Category: Uncategorized

Here is an interesting review of a book by David Lebedoff called The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War.  The thesis of the book is that Orwell and Waugh are in many important ways the same, despite having totally disparate views on religion and the afterlife.  Looks interesting.

Here is an interesting bit of “political philosophy in literature” – an article on the good and its relation to political power.  He uses the Lord of the Rings as his starting point, but students in the Republic course will see shades of Plato (the only ones that should rule are the ones that don’t want to rule).

Dan shared this interview with me, and I thought it worth sharing on the blog. For those in the Plato class, it discusses many issues we have been discussing in our class – literature and tradition, the relation to the Absolute, and of course the question of language and meaning (deconstruction, etc).

A student, more savvy than I with computers, somehow cooked this up: Click here.  Like all radicals (and if you want to be a social radical these days, you should be a devout Catholic), I will take my refuge in the safety of the academy.

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.