Kharakvasla A friend recently lent me a copy of Clive James’ book Cultural Amnesia – now that is a good friend – which I devoured over the course of a little over a week. The book is excellent, and what is particularly lovely about it is that it filled me with the desire to read everything […]
Tag Archives: Religion
Freud and the Future of an Illusion.
19-Aug-13Your God Isn’t Big Enough.
02-Feb-13A first-hand account of a young woman leaving behind a limited idea of God for something more universal and true. Like all things that feel real, fascinating. I have had this conversation with numerous people whose religious ideas have been tested in the furnace of the world: and the great question always remains, “After all […]
The God of Happiness.
07-Jan-13There is an essay about this topic, and Dostoevsky its prophet: “For we are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”
To the River.
23-Mar-12I took I-10 away from Phoenix for awhile, and then turned off it onto Salome Road, which headed straight for the small town of Salome, a railroad town where US-60 runs. Most of the housing was temporary or seasonal; large numbers of retirees spend winters here, in RV parks or small cottages. Almost everyone I […]
Night in the Desert.
05-Feb-12Feeling horribly contained by urban life here, I drove out of the city not really knowing where I was going and pulled my truck to the side of the road by a small shrine about fifty miles into the desert. I pulled out my sleeping bag and found a spot where the rocks were a […]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY Language changes, and words take on new meanings in time, but this is an example of a meaning-shift a bit bewildering to me. I’ve seen it enough so I should be fine with it; but the word “religion” is being used to mean “everything I dislike about religion” or “bad religion.” Here in this […]
Christopher Hitchens, Flagellum Dei.
19-Dec-11I see no particular reason to call Christopher Hitchens a good person – anyone, as I have said, who leaves his wife when she is pregnant with their second child is safely distancing himself from all the more benign forms of respectability – but I must confess that despite the obvious – despite Greenwald’s pointing […]
Bertrand Russell’s Atheist Essays.
14-Sep-11There is a fine little collection of essays about atheism by Bertrand Russell, entitled Why I Am Not A Christian, which I read on subway rides about the city the past week. It is light reading, and his mature essays are in a lucid style which offers no difficulties (some of his earlier essays, such […]
Into Eternity.
18-Feb-11I saw the well-reviewed documentary “Into Eternity” last week, and was not too impressed, though I don’t quite regret the two hours. There has to be some excuse for making a movie out of what might be a thousand-word essay; and “Into Eternity” does not offer that kind of visual or experiential payoff. The facility […]
Saint Augustine and Religious Empiricism.
20-Mar-13Shoreham-by-Sea There was a little bit of Facebook hullabaloo over this Tuesday’s march against gay marriage in D.C., which is being promoted by Catholic bishops. As usual, the bishops going out of their way to prevent non-Catholics from getting things like hospital visitation rights is a good indicator of the general fact that if you want […]