A Christian & An Atheist: A Discussion [a table of contents]

July 28, 2013March 2, 2014 / Paul Burkhart / 13 Comments

I had the privilege over the past couple of weeks of engaging in a spirited back-and-forth with a good friend of mine, Daniel Bastian. Unfortunately, in the speed with which this exchange occurred, I know it was hard for people to keep track of the writings, the arguments, and the comments. And so, I’m writing this post in hopes of making it easier for people to follow. Here you will find a “Table of Contents” of sorts for the entire exchange, as it appeared on this blog.

Sadly, much was said over Facebook comments (and even blog comments) that cannot be sorted out and highlighted in their proper place. Comments on each post were scattered among different places and sites and posts, and so to try and consolidate them and make any sense of them for the reader would be nearly impossible. These long-form pieces will have to do, though I’ve provided the link to the Facebook comments when able, in case the interested reader wants to wade in.

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Simplistic Atheism {4}: What could make me an Atheist?

July 25, 2013July 30, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 48 Comments

(Note: These exchanges are now complete. There is a Table of Contents to the discussion now available.)

In this series of exchanges with my friend Daniel, I’ve tried to argue that his Facebook post on why he is an Atheist expressed an overall view of the world that is too small and too simplistic. I think this is because of his empiricist method and materialist conclusion about reality–that all there is is what we can see, touch, feel, etc.

Some concluding remarks

My whole point has not simply been that Daniel’s facts or even his method is wrong. But rather, it finds its proper place, meaning, fullness, and possibility within the Christian view of reality. I have argued in each of my posts that Christianity does not “refute” reason, science, history, skepticism, textual messiness, historical difficulty, or even doubt. Instead, the Gospel encompasses it all, and each of those things find a greater fulfillment in their use, cohesion in the whole of the world, and reality within that place.

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WordPress Weekly Photo Post: Fresh

July 23, 2013July 23, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Fresh“. I’ve been spending a long four-day weekend at my girlfriend’s family dairy farm, where she grew up, for her birthday. We’ve had fresh raw milk (oh how I love thee!), fresh raspberry pies, fresh air, and enjoying these fresh blueberries we picked at her grandmother’s farm next door. It’s been an incredible weekend of love, celebration, and a good ol’ hymn sing (the highlight of my time).

It’s really amazing the difference that fresh can make in our lives.

See my past Weekly Photo Challenges here.
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Car Theft, Domestic Violence, & a Musical: a weird day

July 19, 2013March 7, 2016 / Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

Yeah, that’s my car there in that picture. This afternoon, my car got broken into.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. This was one the oddest days I’ve had in a long time.

Every day this week, mainly for work reasons, I’ve had to get up anywhere from one hour to an hour and 45-minutes earlier than I normally wake up. I’ve also been staying up later than usual all this week. I have been a zombie, for sure.

This morning I had to wake up crazy early (to me, at least) to pick up a client and get them to court for a domestic violence case. They had been the one abused, and they were to testify. This is one of the most difficult things for abuse victims and support was definitely going to be needed.

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Simplistic Christianity; Simplistic Atheist: a response [GUEST POST]

July 12, 2013July 28, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

(Note: These exchanges are now complete. There is a Table of Contents to the discussion now available.)

Earlier today, I posted an introductory post in response to a Facebook note by my friend Daniel. Before I posted it, I had a few friends read the post to see if they thought it would be taken especially personally and shut down, rather than promote, further conversation. They said that it was on the line, but they didn’t think it was too personal. Unfortunately, it seems I (we) were wrong.

Daniel responded in a comment, but I thought it deserved a more prominent place on the blog. I’ve included his response below, and included some brief words of clarification to his points.

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Paul,

While I do appreciate your taking the time to respond, I don’t appreciate the flagrant misrepresentation. The religious opinion and intellectual caliber you ascribe to me in this piece in no way reflect my actual disposition and are so off-piste that I quickly lost track of whether you were talking about me or some nondescript internet denizen with which you have passing familiarity.

To set the record straight, you do not know me personally, and you clearly know even less about my views of religion and the serious, contemplative academic respect for and to detail to which I approach the topic. If you have a question about my views on an issue, ask me. Ask me. Don’t implant your own thoughts onto my character and radiate them in a public post. It’s unprofessional and ventures headlong into character intrusion.

