Category: Religion
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The Supernatural and the Miraculous
I think it is important to distinguish the supernatural from the miraculous especially inasmuch as their conflation aids and abets the 'Dawkins Gang.' (That's my mocking moniker for Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and their fellow travellers.) Let's briefly revisit Daniel Dennett's definition of religions as . . . social systems whose participants avow belief in…
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Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz
One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name 'Ron Franz.' He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless's paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so…
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Simone Weil and Generic Wretchedness
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Emma Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 70: The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it. This suggests one of several tests you might apply to yourself to see if you have a religious 'bent' or sensibility, or orientation toward life, or however…
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A Pascalian Indication of Our Fallenness
Edward T. Oakes in a fine article quotes Pascal: The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, he has fallen from a better…
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Philosopher of Religion Complains, “I Don’t Get No Respect”
Like Rodney Dangerfield, we philosophers of religion get no respect. As philosopher of religion Nelson Pike puts it, If you are in a company of people of mixed occupations, and somebody asks what you do, and you say you are a college professor, a glazed look comes into his eye. If you are in a…
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Conservatism, Religion, and Money-Grubbing
This from a reader in Scotland: I'm a first year undergraduate philosophy student with some very muddled political views. My father has always been a staunch supporter of the Left to the point of being prejudiced against all things on the conservative or Right side as 'religious' and 'money grubbing' . I never questioned any…
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Is Religion Dangerous? Is Philosophy?
Is Religion Dangerous? is the title of a very good book by Keith Ward (Lion Hudson, 2006). It is a good answer to the Dawkins-Hitchens junk-critique of religion as dangerous. I've got the book on loan from the local university library, but some fellow had the chutzpah to issue a recall. So I must return…
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To Understand the Religious Sensibility . . .
. . . two books are essential: Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you, if they do not move you, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility.…
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Pavel Tichý on Whether ‘God’ is the Name of an Individual
This post is the third in a series on Pavel Tichý's "Existence and God" (J. Phil., August 1979, 403-420). So far I have sketched his theory of existence, made a couple of objections, and refuted his argument for it. I now turn to section II of his article (pp. 410-412) in which he discusses Descartes'…
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From the Mail: On the Truth of Religion
This from a U. K. reader: In your 'Maverick Philosopher' blog post on Friday 16th October, you address Carlo Strenger's Guardian article 'Atheism: Class is a distraction' and I think you have done the author a disservice. You rightly point out that the argument "All Religions contradict one another, therefore no religion is correct" is…
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If Religions Contradict Each Other, Does it Follow that No Religion is True?
This from a piece in guardian.co.uk: According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational…
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Pessimistic Thoughts on Political Discourse in America
The following piece was written on 12 April 2006. I repost it, slightly emended, because events since then have led me to believe that the grounds for pessimism are even stronger now than they were before. It is becoming increasingly clear that conservatives and liberals/leftists live on 'different planets.' And it is becoming increasingly clear which planet…
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Can Belief in Man Substitute for Belief in God?
The fact and extent of natural and moral evil make belief in a providential power difficult. But they also make belief in man and human progress difficult. There is the opium of religion, but also that of future-oriented utopian naturalisms such as Marxism. Why is utopian opium less narcotic than the religious variety? And isn’t it…
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Is Sin a Fact? A Passage from Chesterton Examined
A correspondent asked me my opinion of the following passage from G. K. Chesterton: Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin — a fact as practical…
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A. E. Taylor on F. H. Bradley on Religion
The following quotations are from A. E. Taylor's "F. H. Bradley" which is an account of his relation with the great philosopher, an account published in Mind, vol. XXXIV, no. 133 (January 1925), pp. 1-12. A. E. Taylor is an important philosopher in his own right whose works, unfortunately, are little read nowadays. Bradley as…