NaClhv

Theology, philosophy, math, science, and random other things
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

On becoming a good person

I don't care much about the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. I mean, it's hard to care, given some perspective. It happened half a world away. The death count at the moment stands at 136, according to Wikipedia. That's nothing. The world's mortality rate is about 0.8% per year - or about 100 persons per […]
2015-10-19

On martyrdom (Part 1)

We're going over the book of Acts in my Bible study group. We recently went over the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7, and did a related study looking at the concept of martyrdom. Here are some relevant quotes on that topic, from various persons: If a man has not discovered something that he will […]

Come visit my church

I attend a church called Tribe, in Berkeley, California. You can find our website at tribesites.org. I obviously think that my church is pretty great - I've been going there for about a decade now. I'd like to invite anyone who reads this post to come by for a Sunday service. Everyone is welcome, and […]

The principle of least awesomeness

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine..." - Ephesians 3:20. I have this tool that guides my thinking, which I privately call the principle of least awesomeness. It simply says that God is at least as awesome as anything we can imagine. Straightforward idea, right? Let's […]

The intellect trap

I have another math brainteaser for this week. It's easier than last week's problem. You're taking a long drive, and you want your average speed for the trip to be 50 miles per hour (mph). But you run into some traffic, and when you've traveled half the distance to the destination you notice that your […]
2015-08-03

The two envelopes problem and its solution

A job I was looking at had a requirement that read: "Inability to stop thinking about the two envelopes problem unless you’ve truly come to peace with an explanation you can communicate to us". So I thought I'd post my explanation for the problem. The setup to the problem goes like this: You have two […]

History, moral progress, and moral perfection (part 2)

In the last post of this series, we examined the nature of social progress, and where that leaves us in the course of history. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. In the future, it will continue to bend towards perfection - and away from our current state. The […]

Human laws, natural laws, and the Fourth of July

Have you heard about the time they tried to redefine pi(π) - the mathematical constant - by law? Yes, that really happened. The cherry on top is that the suggested value of pi was not anywhere near the correct value: the bill implied various different values like 3.2 and 4. Thankfully, the bill never became law, and […]

On same-sex marriage

Last Friday, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across all 50 states. I had long intended to write something on this important and contentious issue - in fact, you can see that my last few posts have been laying the foundation in preparation for speaking on this topic. But, as many observers noted, the matter […]

History, moral progress, and moral perfection (part 1)

Do you think that you live at the apex of moral history? That, after thousands of years bumbling and mistakes, your particular place (America, for instance) and time (June 2015) is when your society has finally gotten things right and achieved perfect virtue? Obviously you don't. I hope none of us are so foolish, provincial, […]
1 … 5 6 7 8 9 … 12

Pages

• Home
• All posts
• About

Post Importance

• 1: essential (4)
• 2: major (23)
• 3: normal (117)
• 4: partial (101)
• 5: minor (422)

Post Category

• blog update (427)
• humanities (28)
 • current events (32)
 • fiction (10)
 • history (39)
 • pop culture (14)
  • frozen (8)
• math (58)
• personal update (22)
• philosophy (88)
 • logic (65)
• science (56)
 • computing (16)
• theology (106)
 • bible (40)
 • christology (11)
 • gospel (7)
 • morality (23)
• uncategorized (2)
© NaClhv.com, 2013-2026, All rights reserved.