To avoid further blatantly misinformed opinion from surfacing, I have tremendous respect for people of any and all religious persuasion, though I may depart from them on the metaphysics of their beliefs. I am under no delusion that theism, and Christian theism, can be dismissively fit into a box rather than a broad spectrum of nuance and theological nicety. Fundamentalism is *not* the truest articulation of Christianity and in fact is the most injurious strain of Christianity in its long history. There *are* legitimate theistic views to be voiced and I can entertain and respect those voices without affirming them for myself. I do so regularly and incorporate many of these voices in both my reading list and my book reviews on various websites.
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Simplistic Christianity leads to Simplistic Atheism: it’s our fault

July 12, 2013July 28, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 20 Comments

(Note: These exchanges are now complete. There is a Table of Contents to the discussion now available.)

“I walk outside my house, I look around, and it doesn’t seem apparent to me that there is a God. I just don’t feel it. It doesn’t seem to be the natural conclusion of reality when I live life and look around. I see the world, and the existence of God doesn’t feel like a natural conclusion one could draw.”

I stare down into my coffee, catching the corner of my pastor’s glasses in the dark reflection.

“Well”, he says, “I know it doesn’t fix how you feel, but in the grand scope of human history, and even the global humanity living today, that opinion you just expressed is in the extreme, extreme minority. Most people living in the past and now have found looked at the world and have not been able to come to any conclusion other than their being a God.”

Crap. He was right. What I thought was such an objective engagement with the world around me, was (of course) still the product of the cultural forces from which I drink deeply. History and developmental psychology have shown us that religiousness is the default mode of the human heart.

We are by nature religious. It takes other, external forces to push back against that and move us away from it. And this fact is no apologetic for religion. It’s neither a point “for” or “against” religion. We are also by nature selfish and willing to do whatever it takes to be the fittest and survive. We try not to give into this natural drive and through education and conditioning try to move away from it.

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Repeal the 4th Amendment! (and a few other quick & dirty items)

July 3, 2013February 5, 2015 / Paul Burkhart / 2 Comments

Last week, I wrote up a post with several short and random items just listed out with some thoughts brought up by the NSA Surveillance leaks. I had a few ideas that I forgot to put in last time (and it would have made the post too long anyway), so here they are.

Egypt. Firstly, in the midst of continuing NSA leaks, and even the Director of National Intelligence admitting he lied under oath to Congress, is it wrong of me to be a little frustrated at Egypt right now? I mean, they’re taking up all of the news cycle coverage. Can’t we get a little time for a Constitutional crisis here? Stop stealing the spotlight.

(You too, Snowden, although I know it’s not all your fault.)

Law vs. Constitution. This is one I forgot to say last week. Everyone keeps wanting to stress that these surveillance and wiretapping programs were legal and law-abiding; that Congress and the Judiciary were fully aware of it.

Well, I already mentioned last week about the Judciary part of this, but as far as Congress goes, they’re right–it is indeed legal for the Executive branch to have been doing this stuff. But, there are two caveats to that.
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Two of my best friends got engaged this weekend. This is a very good thing.

June 30, 2013July 4, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 8 Comments

[Appropriately, this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is the topic “Companionable“. I could think of no better picture to post and story to tell than this.]

That there is a picture of David and Elizabeth Jane. (They’re in the process of converting to the Orthodox family of the Church, where the ring is on the right hand.)

David here is my oldest friend. Being bad at keeping friends that don’t live near me, this means that our friendship is about five-and-a-half years old. Not a crazy long time, I know. But for what we lack on the front-end duration of our friendship, we definitely make up for it in our desire to stay friends for decades to come.

We’ve seen each other through spiritual darkness, relational pain, and dramatic theological changes. He’s an amazing drywaller, photographer, writer, farmer (as of recently), and general human being.

And he got engaged to an incredible woman this weekend.
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Trash Spotify, get Google Music (discount ends 6/30) [casual fri]

June 28, 2013January 13, 2014 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

A few years ago, I wrote about my own personal, internal struggle over online music services. Well now, I have a winner.

I’ve told several friends about Google Music. For the past couple of years it’s been my go-to mobile music manager. Long story short, this is how it has worked: Google uploads your entire library of music to their own servers (a.k.a. “the cloud”) and then you can listen to it on any device with a browser (including iOS devices). This is absolutely free.

