{"id":14181,"date":"2026-06-12T16:39:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T23:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=14181"},"modified":"2026-06-12T16:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T23:45:13","slug":"faith-and-prayer-the-case-of-ron-franz-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/faith-and-prayer-the-case-of-ron-franz-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/open.substack.com\/pub\/williamfvallicella\/p\/faith-and-prayer-the-case-of-ron?r=f3tzc&amp;utm_campaign=post&amp;utm_medium=web&amp;showWelcomeOnShare=true\">Top<\/a> o&#8217; the Stack.\u00a0 Explores the difference between puerile and mature faith.\u00a0 Topics include: idolatry, superstition, grades of prayer, mysticism, Simone Weil.<\/p>\n<p>It starts out:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer\u2019s\u00a0Into the Wild\u00a0is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name \u2018Ron Franz.\u2019 He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless\u2019s paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so that the old man with no surviving kin wanted to adopt the 24-year-old as his grandson. The story of their encounter is recounted in the chapter entitled \u2018Anza-Borrego\u2019 and is also well told in the movie version of Krakauer\u2019s book. Franz came to pin his hopes on the remarkable young man and longed for his return from Alaska. When he heard from a hitchhiker that McCandless had died, he and his faith were shattered:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Top o&#8217; the Stack.\u00a0 Explores the difference between puerile and mature faith.\u00a0 Topics include: idolatry, superstition, grades of prayer, mysticism, Simone Weil. It starts out: One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer\u2019s\u00a0Into the Wild\u00a0is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name \u2018Ron Franz.\u2019 He was 80 years old when his and Christopher &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/faith-and-prayer-the-case-of-ron-franz-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,203,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-and-reason","category-questers-and-other-oddballs","category-spiritual-exercises"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14183,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14181\/revisions\/14183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}