Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Conversions

  • From the Mail Bag: Old-Time Reader Swims the Tiber

    This just in from Russell B.: Long time no talk. I hope you’re doing well. I have been thinking about your work on existence over the past 3-4 years very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that it has made me swim the Tiber (well, I was born and raised Catholic so did I actually leave?).…

  • A Lefty Sees the Light

    Sasha Stone, An Ex-Democrat's Case for Trump Good advice: What the Democrats and Never Trumpers want now is to push Trump and MAGA back into the danger zone. They want more violence. They want riots. They want an uprising [so] that they can then bring in the military, weaponize dissent, speech, and ideology, and have…

  • Ex-Leftist Tells All

    I have mentioned Michael Rectenwald (yes, that is how he spells his name) here and here. Tom Woods today tells the story of Rectenwald's move from Marx to Mises. I thank Tony Flood for the link.  Michael Rectenwald, formerly a professor at New York University, spent his life as a leftist — a self-described Marxist,…

  • A Conversion Story

    Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in her own words. An important part of what opened me to Catholicism—and to the peerless gift of faith in Christ Jesus—was my growing horror at the pride of too many in the secular academy. The sin is all the more pernicious because it is so rarely experienced as sin. Educated and enjoined…

  • A Conversion Story

    The historian Eugene D. Genovese started out Catholic, became a Communist, but then returned to the church of his upbringing. Here he tells the story of his wife's conversion. (HT: Karl White)  I have read parts of one book by Genovese, The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Culture War (University of Missouri Press,…

  • A Reader has a Request. Suggestions Solicited

    I hope you are doing well. I am a regular reader of your blog for quite a few years and I thank you for doing this.   When you have time, could you recommend books/articles written by thinking people who became believers (were not born into religious setting) and describe the processes that led them…

  • From McTaggart to Rome

    Peter Geach, Truth and Hope, University of Notre Dame Press, 2001, p. 9: Soaking myself in McTaggart, I imbibed a desire for Heaven and eternal life, which of course I had not to abandon on becoming Catholic; and meanwhile I was preserved from giving my heart with total devotion to some less worthy end, as…

  • Reader Considers Converting to Islam. Would Christian Unitarianism Satisfy his Scruples?

    Here is the beginning of the letter he sent me: I've been considering converting to Islam.You've had a big part in this, though I know it won't please you to hear it. Your arguments against the coherency of the Incarnation are hard to get past. My arguments against the Chalcedonian, 'two-natures-one-person' theology of the Incarnation…

  • A Mormon De-Conversion

    I have a category called Conversions. De-conversions are equally interesting. Here Spencer Case tells his story. If memory and the engines of search serve, I have written only two extended entries on Mormonism, both of which mention our old friend Spencer. Religion and Anthropomorphism with an Oblique Reference to Mormonism On the Mormon Conception of…

  • Word of the Day: Dégringolade

    Merriam-Webster:   a rapid decline or deterioration (as in strength, position, or condition) : DOWNFALL Example from Why I Left by Jim Holt: I will now confess to the obvious: the foregoing account of my spiritual dégringolade, while true in every detail, is a caricature. My alienation from the Catholic Church was not mainly intellectual. It was moral, even…

  • David Rubin: Why I Left the Left

    David Rubin, who describes himself as gay, pro-choice, and classically liberal, explains why 'progressives' are in fact regressive. (A point I have made many times.) A Prager U video under five minutes in length.   Trigger Warning! The video contains vicious, racist, incendiary content sure to melt snowflakes. Richly deserving of being 'demonetized' by Google if…

  • Reading Now: Andrew Klavan, The Great Good Thing

    Subtitle: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ. Thomas Nelson, 2016, 269 pp.  I was aware of Klavan only as a hard-punching conservative PJ Media columnist before reading a review that 'turned me on' to this book.  It arrived last night thanks to the synergy of Amazon.com and the U.S. Mail.  I'm on p.…

  • Harry Binswanger’s Conversion

    It's an old story.  An adolescent adrift reads or hears Ayn Rand and suddenly has something to live for.  (Via Objectiblog)

  • The Amazing Zamperini

    A track star at the University of Southern California, Louis Zamperini was swept up like so many of his generation into World War II. Story and interview here. In May 1943, his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. For 47 days, he floated on a raft in the ocean. He was then captured by the Japanese,…

  • Kirsten Powers on Becoming Christian

    Mostly fluff, but of some interest. Filed under: Conversions