I started at the beginning of my teaching career, based on my belief that students need exposure to the world of language outside of instruction and assessment. I got the idea from Billy Collins, who implemented a “poem-a-day” program in various public schools that involved a reading of a poem a day, without any required instructional connection whatsoever. Mere exposure for the sake of it being something in our language.
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Category Archives: Books
Seasons Change—A poem from my adolescence
[The melting of the snow reminded me of a poem I wrote in middle school. I decided to dig it up.]
Seasons Change
Mother Nature’s grand gift
I see is truly alive
New trees do bud
Flowers born
In tears
In fog
The earth flourishes in sun
It has only just begun
Trees are deep green
Bring fruit
And nuts
In sun
It is now a time to slow down
Time to show beauty in age
As once we were green
Now must die red
And yellow
Orange
Now comes the cold soft white rain
Trees only hibernate in ice
They are not truly dead
They are just waiting
And now comes
New life…
Mother Nature’s grand gift
Is alive once again
A Shot of Faith To The Head: The Full Review
_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book
Below are all my review of A Shot of Faith to the Head, a good book with a bad title:
Intro
Part 1: Is Belief in God Irrational?
Intermission: The Art of Rational Self-Defense
Part 2: Does Science Prove that God Does Not Exist?
Part 3: Does Evil Prove that God Does Not Exist?
Conclusion
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Conclusion
_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Conclusion
As Mitch Stokes reasoned in his book, there are three evidential reasons for why belief in God is rational:
- The universe is rational, and we are rationally able to comprehend and communicate it’s rationality, which reflects a rational being, a perfect form that created the physical world to be rational.
- The universe looks designed, and not only that—it also has no physical (non-supernatural) explanation for why it looks designed, which leads us to accepting a supernatural explanation for the designed universe.
- Humanity comprehends and communicates absolute moral standards, concepts of good and evil that have no physical explanation or, more importantly, physical reason for an ought, which points us to a supernatural being that has instilled a sense of morality.
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 3: “Evil and Suffering Show There’s No God”
_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 3: “Evil and Suffering Show There’s No God”
“Many of the atheists’ grievances are moral ones, founded upon an acute sense of ethical superiority,” says Stokes. Sometimes it’s not about science at all, or at least not primarily. Sometimes it’s about the heart. Atheists have decided that the world is not to their liking, and that it is either God’s fault, or he’s not real to begin with.
[See the last post on whether science proves God doesn’t exist]
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 2: “Science Has Shown There is No God”
_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 2: “Science Has Shown There is No God”
An official statement from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences:
“Science is a way of knowing about the natural world. It is limited to explaining the natural world through natural causes. Science can say nothing about the supernatural. Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral.”
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Intermission
_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Intermission—Argumentation and Defense
“Objections”
But wait. Aren’t we ultimately saying, if we follow the line of reasoning from our previous post, that the Christian definition of faith is belief without evidence? Recall that everyone operates on faith of some sort. Also recall that not in every field does absence of evidence prove evidence of absence.
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 1—”Belief in God is Irrational”
_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Part 1: “Belief in God is Irrational”
Evidence
Mitch Stokes is bold. He begins his “shot” into our heads by challenging the notion that rational beliefs must be supported by evidence, a belief known as evidentialism. This might at first sound like a bad move, as if to say to tell Sherlock Holmes that you just have to believe you know who stole the diamond, and that’s ok. But retrace the steps of human reasoning. Go quiz the philosophers (and even the scientists) on this issue. We have always used reason as long as we have used writing, and earlier. What is evidence, though? And how does it factor into our reasoning? Is it just a matter of things that are there for us to find, things that obviously point the way toward true things, so long as we are rational? Simply put,
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_A Shot of Faith To The Head_: Bad Title, Great Book: Intro
My brother bought it for me as a Christmas gift, this book I had never heard of, A Shot of Faith to the Head, by Mitch Stokes. It was an accidental discovery, for him and for me. I didn’t know it would become a book that I would want to hold on to, one that surprisingly bolstered a faith in the very existence of God I already thought was solid enough.
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Mining for Ore: A Poem Inspired by The Hobbit
Mining For Ore
In the depths, diamonds and demons:
Mine at your own risk.
Chisel and plumb and plunder
As does the prisoner
To light and breath.
Touch nothing,
But look on.
Something hums and burns beneath.
Lift up your candle and call out,
For it has broken through.
Pray that you pried loose
What you can bear to see—
Bear it up alone
And alone you will sink.
Let the eye that opens be yours,
For in the deepest of halls
No headlamp or torch can discern
Sovereigns from scales.
CALEB COY 