Benjamin Parviz
@parvizbd
PhD(c) Philosophy and Bioethics at Saint Louis Univ, working on despair, suicide, and culture. Hope is a mystery and not a problem. Gabriel Marcel stan account.
I have a new piece out this morning in @ChurchLifeND, "Gabriel Marcel on the mysteries of death and despair." I wrote this for and presented it at the 2024 conference of @scbioethicists. It includes Marcel's distinctions of problem/mystery, an argument against assisted suicide.
Techniques of degradation that subject mysteries such as dying and death to technical control for the sake of effectiveness and efficiency contribute to the epidemic of despair and threaten to make living impossible. --Benjamin Parviz hubs.la/Q03lBjRq0
I suspect that most people who are committed to liberalism and democracy are motivated by despair over truth and the possibility of knowing truth. Some may sincerely hope to know truth and are motivated to support liberalism and democracy bc of this hope. But probably not most.
The conversation about new technologies should not be about what it can or cannot accomplish, but how its existence and use changes who and what we are. This is a worthwhile contribution from @jeff_bilbro about AI machines. I may assign it as day one reading this fall.
So far this summer, I've written the first 16,000 words of a book manuscript on AI and the possibilities of living as creatures in a world designed for machines. But I'm still pretty happy with the arguments I sketched out in this essay.
Never has there existed any person who does not have a god.
"What does it mean 'to have a god'? Answer: A 'god' is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in all need. To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in something with your whole heart." - Martin Luther, Large Catechism, First Commandment
One of the best things that has ever been done on the internet is the All of Bach project by the Netherlands Bach Society and its channel on YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=iEY5ZY…
Productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency are not fruits of the Spirit.
Would you like to help plan the next conference of the Society for Christian Bioethicists? We are compiling the conference planning committee now. If you're interested, please email us a brief introduction and a CV to christianbioethicists at gmail dot com.
I just tried to explain the concept of research to my 6 yo. She asked "So if I give you a riddle you would read a book to see if you can find the answer?" Yeah, that's pretty much about it.
"The most important thing, she said, was that Veritas focused on restoring her health, whereas IVF felt like bullying her body into submission." This essay reminds and helpfully illustrates that IVF is not a fertility treatment. thefp.com/p/what-i-went-…
I'd plant 1826 apple trees.
If you knew the end of humanity was in five years, what would you do between now and then?
"Hope and the calculating faculty of reason are essentially distinct and everything will be lost if we try to combine them." - Marcel, Homo Viator, p. 59.
“we have a tendency to substitute for an initial relationship, which is both pure and mysterious, subsequent relationships no doubt more intelligible, but at the same time more and more deficient as regards their ontological content.” - Marcel, Homo Viator, 50
"...hope is engaged in the weaving of experience now in process, or in other words in an adventure now going forward." - Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator, p. 46.
For Lutherans: the left-hand kingdom is not the secular kingdom. There is no secular kingdom. It is the kingdom in which God administers his good gifts through magistrates rather than bishops. There is not a religious-secular divide in Lutheran theology.