I read Mysticism Sacred and Profane in high school, like just about everyone else, I suppose (excuse me: “I reckon”), and I did not know until this day that Zaehner was involved in the great game. Even suspected of being a Russian spy, he was. There’s also the matter of what he would have thought [...]
During yet another break from grading, I watched the Paul Schrader-directed version of the Exorcist prequel. As you may know, the studio execs thought Schrader’s film so commerically unviable that they hired another director to jazz it up for the release with the screaming and the demonic hyenas, nyeagh. I actually tried watching that version [...]
I wonder how many people have read the former before the latter? Because it seems to me that, if you know something about Nietzsche’s argument, the Clement is just a long supporting blockquote. Also have to wonder how effective these exhortations were.
Though I’ve decided to teach a differently themed writing class this fall, I follow intermittently the debates about contemporary creationism. There are two stories in the Times today about it: one by Jodi Wilgoren, mentioned that the Gates foundation donates to the creationist Discovery Institute, which was mildly surprising. A charitable assumption might be that [...]
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The NYT has the story. I’m still trying to decide whether I’m going to teach the “Rhetoric of Evolution” class in the fall. I don’t think the sociological significance of the ID movement, particularly its hitching onto complexity theory, has been adequately addressed. Anyone with pointers is welcome to share.
I’ve just read this Harper’s article by Jeff Sharlet (which I found via Cliopatria); and it contains the following puzzling passage: The mastermind behind the coup was Ralph Reed, once of the Christian Coalition, who had been reborn as Georgia’s Republican chairman. Reed remains a fundamentalist, the same man who once tested employees’ commitment to [...]
STUTTGART, Germany (AP) — A man wielding a sword attacked parishioners at a Protestant church in southwest Germany, killing one person and injuring several others. The Baden-Wuerttemberg state Interior Ministry said the attack occurred during a church service. It had no immediate details on the suspect or his motives.
From The Economist. I found this to be curious: According to Scot McKendrick, curator for classical, Byzantine and biblical manuscripts at the British Library, only four researchers in the past 20 years have been allowed access to those parts of the original that are in London.
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That every single chiliast, including particularly Cotton Mather, was exactly right. Theological parallels?
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Though I didn’t get to see my favorite Goth act, Sixes and Nines, play at the Wrathbone last night–and of course they did their Trisha Yearwood cover, “She’s Entombed with the Boy”–I felt like this column made up for it somehow.
This New Yorker article brought to mind something I’ve been thinking about of late. With the worldwide prospects of torture on the considerable rise, it occurs to me that the development of analgesics, perhaps subcutaneous or dental, that cause pain to be perceived as hallucinatory or what C.D. Broad calls “extraspective” images might be either [...]
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If one explanation is immensely complex but demonstrates rapid and consistent progress and another is infinitely complex with no progress and no possibility for progress, which do you choose and why? Background readings: Here, here, and here. Bonus points if you can a) independently reproduce the relevant Hume and b) demonstrate what such a reproduction’s [...]
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My logs tell me that the readers of this site comprise five people and fifty robots, so I figured I’d call upon their vast store of knowledge to ask the following question: what novels (or other) can you think of that depict a society in which enlightenment epistemological principles have been supplanted by revelationism but, [...]
As long-time readers know, I taught a course last semester called “The Rhetoric of Evolution in America.” This course was organized into three sections, with last two focusing on debates without and within evolutionary theory. As you might expect, in the fomer I taught selections from intelligent designers along with even YECs. One of the [...]
Behold! Philosophical works among [the Solipsists] are more or less of this sort: “Does the scarab roll dung into a ball paradigmatically?” “If a mouse urinates in the sea, is there a risk of shipwreck?” “Are mathematical points receptacles for spirits?” “Is a belch an exhalation of the soul?” “Does the barking of a dog [...]
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Stanley Fish’s article in the Chronicle today might get (or has already gotten–don’t know yet) a lot of attention among academic web log enthusiasts. He argues that religion is the barycenter of both the private and public spheres, and that academics better take notice (and have been taking notice) of this vital energy. “Announce a [...]
