seeker for truth

Since I cannot begin to lay out my full worldview in just a few moments in order to derive how that worldview informs my approach to the environment, I will, instead, simply point out a few defining features of my religious/political/scientific worldview and connect those to my stance on the environment. First of all I reject the mythology of the fall. I reject the idea that man was, in some idealized past, perfect, and that he might again, although through no power of his own, re-achieve that perfection. Instead I believe the version of meta-history that Occam’s Razor would select: We humans are a species who has become sentient. We are infants (or toddlers, or adolescents, if you prefer) who are just figuring out how to come to terms with the fact that this sentience has significantly disconnected us from the processes of biological evolution which produced us. Second, I embrace the concept of free-will. I believe that we are, individually and collectively, self-determining to a very...

I am flabbergasted that it has been almost a year since I began (briefly) to write this blog... after a staggering 4 entries *chuckle* I apparently fell right off the ole' blog-wagon... at any rate, fatherhood is fast approaching (2 weeks until anticipated birthmother due date), house construction is mostly complete... I have decided to abandon my earliest preconceptions about how this blog should work (i.e. dedicated and more or less polished writing with a specific sort of audience/mindset paradigm). Instead, I'm going to attempt to renew this enterprise by utilizing tidbits of writings that I am doing for other purposes, less purpose-built and a much lower threshold for polish. As well as providing simple linkage and commentary on other content that I have already put "out in the 'verse". In that spirit, here is the text of the testimonial that I gave at church ( http://www.austinuu.org ) this morning: Good morning! In my few years as a member of this church ...

Invocation: A wise person once said to me, you get to choose how to live, and there are basically two choices, you can choose to be right or you can choose to be peaceful. The more I have reflected on this the more clear it has become that choosing to be right is about ego, while choosing to be peaceful is about wisdom. Peace be with you. Let us join together in song. Prayer: How can we become more compassionate? It is helpful to think of a generic situation where you are engaged with another person. You perceive their actions, and from this perception you normally confer onto them motives and thoughts. It is by these motives and thoughts, which we have imagined, that we determine how we will react to their action. One form of compassion happens when we are clear and honest about the actions of others, but kind and generous when we infer thought and motive. There is an expression for this in English, it is called ‘giving the benefit of the doubt.’ One way to cultivate our capacity for ...