𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃.

Writer. Professor. Editor. Serving truth-seekers, storytellers, & solitary poets in their vision quest. DM me for a close reading of your creative work. 📜✍️

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Working with you on your words.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

The timeliness of a work of art is a necessary condition of its timelessness.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

What you think of yourself reveals only what you think of your thinking self.

[Giff Lasta @GiffLasta]

@MarkQueppet Then @SteveDPhD reached out and volunteered to edit chapter 1 for free. His comments PISSED ME OFF. But some critiques landed---chief of which was starting the book stronger than, "I was annoyed." I eventually paid him to give rough comments on the whole thing.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Trauma results from a very powerful encounter with ugliness, especially if that ugliness strikes us as a kind of revelation, disclosing to us the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 truth about the world.

— Timothy G. Patitsas, THE ETHICS OF BEAUTY

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

“zero incompatibility between Christianity & Darwinian theory”

There was no death before the Fall.

Ergo, the theory of evolution—which posits millions of years of death preceding the speciation of humans via natural selection—is incompatible with the Christian creation story.

[Max @minordissent]

Christians will not stop losing until they get over their weird gay strawman of evolutionary biology.

If you take issue with materialism, the hard problem of consciousness or the even harder problem of existence itself is a FAR more persuasive avenue than your inability to grasp basic evolutionary theory.

In truth, there is zero incompatibility nor conflict between Thomistic Christianity and Darwinian theory, and everyone on both sides who thinks otherwise is just confused.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

@unummagnumtotum @JuddBaroff @scotthraines I was just planning to check in with you, friends.

I’d be happy to find some time for Judd’s play, once it’s ready for prying eyes, and assuming Judd’s interested in our thoughts. Let us know on both fronts, Judd.

God bless you all.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

I believe it is in the confrontation with the harsh silence of God where the long-repressed Christian masculinity is to be restored. In God's image, we, too, must make something out of this nothing. Ex nihilism.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

@megha_lilly This is the way. Still going strong with never exceeding the character limit. If I have to say more, I make a thread. The form must have its say.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Never pluralize the word "logic." An instant tell of intellectual failure, unless you're working in formal logic with the specific goal of comparing discrete formal systems.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Many worship the trickster, endless change, in which one thing is nothing but the next ever-receding thing. All is flux, an endless procession, so that even to name it is to miss it: language & logic are boggled. Your boomer parents, your liberal friends, all had by the Deceiver.

[Duncan Reyburn @duncanreyburn]

Without humility, no contact with reality.

[Thaddeus Patrick ☦️ @thaddeusthought]

The price of Truth is humiliation and crucifiction.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

@duncanreyburn The lie of autonomy leads to all the excesses of automation and atomization alike. An enjoyable read, Duncan.

[Duncan Reyburn @duncanreyburn]

If you manage to get your ego well out of the way, everything is instantly transformed into an apocalypse.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Social anxiety: the psychological expression of an agonism between individual & collective identity, due to the absence of any teleological integrative principle to unify the One & the Many, unity & distinction, in a coherent cosmology.

Cosmological incoherence creates anxiety.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

If other people cause you anxiety, not love & joy, be sure that you are living in the Leviathan.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Among sincere servants of God, relations can indeed escape the orbit of personal pettiness & enter loving communion.

All else between people is war. This is true even when—especially when—it's said to be otherwise.

Family, friendships, romance, all of it, lived out in fear.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

Obeying abstract laws is still transactional & never leaves the domain of egoism. Being “good” is just a technology to get what you want (e.g. heaven). It’s in the *personal* encounter, a relationship rather than a concept, that “good” & “evil” cash out & gain their true meaning.

[owen cyclops @owenbroadcast]

probably my least popular opinion among theists is that this isnt true. there could be no God and the universe could “just have” an ethical system woven into it. “good and evil” could “just” exist. at that level of metaphysics, these “but how?” questions don’t really apply.

[𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃. @SteveDPhD]

@owenbroadcast Obeying abstract laws is still transactional & never leaves the domain of egoism. Being “good” is just a technology to get what you want (e.g. heaven). It’s in the *personal* encounter, a relationship rather than a concept, that “good” & “evil” cash out & gain their true meaning.

[G. K. Chesterton @GKCdaily]

Can you hate the world enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?