To Understand Truth and to Attain the True
Maybe scholars debating on the subject of cultural relativism in splendid isolation in the university could benefit from the work done by colleagues who have taken the trouble to collect data from field works. For this reason, I offer below some of the insights on culture taken from scholars from a generation earlier. Presumably, they spoke with authenticity given their vast experience of first hand encounters with other cultures.
Read more...These must be worrying times for Malaysian citizens if an official from IKIM, a government think-tank dedicated to the task of disseminating Islam as a tolerant religion, can come out with an article entitled “Debunking Multiculturalism� that appeared in the STAR (22/08/06).
Read more...“What bad News!� What else could we say to the newsagent as we grabbed a copy of the newspapers the morning after the September 11 attacks on America? We expected him to share our feelings of revulsion and horror. We were thus stunned when the newsagent grinned, gave the ‘thumbs-up’ signal and cheerfully declared the attacks to be “ Good news.� We were equally disgusted when a friend reported that the counter clerk she met in her bank argued that the Americans deserved what they got.
Read more...I am currently busy preparing my talks for a public lecture series for an academic institution in a neighboring country. As such I can begin work on this blog only from Nov 2006. But my site maintenance engineer wants to get this template up before leaving the country. God willing my existential crisis will be [...]
Read more...Newbigin offers just an ordinary dictionary definition. Culture as “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.�78ctc9
He added – A social product of human initiative, not an unchangeable datum. It comprises the “vast variety of human ways of livingâ€? including “all of that which constitutes man’s public life in society.â€?
The Holocaust has become a symbol of absolute evil among Western historians. This is because the Holocaust was perpetrated by what was arguably the most technologically and culturally advanced country of Europe at that time. That Germany then could systematically execute six million innocent and helpless Jews is both horrifying and incomprehensible. To be sure, scholars researching this episode have made considerable progress with increasing access to hitherto forbidden archives. We now know in great details the whole machinery of death deployed by the Third Reich that implemented the program of genocide. It is strange though, that despite all these new details, scholars are not any nearer in agreeing on an explanation for the causes of the genocide.
Read more...In Greco-Roman mythology there is said to stand guarding the gates of Hades a three-headed dog named Cerberus. We may suppose that Cerberus has three brains and therefore three distinct states of consciousness of whatever it is like to be a dog. Therefore, Cerberus, while a sentient being, does not have a unified consciousness. He has three consciousness.
Read more...Let us then investigate how analogical language plays a prominent role in Christian theology.
First, some words about the language of God talk: Talk about God can be univocal, equivocal or analogical.
Univocal language – When a term is used univocally it is being given exactly the same meaning in two different contexts, e.g., we would say of both a dog and a cat that each is a mammal.
Equivocal language – This is to give a word two completely different and unrelated meanings. It is purely accidental that the word sounds the same in each case. Thus the word ‘bat’ can be used of an object in the game of cricket and of a flying animal.
Any attempt at God-talk faces the following dilemma. We must use language derived from everyday experience. If we refer to God without qualifications, we make God part of the finite world. If we dichotomize human language from a God who is totally other, we empty our God-talk of meaning. As Frederick Ferré expresses it, ‘If univocal, then language falls into anthropomorphism and cannot be about God: if equivocal, then language bereft of its meaning leads to agnosticism and cannot for us be about God’ (p.105).
Read more...Islam is well known for its resolute rejection of any attempt to represent God with images. It is therefore a surprise when one comes across passages in the Quran describing God in human terms. Thus, Allah has a face, hands and eyes:
Read more...Only a handful of critics go beyond merely asserting the charge of incoherence of the Trinity and provide logical arguments to support their claim of incoherence. . . In any case, the task of logical demonstration is not so straightforward. Note that we assume that the propositions are clear and unambiguous. For example, we assume that the particular statement P or Q adequately and accurately and precisely represents essential aspects of God. But the fact is, we do not have any clear account of human nature that has gained consensus, let alone an account of divine nature. In reality, propositions P and Q are read differently (though implicitly) by different protagonists in logical debates.
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Dr. Ng Kam Weng
Research Director
Kairos Research Centre
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