Marvin linked to these very interesting and worthwhile essays by someone using the handle Darksyde, which describe what it’s like for an atheist to live in American (or any) society. What it’s Like to be an Atheist Why I’m an Atheist Not recommended reading for those who don’t want an honest, no-holds-barred look at what it feels like to be in a minority in terms of absence of religious belief. But if you’ve ever wondered why atheists sometimes seem so angry and almost evangelical in their fervor, especially the first essay is worth reading, even if you know you’ll disagree …
Tag: philos
Decorum
This is one thing I think we miss. We miss, meaning we as a society long for it, we wish we still had it around. Or, at least, we think that we do. Or, at least, some os us think that we do. Not that your ancestors and mine are all that likely to have been courtly, or refined. Most of our ancestors were not like that. Most of us Westerners’ ancestors — those of us of European extraction, I mean — were drinking liquor all day long because the water was poisonous. They were dying at age thirty of …
St Paul as a Duped Henchman of Satan?
… [these] are things which Mormon women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in the world to come—and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say anything about that. — Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter XV It’s always struck me as odd that mainstream people–religious or otherwise–laugh at the antics of street preachers, but take the conversions of the members of the early Church seriously. Take Paul, for instance. The guy hunted Christians, till …
A Night Off
Since I’m not supposed to have an internet connection tonight, I’m loathe to work on anything online. But I did read a post by Marvin on our shared blog New Sophists’ Almanac, about Jazz in Japan, musical authenticity, and stuff like that. You can read his original post here, and then check out my response here.
From Harold Bloom’s The American Religion
I’m really quite enjoying this book, which you might find it strange to know I am reading as part of the research I’m doing for a neo-Cold War novel I’m writing set in America. Here are some of the interesting things that Bloom writes, which I feel are things I’ve tried to say in the past, but never got across quite as well as he did: “…the American religion, which is so prevalent among us, masks itself as Protestant Christianity yet has ceased to be Christian. It has kept the figure of Jesus, who is also the resurrected Jesus rather …