Kevin Stilley

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November 2, 2012 by kevinstilley

Art and Artists – select quotes

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
~ Scott Adams

A successful work of art is not one which resolves contradictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contradictions, pure and uncompromised, in its innermost structure.
~ Theodore Adorno

It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, excepis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.
~ Samuel Butler

A picture is a poem without words.
~ Confucius

To me it seems as if God conceived the world, that was poetry; he formed it, and that was sculpture; He colored it, and that was painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal drama.
~ Charlotte Cushman

Nature is the Art of God.
~ Dante Alighieri in Monarchy

Art is a quest for the useless.
~ Gustave Flaubert

The artist is not a different kind of person, but each one of us is a different kind of artist.
~ Eric Gill

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.
~ Rollo May

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
~ Michelangelo

Art is the great stimulus to life.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Art is more godlike than science. Science discovers; art creates.
~ John Opie

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
~ Pablo Picasso

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
~ George Bernard Shaw

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.
~ Lincoln Steffens

But then no artist is normal; if he were, he wouldn’t be an artist. Normal men don’t create works of art. They eat, sleep, hold down routine jobs, and die. You are hypersensitive to life and nature; that’s why you are able to interpret for the rest of us. But if you are not careful, that very hypersensitiveness will lead you to your destruction. The strain of it breaks every artist in time.
~ Irving Stone, in Lust for Life

Art is not pleasure, or an amusement; art is a great matter.
~ Leo Tolstoy, in What Is Art?

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes, Worldview Tagged With: Aesthetics, amusement, art, beauty, Blog, love, Music, painting, pleasure, poetry, Quotes, Science, sculpture

May 28, 2012 by kevinstilley

Isaac Newton – select quotes

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
~ in a letter to Robert Hooke dated February 5, 1676

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Filed Under: Blog, Philosophy, Quotes Tagged With: Isaac Newton, Philosophy, quotations, Quotes, Science, Theology

January 9, 2012 by kevinstilley

Faith and Reason – select quotes

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Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul.
~ Aristotle

No one indeed believes anything unless he has first thought that it it to be believed.
~ Augustine of Hippo

God is not what you imagine or what you think you understand. If you understand you have failed.
~ Augustine of Hippo

Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith; they keep faith alive and moving.
~ Frederick Buechner

A comprehended God is no God.
~ Dio Chrysostom

If reason be a gift of Heaven, and we can say as much of faith, Heaven has certainly made us two gifts not only incompatible, but in direct contradiction to each other. In order to solve the difficulty, we are compelled to say either that faith is a chimera or that reason is useless.
~ Denis Diderot, in A Philosophical Conversation

Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith is her right, …
~ John Donne

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because hey manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions; the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
~ Steve Eley

The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
~ T.S. Eliot, in his Introduction to Pascal’s Pensees

I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

Proof is only applicable to very rarefied areas of philosophy and mathematics…. For the most part we are driven to acting on good evidence, without the luxury of proof. There is good evidence of the link between cause and effect. There is good evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow. There is good reason to believe my mother loves me and is not just fattening me up for the moment when she will pop arsenic into my tea. And there is good reason to believe in God. Very good reason. Not conclusive proof, but very good reason just the same…. I believe it is much harder to reject the existence of a supreme being than accept it.
~ Michael Green, in Faith for the Non-religious

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
~ Ralph Hodgson

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.
~ David Hume, in An Enquiry Concerning Human Concerning Human Understanding

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
~ Robert Jastrow, in God and the Astronomer

The more we know of God, the more unreservedly we will trust Him; the greater our progress in theology, the simpler and more childlike will be our faith.
~ J. Gresham Machen

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration—courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and above all, love of the truth.
~ H. L. Menken

The faith that does not come from reason is to be doubted, and the reason that does not lead to faith is to be feared,
~ G. Campbell Morgan

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.
~ Blaise Pascal

Faith is reason at rest in God.
~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

God cannot be understood by logical reasoning but only by submission.
~ Leo Tolstoy, in Wise Thoughts for Every Day

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being. Religion is as necessary to reason, as reason is to religion.
~ George Washington

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Books on Faith & Reason

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Filed Under: Blog, Front Page, Quotes, Theology, Worldview Tagged With: Apologetics, Blog, Christianity, Epistemology, Faith, God, origins, Philosophy, Quotes, reason, religion, Science, Theology, theory

May 15, 2011 by kevinstilley

Albert Einstein – select quotes

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves — such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine.
~ in The World As I See It

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
~ in The World As I See It

Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

God does not play dice.

