Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Bird Dog at Maggie’s Farm quotes Gods and Gopniks:
…we have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible. Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. The logical and imaginative grammars of belief, which still informed the thinking of earlier generations of atheists and skeptics, are no longer there. In their place, there is now—where questions of the divine, the supernatural, or the religious are concerned—only a kind of habitual intellectual listlessness.
I have noticed this, when discussing the big “Is God There?” issue with the secular crowd, or other things only tangentially related to that one. I notice very often my opposition is demonstrably intelligent, and accomplished — these are people who should be able to understand fundamental thinking like “We know X, because Y.” Or, “Lacking Y, X is a possibility, but not-X is also a possibility.” Many among them have done positive and productive things they would not have been able to get done if they were not capable of building-block thoughts such as these.
And yet, on the God Question, their argument fails to ascend to that level of useful complexity. “It’s a myth, because I say it is”; “It’s a ‘fairy tale,’ because I just called it one.” That seems to be the structure of the argument they want to advance. Worse yet, they keep wanting to veer into it when the discussion is supposed to be about something else.
They’re proving something, just not what they think they’re proving. Instead, they demonstrate that there are certain ingredients involved in clear, useful thinking. That, eliminating possible answers prematurely in an effort to resolve a question, one might as well leave the question entirely unresolved. And perhaps suffering is one of the ingredients; they raise the distinct possibility, in my mind if in nobody else’s, that content people are not apt to come up with useful answers to much of anything at all. They haven’t got any need to.
Perhaps there are some disciplines that can be maintained to rectify that. But if so, then this provides foundation for God’s purpose, if not for His existence. If He truly is dead or never did exist, then re-living the adventure of evolving and advancing a thousand more times, the human race would surely have no choice but to invent Him. With atheists in charge from the very beginning, we would not be exploring the universe today — we’d be living in caves, and more likely than not, without the benefit of spoken or written language.
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If He truly is dead or never did exist, then re-living the adventure of evolving and advancing a thousand more times, the human race would surely have no choice but to invent Him.
That’s always where I run into blank stares in these kinds of discussions (and I speak as an agnostic here). I always ask evangelical atheists, “do you agree that the concept of God is socially useful?” That is, do you agree that the statement “if God did not exist, we would have to invent Him” is literally true? Shuts ’em right up, because –to their credit, I must say– they’re smart enough to see where that lands them.
The “argument” for evangelical atheism always boils down to “you’re wasting your time, money, and brainpower on a fairy tale.” But it’s one hell of a productive fairy tale, no? A world without God is a world without Michelangelo, and when they bring up the horrors of the Inquisition and/or George W. Bush (and it’s not often clear that they understand the difference), I point out that a world without God is also a world without Isaac Newton. It’s a package deal — if he weren’t trying to fathom God’s mysteries, he wouldn’t have done what he did. Speaking in completely utilitarian terms here — and aren’t all atheists by definition strict utilitarians? — I’d trade an Inquisition for a Newton, hands down. That’s the kind of hardheaded, rational economic calculation your Sam Harris types can’t help but approve of.
- Severian | 05/07/2014 @ 08:50“Perhaps there are some disciplines that can be maintained to rectify that.”
Perhaps some book that, by mutual agreement, defined what specific words mean, DESPITE ignorant “usage”, would be a start?
- CaptDMO | 05/07/2014 @ 12:14Maybe acknowledgement that the “fields” of philosophy, and economics (amongst others), are cognitive amusements only?
CaptDMO: Perhaps some book that, by mutual agreement, defined what specific words mean
Great idea. Maybe we could call it a dictionarium, which is Latin for a collection of words. Something like that.
- Zachriel | 05/07/2014 @ 14:47