Not Noteworthy: The Blog That Gives You No Excuse For Wasting Your Time

Welcome to Not Noteworthy, the blog and 'Net posting respository of Jeff Zimmerman. What kind of repository, you ask? Well, years of being a Net addict haven't helped me develop social skills, but they have added pages and pages of my developing philosophical and theological thought to various diverse corners of the Internet.

Thus, not only will you see my up to date thinking here; every day, I will dump whatever essay, worth-while posts, and thoughts I have sprinkled throughout the Internet in years past. Yay--a veritable treasure vault of irrelevance!

October 7th, 2004

In a debate with an atheist...

Atheist: "...your belief in [Christianity] allows you to accept the double talk and imprecision that makes it seem to work on the surface."

Me: "Christianity involves numerous paradoxes, but these are not "double-talk". When you're deep into the tradition, this becomes evident in a way that outsiders won't understand (and will continue to laugh about while at the same time refusing to study). Yes, Christianity is about freedom, but this freedom is understood as inseperable from our social being which requires us to choose good rather than evil. That's a paradox. Yes, God seeks the salvation of the whole human race, but the gift of our freedom means that many will choose otherwise. That's a paradox.

Paradox is a sign of the authenticity of the Christian faith, not its failures. Why? Because the human person is a creature of paradox. Christianity is deeply humanistic for taking seriously the complex nature of our inner lives. To disparage Christianity because of certain tensions, is to demand an essentially anti-human univocal reality."

In a thread titled, "What Would You Die For?"

"Why are you people so damn conservative? I mean, police officers have to risk their lives all the time for people they don't know and probably don't even like. Are the only lives that are valuable the ones that give you comfort and the faces that you recognize?

If you saw a stranger whose life you could save at the expense of your own, do you mean to tell me that you would actually choose not to do so? I mean, hey, I know in most situations people get scared or don't think fast enough or whatever. But now, comfortably reading the forum posts, are you guys actually serious that you would let someone die (who didn't need to), because of the loss (or even the risk) of your own person?" (Sadly, the answer was yes, in most cases).