Here are a few things overflowing from my week. The first two are things I collected while browsing through my local bookstore.

Were you predetermined to read this?

There are reasons people find this disturbing and untenable. For one thing, it really does undercut all moral culpability for actions. Every action, even the pulling of a trigger was determined. So who’s to judge?

As the book’s blurb puts it: “One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody’s ‘fault.’”

I’m fascinated by the argument for determinism mostly because I can’t see how it can bear its own weight. If everything is determined—and all apparent free will is illusory—it must mean that Sapolsky’s belief that everything is determined is an illusion too. In that case, why should anyone believe it?

Full disclosure: I haven’t read the book, but I hope to, and I can’t wait to see if Sapolsky answers my question.

148 Books on Witchcraft & Magic

To attract a new job or financial opportunity, place a dried rose of Jericho in a bowl of spring or distilled water and watch it unfold. After five days, remove the plant and allow it to dry back up. Save the remaining water and dump it onto your front porch or wipe down your front door with it under the full moon.

For gambling, wrap the money you will use with a fresh comfrey leaf that has been dressed with prosperity oil, then place this in your wallet for three days. After the third day, the money will be charged with gambling luck and whatever you spend will come back at least threefold.

The thing that I found so jarring about the many books devoted to witchcraft was that the science and philosophy books near it boast that modern science has eliminated the need for superstitious and magical manipulations of reality.

Apparently not.

Trust = Yielding Allegiance

On to better things.

I was reading the entry on “Worship” in The New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (highly recommend!), and came across a helpful definition of trust as “yielding allegiance.”

I love that phrase because it combines the ideas of dependence (yield) with commitment and loyalty (allegiance). Both concepts are inherent in the Greek word pistos which can be translated either faith/trust or faithfulness.

I think this is important because many people lose sight of the fact that to trust Christ means to obey him too. Because we fail to see that Christ is both Rescuer and Ruler at the same time, we wrongly assume we can trust him and disobey. In reality, however, a failure to obey is a failure to trust.

I have talked with people who are considering a decision that they know would conflict with Christian ethics. “I know I’m a Christian,” they say, “so God will forgive me, right?” I can only reply that I don’t what it means to trust Christ without obeying him. Someone who is consciously and repeatedly refusing to obey Christ is trusting something or someone else for their salvation. To anyone who reasons that way, my message is: “Repent and believe the gospel.”

Herman Bavinck quotes Thomas Edison

While reading Herman Bavinck’s Essays on Religion, Science, and Society (highly recommend!) yesterday I was delighted to find a little intersection of worlds: Dutch and American, philosophy and technology, theologian and inventor.