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I am your mind giving you someone to talk to
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Dr Zhivago published in Russian by the CIA

Click here.

Fundamentalism

We keep trying to explain away American fundamentalism. Those of us not engaged personally or emotionally in the biggest political and cultural movement of our times—those on the sidelines of history—keep trying to come up with theories with which to discredit the evident allure of this punishing yet oddly comforting idea of a deity, this strange god. His invisible hand is everywhere, say His citizen-theologians, caressing and fixing every outcome: Little League games, job searches, test scores, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, the success or failure of terrorist attacks (also known as “signs”), victory or defeat in battle, at the ballot box, in bed. Those unable to feel His soothing touch at moments such as these snort at the notion of a god with the patience or the prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire, a supreme being able to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to abide two men kissing. A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god? His followers must be dupes, or saps, or fools, their faith illiterate, insane, or misinformed, their strength fleeting, hollow, an aberration. A burp in American history. An unpleasant odor that will pass.

Even the inexorable facts of math are subject to His decree, as explained in homeschooling texts such as Mathematics: Is God Silent? Two plus two is four because God says so. If He chose, it could just as easily be five.

Interesting... that's exactly what Descartes, the great rationalist and founder of modern philosophy, said. Hmm.

The dupes, the saps, and the fools—the believers—prefer their re-enchanted past, alive to the dark magic with which all histories are constructed. For them America’s past merely charts God’s love, its meanings revealed to His key men, presidents and generals, preachers and a goy with a shofar. The rest of us are simply not part of the dream. Fundamentalism is writing us out of history.

Read the whole article here.

Should philosophers be more like scientists?

Is philosophy progressive?

I like butterflies

My favourite colour is blue.

And I love Polish Chocolate Walnut cake, which technically should be called Russian Chocolate Walnut cake, because the recipe came from Russia, though it passed into our family through Poland. I'm going to continue calling it Polish Chocolate Walnut cake, even though my brother insists on calling it Russian Chocolate Walnut Cake, because that's what it was always called and I think it recalls the anecdote about how we got the recipe quite nicely.

It's very, very, VERY good cake! Especially when my mum cooks it!

Angels for Hope

This is a sweet idea.

Hat tip: Daily Candy

Very interesting

Sydney Anglican Heretics.

See also the comments on Craig's post here.

More on religion and politics

This Government never has, never would and, in my view, never should adopt any policy because of religious arguments. Governments, unlike individuals, cannot act on the basis of faith, only reason. The difference between the Government and many of its critics is that its senior members think that the values of the Ten Commandments are as much common sense as religious dogma.

Read more here.

Do you like butterflies?

Grown-ups love figures. When you describe a new friend to them, they never ask you about the important things. They never say: 'What's his voice like? What are his favourite games? Does he collect butterflies?' Instead they demand: 'How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much does his father earn?' Only then do they feel they know him. If you say to the grown-ups: 'I've seen a lovely house made of pink brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof', they are unable to picture such a house. You must say: 'I saw a house that cost a hundred thousand francs.' Then they cry out: 'Oh, how pretty!'

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

I am deeply indebted to my dear brother Tim for reminding me of this passage at Christmas.

See also Byron's post on Dickens on Butterflies.

FYI

Strike a match.

When is abortion racism?

An intense sermon from John Piper.

Simply Christian

Christian faith is not a general religious awareness. Nor is it the ability to believe several unlikely propositions. It is certainly not a kind of gullibility which would put us out of touch with any genuine reality. It is the faith which hears the story of Jesus, including the announcement that he is the world's true Lord, and responds from the heart with a surge of grateful love that says: "Yes. Jesus is Lord. He died for my sins. God raised him from the dead. This is the centre of everything." Whether you come to this faith in a blinding flash or by a long, slow, winding route, once you get to this point you are (whether you realize it or not) wearing the badge which marks you out as part of the church, on an equal footing with every other Christian who has ever lived. You are discovering what it means to wake up and find yourself in God's new world. [179]

