Author: Kleiner

Most neo-atheists that I know tend to want to distance themselves from Hitchens – his blood runs a bit too hot.  They usually put forth Dennett and Dawkins as much more responsible spokesman for the ‘movement’.  

But in an article today on new atheism ads on London buses, Dawkins is quoted as saying, ‘This campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think – and thinking is anathema to religion.’

I know I am being reactionary here, but people that say stupid shit like that just don’t deserve to be taken seriously.  What a tired, clearly false, and frankly adolescent attitude.  Grow up, get over your juvenile soundbites about religion, and read something (Aquinas, Augustine, Kierkegaard, even Pope Benedict).  This attitude that atheists have a monopoly on ‘real thinking’ is just so ridiculous, so inane, and so obviously false that I have a hard time understanding how intelligent people like Dawkins can utter such things.  Guess what, not all Christians are anti-intellectual biblical literalists.  How stupid to think they are!  What I find so incredibly frustrating is the hordes of ‘free thinking’ atheists who lap up this sour milk from their prophets as if it were obvious truth.  

I’ll stop now.  In fact, I should probably sit the next couple plays out.

For all of you ‘young earth creationists’ out there – October 23 is Creation Day.  James Ussher, an Anglican bishop who published in 1654 a brilliant study that tried to sort this out (false or not, it is an ingenious bit of biblical scholarship).  He claimed that the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC.  While there are other accounts, Ussher’s chronology was the most widely accepted.

Such attempts were not all that uncommon in his time.  I know of several theologians who tried to date the universe and other events in this way (I know Newton at least dabbled in this, and made a concerted effort to determine the exact date of the crucifixion).

Perhaps this is only funny to fathers (past and present) of toddlers.

Here is an interesting First Things ‘On the Square’ article on the contemporary neuroscience and the soul.  It basically argues that contemporary neuroscience (the increasing appreciation for the organization and patterns of neural activity) actually seems to confirm an Aristotelian understanding of the soul (the immaterial form of the matter, the principle of organization of matter).

I think baseball is the most philosophical of sport, in part because being a baseball fan is more a ‘way of life’ than other sports.  While the World Series is yet to be played, my Red Sox got eliminated last night and so it is time for reflection.  A. Bartlett Giamatti (former commissioner of baseball), has this very philosophical reflection on the game:

‘It breaks your heart.  It is designed to break your heart.  The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again.  And it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings.  And then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.  You count on it.  Rely on it to bumper the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive.  And just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.  And summer is gone.’