Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Idolatry

  • Patriotism and Nationalism: Dispelling Some Confusions

    Robert F. Gorman: St. John Paul II, addressing the themes of nation, nationality, and patriotism, stated: “It seems that nation and native land, like the family, are permanent realities. In this regard, Catholic social doctrine speaks of ‘natural’ societies, indicating that both the family and the nation have a particular bond with human nature, which has a…

  • Earth Day 2018

    Maverick Philosopher loves Earth with an ordinate love but doesn't celebrate anything as politically correct as Earth Day.  Maverick Philosopher celebrates critical thinking.  So he refers you to William Cronon's The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.  A rich and subtle essay.  Excerpt: Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who regard…

  • The Paradox of the Misanthropic Naturalist Animal Lover

    In the Judeo-Christian tradition, man and man alone among living things has a higher origin and a higher destiny. Made in the image and likeness of God, and the only creature so made, he comes from God and is called to return to God for his ultimate felicity and fulfillment. He is, to be sure,…

  • Is ‘Trumpism’ a Heresy?

    This is so stupid as to be beyond belief: President Donald Trump exudes an ideology of "America first." There's only one problem for orthodox Christians, however — the nation may never come first, because in first place must always be Jesus Christ and his Gospel. In that sense, "Trumpism" is actually a heresy. Exudes?  Does…

  • Earth Day 2015: Earth as Idol

    Maverick Philosopher doesn't celebrate anything as politically correct as Earth Day.  Maverick Philosopher celebrates critical thinking.  So I refer you to William Cronon's The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.  A rich and subtle essay.  Excerpt: Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists…

  • Idolatry and Atheism

    If God exists and you worship anything in his place, then that thing is a false god and you are an idolater.  But if God does not exist, and you worship anything at all, then you are also an idolater.  For idolatry entails worshipping something unworthy of worship, and if God does not exist, then…

  • Religion and Superstition

    Julian Baggini asks: Can a religion survive being stripped of its superstitions? Baggini does not tell us explicitly what he understands by  'superstition,' but the context suggests that he takes the term to apply to any and all supernatural elements in a religion, whether these be beliefs, practices, or posits such as God and the soul.  The supernatural,…

  • Idolatry and Iconoclasm: A Weilian Meditation

    In one of its senses, superstition involves attributing to an object powers it cannot possess. But the same thing is involved in idolatry. Someone who makes an idol of money, for example, attributes to it a power it cannot possess such as the power to confer happiness on those who have it. So we need…

  • Pet Love as Idolatry? Problems of Attachment and Grief

    I buried my little female cat Caissa at sunrise this morning in a beautiful spot in the Superstition Mountains in the same place where I buried my male cat Zeno in October of 2002.    When I buried Zeno, just before leaving the burial site, I prayed, "May we love the perishable as perishable and…

  • Earth Day 2010

    Maverick Philosopher doesn't celebrate anything as politically correct as Earth Day.  Maverick Philosopher celebrates critical thinking.  So I refer you to William Cronon's The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.  A rich and subtle essay.  Excerpt: Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists…

  • Simone Weil on False Gods

    Despite her infuriating extremism, Simone Weil may well be the purest incarnation of religious sensibility in the twentieth century. "It's not up to us to believe in God, but only not to grant our love to false gods." As Weil understands, essential to genuine religion, though not exhaustive of it, is the realization that nothing…

  • Environmentalism as Green Socialism and Nature Idolatry

    From Jeffrey T. Kuhner, The War on Capitalism: Environmentalism has very little to do with protecting the environment. It is green socialism. Its objective is to achieve what red communism couldn't: the conquest of capitalism. Instead of central planning and a command economy, we would have a highly regulated, highly taxed bureaucratic corporatism that would…

  • Timothy Treadwell and Nature Idolatry

    In the weight room one day I made the acquaintance of a man from Alaska.  I steered the conversation onto Chris McCandless and others of the wild and crazy crew who seek Something More in the last American frontier. My interlocutor was not familiar with the McCandless story, but he reminded me of the case of…

  • Idolatry, Desire, Buddha, Causation, and Malebranche

    What is idolatry? I suggest that the essence of idolatry lies in the illicit absolutizing of the relative. A finite good becomes an idol when it is treated as if it were an infinite good, i.e., one capable of satisfying our infinite desire. But is our desire infinite? That our desire is infinite is shown…