Episode 041 - TSSM in 2019

Themes we'd like to grapple with in the Year of Our Lord, 2019, and beyond:   Last year was largely about the intellectual challenge leveled by many against religion, and we will continue talking about that as the podcast moves forward. Paul's mission this year to work through Road to Reality This year we also want to broaden the scope to include places where religion and faith converge, which means we're going to discuss psychology. Looking forward to the SCS conference topic for this coming year: what it is, and has been, to be human. Neuroscience and what it implies for anthropology, and where it meets Catholic Christian anthropology coming the other way. What is consciousness, anyway? What parts of the brain seem to be involved, and what do they do? What is free will, anyway? Where are those breakpoints where the soul would have to affect the body in order for that to even work? Crisis points in the way people in the post-Christian West approach the world. Center for Ethics & Culture annual conference in 2018: Wilfred McClay & John Waters "we care about everything, but without God... we have responsibility for everything, but we know that we are flawed and unable to provide solutions" Post-Christian in this context includes both people who have explicitly renounced the Christian faith of the West and those who have a Christian identity in their back pocket somewhere but in reality are not relying on Jesus Christ or his teachings to guide their lives in any conscious way. Christianity is a demanding religion. If you suck away all the grace and help it promises, but leave some of its demands for social justice or purity of intention, you have a recipe for constant internal condemnation.   Link: CEC video Wilfred McClay (University of Oklahoma) on “Guilt in the Immanent Frame”, and John Waters on “The Importance of Not Being God: A Higher Power Is Indispensable for Human Beings and Human Societies”   No, not THAT John Waters.