Two Eyes, One Reality: Toward Fuller Knowing

Homebrewed Christianity

Dr. Tripp Fuller | Theologian, Philosopher, Minister

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 612 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2026

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I've been wearing glasses since seventh grade, when I discovered mid-car-ride that the rest of my family could actually read a license plate and I had no idea that was something people could do. When the optometrist put corrective lenses in front of my eyes for the first time, I gasped. That's the image I keep coming back to when I think about what happens when a philosophy filters out whole categories of human experience — not maliciously, just structurally, the way astigmatism works. You adapt so well to what you're missing that you don't know you're missing it. This essay is about that. It started with a conversation I witnessed between Philip Clayton and Dan Dennett — two brilliant philosophers, one coffee shop moment, and a question that stopped everything: where in a purely physical universe does "mattering" actually live? It moved through two more conversations in an Edinburgh coffee shop a week apart — one with a theologian who could defend every doctrine but couldn't explain why holding his newborn made him weep, and one with an evolutionary biologist who could describe the neurochemistry of her daughter's depression but couldn't answer the question her daughter was actually asking. Both were half-blind in the same direction, just from opposite sides. What I'm after here is coherence. Whitehead's test, Griffin's challenge, Clayton's emergence framework — the claim that a philosophy failing to account for time, causation, moral urgency, beauty, consciousness, or the felt reality of love isn't humble or rigorous. It's just incomplete. And the good news is that correcting for both eyes doesn't require abandoning science or embracing magic. It requires something harder: sitting with the full weight of human experience and refusing to explain any of it away. You can read this essay and find plenty of others on my Substack, Process This. ⁠Join 600+ Listeners, 30 theologians, & 30 God-Pods at Theology Beer Camp 2026 this October 8-10 in Kansas City!⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠UPCOMING ONLINE CLASS - Theology for Troublemakers: Christian Social Ethics from the Margins⁠⁠⁠⁠ The injustices we face are immense — but they are not unique. Previous generations confronted the same powers with theological conviction and strategic brilliance. The question is whether we'll learn from them. This 6-week online course, led by Dr. Gary Dorrien and Dr. Aaron Stauffer, recovers the radical tradition of Christian social ethics — from Reverdy Ransom and Reinhold Niebuhr to James Cone and the Welfare Rights Movement — and asks what faithfulness demands of us right now. Weekly lectures, live Q&A conversations, guest lecturers, and an online community included. 💰 Donation-based — including $0 🔗⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up at HomebrewedClasses.com This podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Homebrewed Christianity ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠production. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Nerd Throwdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rise of Bonhoeffer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack - Process This!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get instant access to over 50 classes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologyClass.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast, drop a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, send ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠feedback/questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠member of the HBC Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an essay from Trips Substack titled Two Eyes, One Reality, toward Fuller Knowing.
0:14.0	Your philosophy is half blind.
0:18.0	The case for including religious experience.
0:28.0	In seventh grade, I was in the car with my family, and everyone started laughing at the license
0:33.1	plate in front of us.
0:34.6	When I asked what was so funny, my dad said, look at his plate. I remember
0:39.1	being shocked that they could read it. I saw the car, but I had no idea they could actually
0:44.6	read the plate of a car in motion. This discovery sent me to the optometrists and the world
0:50.4	change. I'd adapted so well to my astigmatism, I didn't realize how much I was missing.
0:56.4	When the optometrist placed those corrective lenses in front of my eyes, I actually gasped.
1:01.8	On the ride home with new glasses, I was in awe that the leaves on the trees weren't just green blobs.
1:08.0	They were individual miracles of engineering. People's face has had expressions
1:12.8	that I'd been missing for years. So this is what everyone else has been seeing, I asked my mom.
1:19.8	Well, she smiled, this is what you could have been seeing all along. Driving home with my new
1:25.4	glasses, I couldn't stop thinking about all the things in my daily life
1:29.0	that would be different with a new vision. This reminds me of a conversation. I'd witnessed during
1:34.3	my Ph.D. program between Philip Clayton and Daniel Dennett. Both are brilliant and respected
1:39.4	philosophers, and in conversation, something became clear to me. I hadn't anticipated.
1:45.0	Dennett had just finished attacking religious belief with all the confidence of someone who'd never
1:49.9	examined their own assumptions.
1:52.1	Philip didn't argue back.
1:53.8	Instead, he asked, can your worldview explain why you care so much about being right?
	...

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