“The gluttonous full moon shines a wide-angle lens at the ocean’s curvy body below. Warm, salty hips give birth to an El Niño storm….”

The day of his release from The Farm she took him to his favorite po’ boy establishment where she presented him with a possible solution to permanently crush the source of his agonizing quandary about the existence of providence and freewill by performing a radical surgical procedure, which could theoretically remove the part of his brain responsible for the freedom of the will to make autonomous choices, according to the Cartesian view that the pineal gland is the hub where the mind and body unite and interact, making decisions that could’ve been otherwise. By removing this gland, as well as the adjacent midline region of the brain, the corpus callosum, which is responsible for connecting left and right cerebral hemispheres, and then replacing it with an A.I. Vertex database housed inside a silicon neuromorphic chip with 1,000,000,000 times more dense “neurons” than the corpus callosum, Griffin would be the first walking humanoid robot, able to process information faster than any computer and able to react faster to both the rational and emotional sides of his brain, simultaneously thinking and feeling like no other person alive. Griffin was in favor of the innovative procedure. The date was set. He was made aware of possible complications, including a high percent chance of mortality. The neuro-surgeon who performed the operation was paid handsomely for his time and discretion.

…Hobbes believes people need to be ruled by a Sovereign—a Sovereign with no emotions, desires, or freewill. No, the drastic range of variability within each of those aspects of human nature will never lead to the summum bonum or “the greatest good” necessary to live the good life. The competing conceptions of the good lead only to chaos and war, a “war of all against all.” A social contract is needed for the religious community or the commonwealth founded for the common good of all. Ironically, Hobbes’s catalyst to peace is grounded on a negative view of human nature. The summum malum or “the greatest evil” is used in order to keep the peace, which is stipulated by the social contract. This evil is the fear of violent death given the state of nature or lawless condition of man vs. man. Thus, a Sovereign without wayward human characteristics—a hyper-intelligent Transhuman incapable of disobeying orders—is Hobbes’s contribution to the revolution, from the kingdom of God (the kingdom of already-but-not-yet) or the “kingdom of darkness,” as he likes to call it, to the kingdom of once-and-for-all, Hobbes’s temporal kingdom of absolute rule.

This is a unique conference that marries rational apologetics to imaginative apologetics, the art of defending truth claims and the art of creatively expressing truth claims.

Yes, My Friends, This multi-faceted, multi-challenging, multi-year project is finally complete. With 120 poems, 70 prose, and 10 short stories–that will simultaneously stretch and encourage you–From the Ashes We Rise is a literary force to be read and reckoned with. This book seamlessly weaves Arts and Apologetics all throughout its 556 pages. See why From…

As far back as the classic Greek period, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that whether truth is represented by universals or particulars, all truth emanates from God. Christian theologians and philosophers from early to late Medieval periods, such as St. Augustine and St. Aquinas, believed that even pagan truths have their source in the Lord. And from the late medieval period through the scientific revolution, philosophers and scientists agreed that God was the author of two books—“the book of nature” and “the book of scripture.”

Sean happens to be thinking the same thing. “If I were to revive his brain, will he end up in the first body or the second body?” A sudden pang of doubt deflates his hope of winning the Nobel Prize for the first successful brain-transplant. “What if his brain doesn’t make it? Then the two people, who’ve put their trust in me and donated their bodies in the name of ‘brain research’ when they died, died in vain. No, I can’t believe that! I know what I believe: logical possibilities ground metaphysical possibilities. Option one is logical and thus ontologically possible.” He swallows a gulp of air. “I have to keep working.”

Give me Narnia or 

Give me the Wild Lands of the North. 

Give me Aslan or 

Give me the White Witch

and her black dwarfs.

God: “Truth is self-love that sets you free and enables you to see your sin as an opportunity to talk with Me about why you sin so we can have conversations like this one and walk further down life’s path together. This is My heart. This is discipleship.”

This poem was inspired by my friend and pastor, Matt Whitlock, and his sermon on “The Silently Simple Life.”