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

In the middle of every difficulty comes opportunity.

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

More and more I come to value charity and love of one’s fellow being above everything else . . . All our lauded technological progress—our very civilizations—is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

There are two ways to look at life. One is that nothing is a miracle, and the other is that everything is a miracle.

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.

We cannot solve the problems we have created with the same thinking that created them.

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: albert einstein, biography, Blog, perspective, physics, Quotes, relativity, Science, time

February 8, 2011 by kevinstilley

Looking for a good book?

Looking for a good book? Below are the “Additional Reading” suggestions in the discussion guide which accompanies “The Reason For God: Conversations on Faith and Life” small group curriculum by Timothy Keller (which is currently my favorite small group curriculum to recommend). I am familiar with most of the books on this list, and can give a hearty second recommendation to them. And, I am very anxious to get my hands on the ones on the list with which I am not familiar, based on my great appreciation for those with which I am familiar.

Discussion #1 – “Isn’t the Bible a Myth? Hasn’t Science Disproved Christianity?”

  • Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?, by Denis Alexander
  • Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, by Richard Bauckham
  • The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, by Craig Blomberg
  • The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, by F.F. Bruce
  • Science and Faith: Friends or Foes?, by C. John Collins
  • Nothing But the Truth, by Brian Edwards
  • Darwin on Trial, by Phillip e. Johnson
  • Redeeming Science, by Vern Poythress

Discussion #2 – “How can you say there is only one way to God? What about other religions?”

  • The Dissent of the Governed, by Stephen L. Carter
  • Answering Islam, by Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb
  • The Abolition of Man, by C. S. Lewis
  • Death of a Guru, by Rabindranath R. Maharaj
  • Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions?, by Gerald R. McDermott
  • The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, by Lesslie Newbigin
  • The Supremacy of Christ in a Post-Modern World, by John Piper
  • The Universe next Door, by James Sire
  • Christianity at the Religious Roundtable, by Timothy Tennent

Discussion #3 – “What gives you the right to tell me how to live my life? Why are there so many rules?

  • Angry Conversations With God, by Susan E. Isaacs
  • Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis
  • Hope Has Its Reasons, by Rebecca Pippert
  • Mere Morality, by Lewis B. Smedes
  • Real Sex, by Lauren Winner

Discussion #4 – “Why does God allow suffering? Why is there so much evil in the world?”

  • Where is God When Things Go Wrong, by John Blanchard
  • How Long, O Lord? By D.A. Carson
  • Making Sense Out of Suffering, by Peter Kreeft
  • The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis
  • A Step Further, by Joni Eareckson Tada
  • Lament for a Son, by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Discussion #5 – “Why is the church responsible for so much injustice? Why are Christians such hypocrites?”

  • The Transforming Vision, by Brian Walsh and J.R. Middleton
  • Let Justice Roll Down, by John Perkins
  • Church History in Plain Language, by Bruce L. Shelley
  • Creation Regained, by Albert Wolters
  • Until Justice and Peace Embrace, by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Discussion #6 – “How can God be full of love and wrath at the same time? How can God send good people to Hell?”

  • The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, by D.A. Carson
  • Original Sin: A Cultural History, by Alan Jacobs
  • The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis
  • Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav Volf
  • The God I Don’t Understand, by Christopher Wright

Are you familiar with any of these books? Share your thoughts on them in the comments below.

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Filed Under: Apologetics, Blog, Books, Evangelism, Philosophy Tagged With: Hypocrisy, Pluralism, religion, Science, suffering, World Religions

October 24, 2009 by kevinstilley

Science and Religion – quotes

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
~ Albert Einstein, in The World As I See It

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: quotations, quote, religion, Science

October 19, 2009 by kevinstilley

Charles Robert Darwin – Quotes

Man is more courageous, pugnacious, and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius.
~ Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man, ch. 8

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Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Biology, Charles Darwin, evolution, Quotes, Science

September 28, 2009 by kevinstilley

Pop Quiz

Who discovered the neutron?

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September 21, 2009 by kevinstilley

Pop Quiz

Who discovered penicillin?

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November 1, 2008 by kevinstilley

Carl Sagan – Select Quotes

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, cosmogony, cosmology, creation, evolution, God, intelligent design, origins, Quotes, Science

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