

Reflection

Writing and the research process

In my experience of the research process, I cannot force scientific and mathematical ideas to emerge. Perhaps, in the same way, I cannot force a story.

Voice

Albert Schweitzer

With the spirit of the age I am in complete disagreement, because it is filled with a disdain for thinking.

Voice

Arn Anderson

I'm both a professor and student, because if you are no longer a student, you don't have the right to call yourself a professor.

Voice

Baruch Spinoza

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

Voice

Blaise Pascal

It is not certain that all is uncertain—to the glory of skepticism.

Voice

Blaise Pascal

The heart has reasons which reason does not know.

Voice

Charles Whitfield, Healing the Child Within

One reason is that the mother herself is so impoverished and needy that she uses her infant to satisfy her own unmet needs.

Voice

Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind

Who can gaze indifferently at the suffering of people whose only sin was that they blocked the path of historical processes? To lull his conscience he resorts to ...

Voice

DARPA Broad Agency Announcement

The Defense Sciences Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of new simulation capab...

Voice

David Carradine

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

Voice

Earl Biddle

It is to be expected that scientific explanations of human behavior in purely materialistic terms will be met by opposition, not only by the clergy, but by everyo...

Voice

Edward O. Wilson

The final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material p...

Voice

For this very reason make every effort

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseveran...

Voice

Frederick Buechner

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's hunger meet. –Frederick Buechner

Voice

Frederick Douglass

Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure an...

Voice

Friedrich Nietzsche

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece...

Voice

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Imagine: inside, in the nerves, in the head—that is, these nerves are there in the brain... damn them! there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those ...

Voice

Gabriel Chevallier, Fear

"Most rules lie, yet lies are less shocking, less corrosive than the chosen, cultivated ignorance that Chevallier addresses here.

Voice

Groucho Marx

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.

Voice

H. L. Mencken

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." –H. L. Mencken

Voice

Hope

Faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience.

Voice

Isaiah 50:4

The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.

Voice

J.P. Stern on Canetti

To conclude that Canetti's use in his book Crowd's and Power of the method of philosophical anthropology is uncritical – that is, unphilosophical – is to advert t...

Voice

Johann von Goethe

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

Voice

John 16:33

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.

Voice

John Mayer, Split Screen Sadness

'Cause I can't wait to figure out what's wrong with me So I can say this is the way that I used to be Songwriters: John Clayton Mayer Split Screen Sadness lyrics ...

Voice

Journaling is...

Writing from the place of knowing that I am loved.

Voice

Karl Barth, The Humanity of God

The Gift of Freedom. Foundation of Evangelical Ethics.

Voice

Karl Ove Knausgaard, Wolves of Eternity

"Why are you reading when you don't have to?" Sevoshka would often say to me Alevtina whenever I sat down with a book on some subject or other that was completely...

Voice

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Monday Motivator

Most importantly, we must develop our own internal system of value, measures of quality, and definition of success.

Voice

Leszek Kolakowski

The patterns are always the same: the great socialist revolution consists, first of all, in giving us privileges, titles and power for our political opinions and ...

Voice

Mircea Cartarescu

In capitalism, man exploits man.

Voice

Miroslav Krleza, On the Edge of Reason

Had I not come to a turn in this account that could be described as a fatal one, according to a mysterious law of human folly, in all probability I would have spe...

Voice

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Voice

Poincare

To doubt everything or to believe everything are equally good solutions–both dispense with the necessity of reflection. –Poincare

Voice

Proverbs 19:21–23

What a man desires is unfailing love.

Voice

Proverbs 25:2

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.

Voice

Psalm 65

Praise awaits you, our God, in Zion; to you our vows will be fulfilled.

Voice

Rainer Maria Rilke

How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Voice

Reinhold Niebuhr

The vantage point from which man judges his insignificance is a very significant vantage point.

Voice

Rene Descartes

Thanks be to God, I did not find myself in a condition which obliged me to make a merchandise of science for the improvement of my fortune.

Voice

Rick Rubin

The best work is the work you are excited about.

Voice

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. --Rilke.

Voice

Roland Barthes

...

Voice

Ronald Beiner

Looking back on that conversation today, I cannot help but wonder whether my more hopeful view of the discipline and its intellectual achievements was just a conc...

Voice

Rush Holt

This election is said to have been about rejecting the political establishment. We cannot let that mean rejecting established facts.

Voice

Seeing Jesus

Our first responsibility is to be revived ourselves, and to have a testimony that we have come to the end of our struggle and that we have found Jesus himself as ...

Voice

Spiritual Growth

Spiritual growth is the result of coming face to face with our own situation, feeling the brunt of our own puzzlement, recognizing no recipe will apply completely...

Voice

Spoke Into the Wheel

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."

Voice

Starfish Story

A man walking down the beach sees a young boy picking up something and gently tossing it into the ocean. When the man asks what he's doing, the boy replies that h...

Voice

Stellan Ohlsson

The psychology of thinking encounters several perennial problems... Perennial problems are rarely solved. Instead, they serve as loci for the accumulation of know...

Voice

Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times the calling that is yours and yours...

Voice

Timothy Snyder

Post-truth is pre-fascism. –Timothy Snyder

Voice

Tripp York

The hope of the Christian is to worship God in such a way that attracts others to God.

Voice

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Imaginatively she is of the highest significance, practically she is completely insignificant.

Voice

William Barclay

When we speak for Christ we must speak as if Christ is listening -- as indeed he is. --William Barclay

Voice

William James

As for me, my bed is made: I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular forces that work from individual to individual,...