Making Sense of Religion
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Part 2: On Being a Postmodern Catholic
This post is a follow-up to Part 1, which should be read before this one. Both Parts I and II, with Parts III & IV to come, are attempts to represent to sane outsiders why the creedal elements in Christianity, as contrasted with a generalized transcendentalism, are so compelling to sane insiders. This a personal
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Part 1: On Being a Postmodern Catholic
This post is more or less connected to the debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan, and a followup to my two posts about it in the last week here and here. If this subject interests you, I encourage you to read the Harris/Sullivan blogaloue and my two previous posts and the comments after them.
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Searching for Flannery O’Connor
From tomorrow’s New York Times Travel section: Somewhere outside Toomsboro is where, in O’Connor’s best-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family has a car accident and a tiresome old grandmother has an epiphany. The fog of petty selfishness that has shrouded her life clears when she feels a sudden spasm
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Sam Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan, II
Yesterday I got a flurry of comments from people criticizing my earlier piece on the debate between Harris and Sullivan. It came apparently from a reference to that piece on Sullivan’s Daily Dish in which Sullivan seems to think my piece about this debate is pro-Harris. I’m the "post modern Catholic" he refers to. Oh
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Sam Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan
I don’t know if you’ve been following the debate between the religion-despising Sam Harris and the religion-defending Andrew Sullivan over here and here. I’m, of course, on Sullivan’s side in this debate, but my tack in debating somebody like Harris would be to say that there is no debate if the terms of the debate
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The Power of Myth
As anyone who's been reading ATF for awhile knows, I'm a big proponent of the the power of mythic narratives. To live without a narrative is to live without meaning, and even nihilists have narratives. Who was a greater mythmaker with his Eternal Return and Zarathustra stories than nihilist-in-chief, Friedrich Nietzsche. The choice is not
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Splinter in Eye Syndrome
I haven’t commented on the pope’s Regensburg University speech. I have never liked the guy, and was profoundly disappointed when he was elected pope. I’m a Catholic, so I try to avoid saying negative things about him lest they sound gratuitous. Nevertheless, he represents everything that I find distasteful and absurd in official Catholicism. And
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Mind over Matter
Some thoughts on the subject after a chat with my fifteen-year old son about his debate with a classmate who argued for scientific materialism. One of the great things about having kids is how their questions force you to think through things again and to formulate answers for an audience who only takes you half
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Mythos and Logos 1
An interesting interview in Salon this morning with Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God. An excerpt: Salon: I think these questions are tremendously important now because more and more people, especially those with a scientific bent, say we don't need religion anymore. Science has replaced religion. You know, religion used to explain all
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More on Christian Liberty
If there is one thing I have become sick of hearing is the now-tired argument that people who are religious our spiritually inclined are weak and needy, that they are afraid to be free. Now I'm a Catholic, and it's not easy being one these days. I'll be the first to acknowledge that much of