Made for spirituality, we wallow in introspection. Made for joy, we settle for pleasure. Made for justice, we clamour for vengeance. Made for relationship, we insist on our own way. Made for beauty, we are satisfied with sentiment. But new creation has already begun. The sun has begun to rise. Christians are called to leave behind, in the tomb of Jesus Christ, all that belongs to the brokenness and incompleteness of the present world. It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds and stewards of the new day that is dawning. That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian, to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God's new world, which he has thrown open before us. [202]

Tom Wright, Simply Christian, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, 2006.

Top 25

The top 25 most played songs in my iTunes library as of today - ranging from 39 plays down to 18.

1. We're Coming Home - Rogue Traders
2. Black Fingernails, Red Wine - Eskimo Joe
3. Together in Electric Dreams - The Human League
4. Revolution - The Veronicas
5. Come On Come On - Little Birdy
6. (Can't Get My) Head Around You - The Offspring
7. Ain't No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
8. Not Ready to Make Nice - Dixie Chicks
9. Throw Your Arms Around Me - Hunters & Collectors
10. Prisoner of Society - The Living End
11. How You Remind Me - Nickelback
12. Nothing At All - Kasey Chambers
13. Did It Again - Kylie Minogue
14. Miss Independent - Kelly Clarkson
15. The Ship Song - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
16. Joker and the Thief - Wolfmother
17. Times Like These - Foo Fighters
18. Tonic - Pete Murray
19. Don't U Eva - Sarah Blasko
20. Mystery - Brooke Fraser
21. Are You Gonna Be My Girl - JET
22. This Is How It Goes - Missy Higgins
23. Amazing - Alex Lloyd
24. You Give Me Something - James Morrison
25. (Baby I've Got You) On My Mind – Powderfinger

I think this gives a nice indication of the range of my taste in music! Just keep in mind that this is only over the last 4 or 5 months that I've had my new laptop. Interesting... all but 7 of these were bought from the iTunes music store. That's a dangerous place...

Christianity in a Democracy

My brother Tim has a new blog called Christianity in a Democracy.

I recommend that you check it out.

(Nick, maybe you can argue some more with Tim over there!!)

I find it interesting that the link to this blog from Tim's other blog is the first in a list of "interesting blogs."

Strange

Thanks to my brother's influence, I have started using Google Analytics. According to the pie chart which analyses visits by source, one visitor last Friday came via the San Francisco Giants Blog.

I'm not sure how that works.

It's almost here!

My DVDs of Alias Season 5 should arrive from Amazon any day now...

The question is, do I watch them straight away, or do I watch the first four seasons again first, in order to appreciate the full impact of the final season??

Singstar

So 1, 2, 3, take my hand and come with me because you look so fine and I really wanna make you mine.
(Insert air guitar here)

I say you look so fine that I really wanna make you mine.
(More air guitar here)



(Yes, that's me underneath the hair!!)

Happy Birthday Pierre Gassendi!

On this day in 1592, Pierre Gassendi was born at Champtercier, near Digne, in France.

Gassendi was a mathematician, natural philosopher and theologian, most notable for his efforts in reviving and Christianising Epicurean atomism as an alternative to Aristotelianism. He was also a correspondent of Marin Mersenne - the postbox of the time - and of Rene Descartes. He wrote several objections to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.

Barry Brundell, the Catholic priest/historian of science famous for impersonating the Pope and Cardinal Bellarmine in retrials of Galileo at UNSW, is an expert on Gassendi. He told me once about how he ended up as such. He said that he had an idea of the kind of argument he wanted to make in his PhD thesis, and the time period he was interested in. He didn't want to focus on anyone who had already been done to death by other historians, so he went searching through a library card catalogue (yes, it was back in those days) and came across Gassendi. Right time period, fitted the argument, had been neglected by historians... perfect! Ah, the wonders of academic research!

