John Pohl

Academics: The Issues (Well, at Least in Medicine) *and Maybe Theology

A little about me (see my blog home page)… As soon as I entered medical school, I learned that medicine could have an academic track. I was a first-generation physician so the field was very opaque to me. In fact, I had NO IDEA what a fellow was. For the audience, a fellow is aContinue reading “Academics: The Issues (Well, at Least in Medicine) *and Maybe Theology”

Reading Some Gould This Weekend…

Stephen Jay Gould is one of my heroes for many reasons. I love thinking about evolution (I’ve done some prior work looking at founder effects in humans), and Gould has some many interesting ideas in the field of evolutionary science. More importantly, I love his writing style. If I could emulate him in terms ofContinue reading “Reading Some Gould This Weekend…”

Creativity in Nature

Recently, I have been reading “A Purpose for Everything” by Charles Birch. He is a geneticist, and importantly (to me), he is a proponent of process philosophy / process theology. I have been reading his book very slowly. Hey, I’m a pediatric gastroenterologist with a busy schedule! Anyway, P. 38 (Twenty-Third Publishing version) made anContinue reading “Creativity in Nature”

Listening to Francis Collins

I was able to attend an on-line meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation this weekend. The ASA is a wonderful organization for Christians who work in the sciences. I have been a member for many years. Francis Collins was the guest speaker, and I think about 30+ people attended. On a personal note, I sentContinue reading “Listening to Francis Collins”

Panexperientialism

Ahh, now to the most difficult of the three “p“s of Naturalismppp — panexperientialism. It is actually not that difficult, but it kind of runs into the realm of woo spirituality / New Age thinking if taken into silly realms. Panexperientialism basically means that every entity has “experience”. Lots of thoughts here, but let usContinue reading “Panexperientialism”

Panentheism

In my continuation of explaining the 3 “p“s of natural theology, the second p of Naturalismppp is panentheism. This term is often mistaken for “pantheism.” There is nothing wrong with a word like pantheism. It simply means God or gods are in every natural thing. “Panentheism”, on the other hand, simply means all are inContinue reading “Panentheism”

Prehension

In order to understand the concept of God in the world without the need of the supernatural, the term Naturalismppp has been developed by Griffin. Three philosophical ideas (the three “p“s) with theological overlap can describe God in such a setting — prehension, panentheism, and panexperientialism. It is completely reasonable to believe in supernatural eventsContinue reading “Prehension”

Morality

Morality — I put the idea right up there with consciousness in terms of items we don’t understand. Many religious people are immoral as seen in world history. Some of the most moral people I have ever met are atheists. War, murder, eating animals, tax evasion, not helping the poor, etc.: I would think thatContinue reading “Morality”

Journal Fees

Publishing in journals is a major way for those of us in academics to advance at our universities. This advancement includes potential salary raises. Is this method a fair way to advance? I’m not sure especially for those in the liberal arts or fine arts or for those in “career line” academic pathways (including manyContinue reading “Journal Fees”

The Demarcation Problem

I’ve been reading through Sean Carroll’s well written article on ArXiv about his concerns surrounding Karl Popper’s “falsifiability” argument to separate science from non-science. Awesome. However, I wonder how much he is leaning on the problems of “falsifiability” in the setting of Everettian interpretation? Carroll is a proponent of this “many worlds” interpretation. I amContinue reading “The Demarcation Problem”