I am currently reading Slavjo Zizek’s latest book Less Than Nothing. It is a profound and systematic work (though I must warn that if you don’t have a background in continental philosophy it is difficult). Anyway, the following reflections are directly inspired by his writing on Malebranche, Occasionalism and the Big Other found there. Descartes [...]

Posted in Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Bill Murray, Broken Flowers, Jim Jarmusch, Loss, love, meaning

I once had the idea for a sci-fi short story about a scientist who was deeply in love with two women. Two woman who are, in turn, deeply in love with him. He is paralyzed by the choice; utterly unable to decide which woman he should actually commit himself to. In addition to this each [...]

Posted in Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Clones, Desire, Lacan, love, Objet a, Zizek

Here I want to offer a final reflection on grace and ethical systems. The original post that sparked the rather heated debate, here and elsewhere, was entitled “Stop Teaching the Ethics of Jesus.” One of the important, but missed, points of the title was that it didn’t say “Don’t Teach the Ethics of Jesus.” The [...]

Posted in Blog, Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Ethics, Grace, Hegel, love, Zizek

There is a strong tendency within the church for people to extract and teach the ethical framework found in the Gospels. For instance, people might set up a community in which they attempt to live out principles such as giving to someone in need, turning the other cheek and living simply. There are however a [...]

Posted in Blog, Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Ethics, Grace, love, morality

There is a famous set of experiments carried out by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov in which he would present some dogs with food while ringing a bell. He showed that over time the dogs began to associate the ringing of the bell with receiving food. The result was that, if the dogs heard the bell, they would begin [...]

Posted in Blog, Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Desire, love, Pavlov's dog

  In time travel films such as Back to the Future a trope is often employed whereby a photograph taken back in time begins to change as a direct result of some current intervention. For instance a person in the photograph may begin to dissolve away as the protagonist prevents that individuals parents from ever [...]

Posted in Blog, Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Back to the future, cause and effect, changing the past, love, psychoanalysis, subjective

When I was young I used to watch The Littlest Hobo. This was a fascinating show about a dog that would travel from place to place helping people in need before quietly leaving at the end. It might sound similar to Lassie, but there were several important differences. This dog had no owner, no name, [...]

Posted in Philosophy/Theology | Tags: God, Littlest Hobo, love, vanishing mediator

Love is so humble that it seems impossible to ever really catch anything but the briefest glimpse of her. She is like a tiny field mouse dwelling in the dark. Should we hear her scratching in the corner and shine a light she will, quick as a flash, scurry away so that we catch sight [...]

Posted in Blog, Philosophy/Theology | Tags: beloved, existence, love, Valentines

As a child I often watched the relentless, unending chase that took place between Wiley Coyote and his arch-nemesis the Roadrunner. And yet I never really gave much thought to what would happen if Wiley Coyote ever finally caught him. This cartoon gives us a little insight into the possible outcome (there is swearing in the following clip), What [...]

Posted in Philosophy/Theology | Tags: Desire, Drive, love, Roadrunner, Wiley Coyote

Following my recent post on the reduction of Crucifixion to a mythology (which generated a lot of traffic) I thought I would touch on the thorny issue of Resurrection. While some people have reluctantly agreed with me that the Crucifixion could be described as a moment in which everything comes crashing down, where our mythologies [...]

Posted in Philosophy/Theology | Tags: 1 John 4:20, Bonhoeffer, Crucifixion, Fundamentalism, Hebrew Scriptures, love, Matt 18:20, New Atheism, Peter Rollins, Resurrection, theology, world