If I ever need a reminder to be careful about my pretensions to sophistication, I can always fall back on my love of country music. Every so often though, even this guilty pleasure comes to good account. Case in point, Keith Urban’s Days Go By. Urban’s song wrestles with the same aspect of time considered in my last article, namely the way time seems to fly. In turn, he suggests a specific view for approaching

The time has come to lose that weight The weight that holds me back Strip down to the essentials To run that Heavenly track The stands are full of cheerers-on Who’ve come to see me run There’s a wild olive crown Just waiting to be won   And now we’re sweatin’ to the oldies Until the race is run Sweatin’ to the oldies With Saint Ephrem the Syrian 1   Lord and Master of my

There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” that stands for me as a metaphor for my vocation. In this scene, Walter, who works in film development at Life Magazine, laments the loss of a film strip for the final cover of the magazine. The photographer is halfway across the world, while Walter faces the end of his job in New York. Then, imagining a picture of the

Happy weekend, dear readers! Here is a round-up of different religion, theology, and current events articles from our own authors and across the internet. The following articles do not necessarily reflect the views or mission of Conciliar Post. These articles have been selected based on their prevalence across popular blogs and social media and their relevance to current events. We invite you to engage in friendly and positive discussion about these articles. If you read

One of the many unique features of Conciliar Post is the Ask function that allows readers to pose questions to the Conciliar Post community. Unfortunately, this portion of our attempts to further meaningful and informed dialogue has often resulted in questions which are (for a variety of reasons) not suitable for public response. That all changes today, however, as this article stems from the following question asked by a Conciliar Post Reader: What are the

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The precise meaning of this verse—and the two chapters of “Creation Narrative” which follow in this Book of Beginnings—remains a hotly debated topic today. Consideration of Genesis 1-2 has often led to extreme responses, ranging from rejection of the Biblical text as useless hokum from an unlearned and backwards age, to overly-detailed analysis of this passage as the key to understanding all of natural science,

Freedom, I’m told, is the absence of tyranny. I realized one day that everybody’s got an idea of the kind of freedom they ought to have, mostly inaccurate. History and human nature proves that humans have a strange habit of running straight to tyranny at the least provocation. It’s because we’re mixed up about freedom.  Without comprehending tyranny in its worst form, no one will cling to real freedom. Real freedom isn’t doing whatever we

“What kind of being is God? Does any man or woman know? Have any of you seen Him, heard Him, or communed with Him? Here is the question that will, peradventure, from this time henceforth occupy your attention.”1 Thus begins the King Follett Discourse, one of the most famous sermons delivered by Joseph Smith, the Prophet and first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the course of this article and

The Problem of Consciousness for the Corpuscular Cosmos The biologist Kenneth Miller gives a charitable response to Nagel by interpreting him to say there are fundamental issues, like consciousness, which makes the materialist program in biology face obstacles it will not overcome in the near future. Nagel’s book today, Miller says, parallels Erwin Schrödinger’s book, What is Life? in 1956. According to Miller, Schrodinger said “that our then-current understanding of physics was incapable of explaining