Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Religion

  • Monasticism and the Monks of Mount Athos

    In April of 2011, 60 Minutes had a segment on the monks of Mt. Athos.  It was surprisingly sympathetic for such a left-leaning program. What one expects and usually gets from liberals and leftists and the lamestream media is religion-bashing — unless of course the religion is Islam, the religion of peace – but the segment in…

  • William Empson on Buddhism and Christianity

    Karl White refers us to this quotation from a John Gray piece on William Empson in The New Statesman. Empson’s attitude to Buddhism, like the images of the Buddha that he so loved, was asymmetrical. He valued the Buddhist view as an alternative to the Western outlook, in which satisfying one’s desires by acting in the…

  • The Political and the Religious

    I stated that the reason for carefully vetting Muslims who aim to immigrate into the USA is political rather than religious.  I had several points in mind, one of them being that it is the theocratic character of Islam that renders it incompatible with Western values, but not its specifically religious character. Theocracy is a…

  • On the Misuse of Religious Language

    A massage parlor is given the name Nirvana, the implication being that after a well-executed massage one will be in the eponymous state. This betrays a misunderstanding of Nirvana, no doubt, but that is not the main thing, which is the perverse tendency to attach a religious or spiritual significance to a merely sensuous state of…

  • Forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy: Review of W. E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality

    Review William F. Vallicella William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2015), ix + 369 pp. This is a book philosophers of religion will want on their shelves. It collects sixteen of William E. Mann's previously published papers and includes “Omnipresence, Hiddenness, and Mysticism” written for this volume. These influential papers combine…

  • Christopher Hitchens, Religion, and Cognitive Dissonance

    Hitchens says somewhere that he didn't suffer from cognitive dissonance of the sort that arises when a deeply internalized religious upbringing collides with the contrary values of the world, since he never took religion or theism seriously in the first place.  But then I say religion was never a Jamesian live option for him.  But…

  • Easter Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 15:14: Christianity and Buddhism

    Biblia Vulgata: Si autem Christus non resurrexit, inanis est ergo praedicatio nostra, inanis est et fides vestra. King James: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Orthodox* Christianity stands and falls with a contingent historical fact, the fact of the resurrection of Christ from the…

  • What Kind of Religion is Islam?

    Our old friend Jeff Hodges recommends this outstanding Commentary article by Alain Besançon. Extracts: Within this scheme, where to locate Islam? For Christians and Jews alike, the difficulty—and the embarrassment—lie in the indisputable fact that Islam believes in one God, eternal, almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, merciful. Is not this formula, which I…

  • Trinities Podcast 121: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part II

    Master podcaster Dr. Dale Tuggy and I continue our discussion. He's got a great voice for this medium, doesn't he?  Me, I'm too sotto voce.

  • Edward Feser on Christians, Muslims, and the Reference of ‘God’

    So far, Ed Feser's is perhaps the best of the  Internet discussions of this hot-button question, a question recently re-ignited by the Wheaton dust-up, to mix some metaphors.  Herewith, some notes  on Feser's long entry.  I am not nearly as philosophically self-confident as Ed or Lydia McGrew, so I will mainly just be trying to…

  • Trinities Podcast 120: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? Part I

    Master podcaster Dale Tuggy presents the question and then he and I discuss the 'public square' and 'technical' aspects of the question.  You can also hear it on YouTube.  Part II in a week or so.

  • More on ‘Same God?’: Richard B. Davis Responds to Beckwith and Rea

    Here. (HT: Steve Hays)  Davis is on the right track:  his critique is consistent with mine. Related articles The Duty of LInkage NRO: One Crappy Website Saturday Night at the Oldies: Two Fortuitous Finds

  • Worship, Reference, and Existence: An Aporetic Triad

    Each of the following three propositions strikes me as very reasonably maintained.  But they cannot all be true. A. Worship Entails Reference:  If S worships x, then S refers to x.B. Reference Entails Existence: If S refers to x, then x exists.C. Worship Does Not Entail Existence: It is not the case that if S…

  • Peter Geach on Worshipping the Right God

    Having just read Peter Geach's "On Worshipping the Right God" (in God and the Soul, Thoemmes Press, 1994, pp. 100-116, orig. publ. 1969)  I was pleased to discover that I had arrived by my own reasoning at some of his conclusions.  On Christmas Eve I quoted Michael Rea: Christians and Muslims have very different beliefs…

  • Dale Tuggy’s Round-Up of the Wheaton Dust-Up

    This thing has really 'gone viral' as they say.  A tip of the holiday hat to Dale for his excellent compilation of hyperlinks and commentary.  Everybody and his uncle seems eager to jump into the fray, one that is at once bitterly political and deeply philosophical. A moment ago I headed over to The Catholic Thing…