Comments on: Dissonances of the Day

By: Elliott

Elliott — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:13:36 +0000

@ Mike

I don’t really get Andrew Sullivan either. I read The Daily Dish all the time, and I usually agree with what he says, and it vexes me that he calls himself a conservative. If he is, it’s only because he exists right on the boundary of conservatism.

Anyway, I read a good part of that interchange between Harris and him a while ago. Harris lays out really good arguments but Sullivan just wriggles like a fish. Kind of out of character for a guy who usually has it all together.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:44:52 +0000

A fairy tale imparts knowledge and warnings to people upon the dangers in the world, the bible is not a fairytale. To call it such demeans fairytales, I prefer to call it a creative work of Myths and Legends of the primitive peoples of terra.

By: Mike Caton

Mike Caton — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:07:35 +0000

Andrew Sullivan is an interesting case of a guy who’s not only gay, but devotes about a quarter of his voluminous blog to putting down the behavior of the Catholic church, then calls himself a devout Catholic. Why go through the contortions? Check out his exchange with Sam Harris (on the right side of his blog). It’s interesting (and a little depressing) to see a guy like Sullivan who I agree with on many (most?) topics suddenly retreat into vapor-think.

Also, I like the concept of air novels. Come on, what’s cooler, Eddie van Halen air guitar or John Steinbeck air novels? “Here comes the cool part, ‘tell me about the rabbits’ YEAH high five!”

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:39:08 +0000

From what I remember, John Dewey has a perspective on religion that is sort of like what Christian Atheism. He thought that there was a religious frame of mind you could be in, and that this frame of mind had psychological and moral benefits. However, he thought that the object it was usually focused on, i.e. actual religions like Christianity, were really bad. Instead, he suggested that people should focus their religious tendencies on participating in democratic processes and civil actions. I forget if that was implicit in his thought or explicit; he may have only suggested the creation of a ‘non-supernatural religion’ obviously thinking of it as some kind of civic participation. This is all from A Common Faith by the way.

Maybe that isn’t too much like Christian Atheism, because it doesn’t embrace the doctrines and rituals of Christianity, but just the psychological mechanisms and structures Christianity itself takes advantage of. But anyways, I like Dewey’s idea so I thought I’d mention it.