This year’s Gifford Lectures by prof. Agustin Fuentes offer an exciting new perspective on human evolution, centered on human niche construction. These lectures inspired me to revisit my doctoral research on a practical cooperation between theology and evolutionary studies of religion, and reinforced my conviction that looking at (religious) education from a niche construction perspective […]
Category: Little Reflections
Little Reflections
Theology and Technology: the adventus approach
Medium has an interview with Michael Burdett on theology and technology. Burdett explains some of the theological implications of technology and why it is important to have a dialogue with transhumanism. What I like the most about the interview, is the idea of an adventus approach towards technology. The following quote will clarify this a […]
On Meeting God in Nature
How can religious traditions help us to encounter God – or, rather, to recognize that we encounter God – in our lives? A crucifix in Tirol triggered me to reflect on that. Nature as a magnificent whole shows traces of your Creator, but if you want to see Him at His greatest, you need to […]
Wim Drees on Science-Inspired Naturalistic Theism
I’ve just finished reading an article by Wim Drees, published (free acces) in Theology and Science, and was really inspired by it. That has of course to do with my own unfinished search for a theological position, in which I hesitate to identify my stance completely with religious naturalism. Drees explains in his article how […]
Big History as a Religious Ritual
Today, I stumbled upon a fascinating example of science turning into religion, or, to be more precise, of people using science to create religious rituals. It all began when I was asked to offer a short meditation at the beginning of next meeting at work. My current employer is the Catholic education network in Flanders, […]
A Matter of Perspective
As a follow up on my earlier post about whether or not patterns in nature represent meaning, I would like to point to this picture. Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/JPMajor/status/852954423785553923 Jason Major, who tweeted this picture, explains: That bright star is actually Earth, seen between Saturn’s A and F rings by #Cassini on April 13, 2017…889.6 million miles […]
Polar Lights and Personal Faith
The turn of the year was a bit of a rough ride. My grandmother died, my last living grandparent, and although I did not have a deep personal relation with her, it felt as if a phase in my life had ended. Unexpectedly, her death has led me into one of the most profound crises of faith […]
The Importance of Modesty (New Year’s Resolutions)
In my most recent post, I argued how important it is to teach narrative skills, in particular in religious education. Jerome Bruner refers to narrative skills as the ability to understand and apply the methods of ‘narrative fields of knowledge’. He points to literature, poetry, historiography, etc., as examples of such fields, but I think it is obvious […]
Christmas, Creation and Education (Follow up on two Twitter discussions)
The last few days I have witnessed what you could call a parochial version of the war on Christmas, which is raging, according to some at least, in the US. A city council in Flanders decided that it was inappropriate to have a nativity scene on display in the city hall, since that would imply a […]
Planetary Knowledge is Self-Knowledge
One of the most critical house rules we must learn is that we are not lords over the planet, but products of its processes; in fact, we are the product of a fifteen-billion-year history of the universe and a four-billion-year history of our earth. We are an intimate and integral part of what we want […]
Weekly Gardening 