http://www.divineuniverse.info Brother William SSF Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:05:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en  Where do Christian moral standards come from? We have the Ten Commandments and something that Jesus said was a more fundamental and all-embracing law: to love your neighbour as yourself. I don’t think anyone would quibble about the Ten Commandments. But the rest of the Jewish law books, the first ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/09/10/heavenly-judgment/ There’s a story in Matthew’s Gospel (15:21-28) that raises the question. Jesus and some disciples were hiking through the region of Tyre and Sidon. It was a cosmopolitan region – people from all over the Eastern Mediterranean. On their way a Canaanite woman accosted Jesus, pleading with him to heal ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/08/31/was-jesus-racist/ I have been re-reading a book that caused a sensation in the Anglican Church some forty-five years ago. That was a time when Anglicans were more concerned about evangelism than sexual orientation. Bishop John Robinson believed that the Church had a deep-seated problem in presenting God to the contemporary secular ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/08/17/honest-to-god/ The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is often over-mystificated, but religious people should be mystified. A sense of mystery is an important element of religious experience. God is the ultimate mystery. Jews do not even attempt to speak his name. The ninety-nine names proclaimed by Moslems are abstract attributes; physical ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/05/19/heavenly-arithmetic/ Forever and ever - endless time. But what is time? We all know what time feels like, but we can’t really define it. Poets have described it as flowing like a river, but many philosophers and scientists believe that this is an illusion: it’s just the way our brain works. ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/05/06/forever-and-ever-amen/ The reason I have called this blog The Divine Universe is that I believe that matter, the physical world, is sacred. This is clearly implied in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, invented in the 3rd century by Tertullian and adopted as a universal dogma by the Council of Nicea ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/03/12/heavenly-stuff/ Whether people think theologically or scientifically, they believe the universe emerged from nothing. Catholics use the Latin word nihilo; scientists use the word vacuum. For centuries scientists and philosophers have been pondering about the vacuum, a region in which there is no matter. In recent years they have gone ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/02/17/out-of-nothing/ Neurologists, molecular biologists and others in the field can tell us a lot about the electrical, molecular and chemical processes that take place when we think or feel with our senses, but such information seems remote from our subjective experience of consciousness. There is a huge gap between objective, scientific ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/02/08/the-thoughtful-universe/ Matthew has crafted what would have been, to his Jewish readers, a very confronting story. His message is that their Messiah is as important to the Gentiles as he is to the Jews. He has grasped Paul’s ongoing theme of the global impact of Christ: that Jesus is the world’s ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2008/01/03/three-wise-men/ The story of the universe is a story of new things. The current version, informed by post-modern science, begins with the Big Bang. From the initial “singularity”, as it is called, new things have continually emerged, and there is no sign that novelty will not continue to be the pattern ... http://www.divineuniverse.info/2007/12/17/something-new-for-christmas/