Emergent - 2026 March
Emergent is just another word for magic. Just because you have a word for something doesn't mean that you know what it is. - Jonathan Pageau
(Quote context and citations are in the note links).
Being, Thinking and Consciousness
2025 Nov 28René Descartes famously said, I think, therefore, I am.
What was he talking about? At the time he was taking a radically skeptical viewpoint on everything in life. However, he was also trying to salvage some point of certainty from which to build up meaning for life.
He reasoned that if he had doubts about things, that meant he was thinking. Therefore, his self must exist because he was aware of the doubts in his thoughts.
Descartes was aware, but was this consciousness?
Kinds of Awareness
Rocks exist, and events happen to rocks. Rocks, however, don’t have any experiences because they are without awareness. They don’t sense things and they don’t react to their environment. In our material universe, this is the natural state of all non-living things.
Christianity is weird!
2025 Sep 26I believe that Christianity is what makes the most sense of human existence, but it also is full of wonderful weirdness.
God
God always has existed because God is a necessary being. The Christian God, therefore, was not created. God is a maximally great being; there is no superior or even equivalent being. All power, intellect, knowledge and good morality is of and originates from God. This single infinite being is in three distinct persons (called Father, Son & Holy Spirit). These persons exist in harmonious continuous relationship.
God is the source of all being, and the origin of all existence. God made all space, energy, matter and living things by speaking them into existence out of nothing, and creating order out of chaos. God made humans with intellect, free will and inherent personal value, finite beings in the image of God.
God the Son took on humanity; Jesus of Nazareth was born a dependent human infant. For a time he set aside his powers of deity, but in his person he continued to be God. He learned as a youth and grew to human adulthood. He participated in the full range of human experience, including both good and the bad. Jesus even died, brutally killed for no fault of his own. However, God then raised Jesus from the dead.
Good News: Read all about it!
Find out about
- The Simple Good News
- values that you (and others) can choose that strengthen relationships
- how this makes sense of spiritual things that are otherwise confusing
- and please choose this way of living
This is an approach for living based on what Jesus taught and is pragmatically useful both for those that follow Jesus or for those that just admire him.
I'm Larry Grove, and my wife is Melanie. We have three adult sons and our family has continued to grow.