The last post argued that we should not affirm a maximalist understanding of divine creation because it destroys any possible sense of self that a person could have and makes God responsible for everything, including our own bad “choices” and the very, very bad things that happen in the world.  So, perhaps the better position is that God has what might be called a “moderate” influence on the design and outcomes of creation…

Having made a case for why I think Divine creation is the most rational explanation for where everything came from, there are still lots of other questions to ask, most notably, what did God create?  This is really the most ultimate metaphysical question.  Metaphysics, contrary to what you will find in many bookstores, is the philosophical exploration of reality as such, or what some call the really real.  This is easily the philosophical topic on which I have spent more brain power than any other.  This hardly ensures that I have anything interesting to say on the matter.  It just means that I really like to think about it…

The most common misunderstanding I encounter when I talk about Divine creation is what might be called the domino fallacy.  It is sometimes assumed that the only thing a necessary reality needs to do in order explain the existence of everything else is to get the process of the world going, just like knocking down the first in a very long chain of dominos.  This idea even has an impressive pedigree in Aristotle’s appeal to God as the “Prime Mover” or “uncaused cause” of all that exists…

The results of the first part of this argument have left us needing at least some conditioned realities and at least one unconditioned reality.  This little achievement of basic reason should not be underappreciated.  I have not once appealed to religious scriptures, nor to something called “faith.”  I have just tried to see where thinking takes us.  Thoughtful people who do not want to follow along with me should at least have the courtesy to explain why…

The following philosophical defense of creation ex nihilo is inspired by the ideas of Robert Spitzer, S.J., especially his book New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy.  Spitzer was the very first person to teach me about metaphysics when I was an undergraduate at Georgetown University.  However, I am going to try to make an argument in my own words, one that may very well depart from Spitzer’s.  What follows should be understood…

As indicated in the Introduction, I cannot answer the question, “Who Am I?” without at least giving some thought to the question of “Where did I come from?”  While it is obviously possible to answer this second question by considering only our knowledge of the particular world we live in, I feel compelled to start one question before that and ask, “Where did ALL of this come from?”  By all, I don’t just mean…

Welcome to the “Who Am I?” Project.  It is a hopefully humble, but also somewhat lengthy, exploration by one person to answer the title question.  By humble, I mean that I make no claim to novelty, depth, comprehensiveness, or academic rigor.  However, I hope it will be thoughtful, and I hope some of my academic colleagues will, on occasion, find something of interest.  It is also very much my hope that some non-academic readers…