And it’s been amazing. I can stream my own music over my phone, I can go to work and play my entire library in any web browser on my work computer, and it syncs up with my iTunes for continued integration with all my offline music listening. And again, all this is free.

And now it’s even better (even though the name is ridiculous). A month ago, Google announced an expansion of this service, and it’s called (take a deep breath): Google Play Music All Access. Basically, what it is is the above Google Music thing that I described (now called “Google Music Standard”), plus a Spotify-like element built-in.
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The best, most entertaining resources on the NSA leaks

June 14, 2013February 5, 2015 / Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

When it comes to the political news this week, I’ve felt a large range of emotions. I’ve felt just a little bit of “I told you so” vindication, joy over the attention the media is giving to it, anger at the government, pride in some brave politicians, and frustration over the fact that no one else in my life seems to be paying attention to this or even care.

I’ve also felt a certain futility in grasping all off this and being able to distill it in a concise, communicable way. I’m going to do my best next week on this blog, but in the end, I don’t think I could do better than these three shows in doing so.

First, nothing helps ease the shock of learning that your government is storing your entire digital life than a little laughter. And to that end, there’s no place better for that than The Daily Show. Jon Stewart is gone for the summer, but he is being ably covered by John Oliver. This clip below is Oliver’s first night hosting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4i_A9nZpiI
Full episode: [Daily Show] [Hulu]

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Crying Over Spilt Rilke [Re-Blog]

June 13, 2013March 7, 2016 / Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

Ran across this quote and post. They are both so good. I am all the more persuaded I need to open up the copy of Letters that I have sitting on my shelf right now. It gets cut off in the excerpt above, but here’s the whole Rilke quote:

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

The Narratician

“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I recently came across a used copy of Letters to a Young Poet, which I’ve been meaning to read for a long time now. As I was leafing through it in the book store, I noticed that there was…

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The Lord is Fleeting [photo sermon]

June 13, 2013June 30, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

For those new to the blog: each week, I try and write a “photo sermon” based on the themes of WordPress’ Weekly Photo Challenge. This week’s theme is “Fleeting“.

* * * * *

A garden cool. A God at leisure. Lovers conspire. Nectar tasted.

The God is gone.

He appears in visitors and shapes and shadows, and as a voice to an ancient Babylonian:

“I will make you…”

The Babylonian’s faith is counted as righteousness, and deservedly so, for this man doesn’t hear the voice of God in any way for decades. (And I get mad when his voice leaves me for months.)

This God lets his people sit in slavery for hundreds of years. When his Chosen asks to see his Glory, He offers only the briefest glimpse of his back. When His People stray at Sinai, He still offers to give them every benefit that He promised–the land, the victory, and their identity. The only difference: He would send his angels with them and withdraw his own Presence.

They freak out.
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a brief Prodigal Paul doctrinal statement

June 12, 2013June 13, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 7 Comments

As I am currently registering for my seminary classes, I thought I’d post this “theological statement” I had to write as part of my application materials. Some friends of mine had thought it would be interesting to read what I wrote, so here it is.

Seeing as I was writing to a seminary staff audience, there might be some references that aren’t commonly understood. I’ll link to times I’ve written about some items, but otherwise, any terminology or ideas that aren’t explained are a simple Wikipedia (or Theopedia–yes, it’s a real thing) search away. Continue reading →

Fleeting: our Societal Anger; our National Substance

June 10, 2013February 5, 2015 / Paul Burkhart / 6 Comments

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Fleeting“. I’ll be posting a more meaningful “photo sermon” based on this theme later in the week, but I saw something last night I wanted to share.

This blog has not shied away from its concern over the civil liberties and privacy issues that have been exposed this week. I hope to post some more in-depth thoughts on these specific revelations later today or tomorrow. For this photo post, though, I ran across a couple of images that show just how fleeting any American societal anger, attention, or protest really is.

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Weekly Photo Post: The Sign Says [casual fri]

June 7, 2013June 7, 2013 / Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “The Sign Says” (okay, as of today, this technically last week’s theme). Anyway, the prompt was to post pictures of signs that we’ve taken and why we picked them. So here a few signs I’ve taken pictures of over the years. This post is just a fun one. Nothing profound here. Enjoy.

Now, even in spite of my coffee snobbery, I really do love Starbucks coffee and (some of) their espresso drinks. So this isn’t a knock on them–I just thought this sign was hilarious.
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