Happy Birthday Sir Francis Bacon!

On this day in 1561, Francis Bacon was born at York House in the Strand, London.

I would imagine that most people have at least heard of Francis Bacon. My first encounter with the name was as a young child listening to the hilarious Rinse the Blood Off My Toga by Wayne and Schuster - "with apologies to William Shakespeare... and Sir Francis Bacon, just in case." I laughed, of course, even though I didn't understand the joke!

My second encounter with Francis Bacon would have been an early History and Philosophy of Science class, most probably as the founder of the "scientific method."

I'm not too interested in "scientific method" - far too much influence from post-Kuhnian sociologists of science. My interest in Bacon lies in his thoughts on nature and religion.

The main point of my PhD thesis is to provide a re-interpretation or re-evaluation of natural theology - pointing out that it's a more complicated enterprise than historians have usually given it credit for, and suggesting a way forward for understanding it in all its complexities. (So really there is no 'it', but that's a topic for another time...)

One thing I've been struggling with is understanding what people actually meant by "natural" theology or "natural" religion. I'm not convinced that it's always framed in opposition to "revealed" religion or Scriptural theology. So, I was quite excited on the weekend when I finaly started reading Peter Harrison's 'Religion' and the religions in the English Enlightenment. The first chapter begins with a discussion of the various meanings of the term "nature" in the 17th and 18th centuries, reflected in different views on natural religion. For the Reformers, Harrison suggests, "natural" stood in stark contrast to "supernatural" and hence "natural religion" was a result of human sin, and was opposed to "revealed religion." For Francis Bacon, however, this opposition was invalid. Harrison quotes Bacon on the two senses of the "light of nature":

The one, that which springeth from reason, sense, induction, argument, according to the laws of heaven and earth; the other, that which is imprinted upon the spirit of man by an inward instinct, according to the law of conscience, which is a sparkle of purity of his first estate; in which the latter sense only he is participant of some light and discerning touching the perfection of the moral law.

That is, Bacon is using "natural" in the sense of something inherent to a person - not opposed to supernatural, since it is endowed by God. The Cambridge Platonists (still no action figures) adopted this use of natural reason, particularly evident in their favourite catchphrase - reason is "the Candle of the Lord" - derived from Proverbs 20:27. But again, that's a topic for another post.

In the near future, I'll try to write more about the Cambridge Platonists and the Candle of the Lord, and about the Reformers' views on nature and the supernatural. I'm intrigued by their dichtomy. But for the moment, suffice it to say, Happy Birthday Francis Bacon!


This is the second post in my series commemorating the birthdays of particular thinkers who I deem worthy of such an honour. (Actually, the thinkers are chosen from the Philosophers' Birthdays calendar I've subscribed to in iCal.) The first in this series was for Dr Samuel Clarke.

Reason and Religion

The role of reason in religion is a major theme in my research. As I read about attempts to solve 17th-century doctrinal conflict by appealing to reason, I can't help but think of our own society - appeals to tolerance, reasonableness, and a rejection of dogma; the view that all religions basically agree on the main points and that the details are not important; the conviction that the way a person lives is more important than what they believe.

Here is a quote from the article I'm currently reading, referring to attempts to find a middle ground between Anglicanism and Puritanism:

Through reason it was hoped that men might be induced to mitigate their stress on points of minor importance, tolerate the lesser differences of opinion, and come together on the great essentials concerning which there could be no reasonable doubt.1

Sounds good in theory, but who decides which points are of minor importance? How do we judge which differences of opinion to tolerate and which we should stand up against? What are the "great essentials" and how do we define "reasonable doubt"? And how did they ever think they could convince Puritans of the value of reason when Puritans thought it had been corrupted by the Fall?!

Hmm. Hopefully I'll have it figured out by the end of the year.

1. Sterling P. Lamprecht, “Innate Ideas in the Cambridge Platonists,” The Philosophical Review 35:6 (1926), 553-573.