Thank you for visiting the Unnatural Philosophy project. My name is Dr. Bryan Stearns. I was raised a Christian and have made that faith my own as an adult. I have spent most of my lifetime searching out knowledge and understanding about the universe as best I can. (In the same sort of way that we all do.) This website is my best attempt to collect and consolidate the nuggets of truth and ideas that I have learned over the course of my life that are most meaningful to me. These are especially the things that I have learned as an adult that I wish I had known when growing up – things that are the same as what I’d always been taught, and yet things that had been missing depth or context or application to normal daily life. This website is here as a way for me to pass on these things to my Godchildren and to my extended family far away. But while the primary audience here is my family, this website is for anyone who might benefit from it. Some of the content here is more personal or creative too (such as hymns or health-related content).
I am nobody – just a Christian man and father who loves his Lord and wants the Church to appreciate the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of our God and creator at least as much as I have grown to. I do not have any theology degree; my background is in computer science. I do not want to make any claims in my writings that appeal to the words of myself or any other mere man alone. If it cannot be derived from the Word of God and what He has spoken into being (which does include the observed created world), then you have no reason to believe it. But when His Word reveals something, believe it!
Unnatural Philosophy is the idea that we must learn truth from the Creator of truth, our Creator. Because humanity is fallen and separated from our Creator, our natural ideas of truth and philosophy are limited to our observations of the fallen world through fallen eyes. The truth of God is now unnatural to us. The fallen world’s idea of philosophy is that only the observable elements of the fallen world that fallen people see should be counted as objective first principles from which we might try to derive more abstract philosophies. I reject this premise. If I believe that the Creator has given us a record of His own Words in the Bible, why would I not include His Word as a valid, objective starting point? Only in His light do we see light. (Ps. 36) Or, as Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8)
You’ll notice I will seldom cite the Bible using more than the chapter reference. This is because I want you to read the full source in context. Reading single verses out of context is a pet peeve of mine. But why read even only a single chapter at a time if you can read the whole book as one context, the way it was meant to be read? Most books in the New Testament only take about a few minutes to read. Reading the Scriptures as single books in this way is the main thing that has given me the content I share here. (Check out the Bible Read To You series as my attempt to help read the Bible this way.)
To all my siblings in Christ, may the peace of our Lord and God be with you now and into eternity, amen.