Maverick Philosopher

The Spiritual Conservative

A new blog born on this Fourth of July.  Well worth a look, and open for comments.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: 'Reason' Titles

We need a list of 'Reason' titles.  Here are three: You're the Reason I'm Livin; You're the Reason (I Don't Sleep at Night); Reason to Believe.  Last week or so I've been forcing myself to listen to Michael Jackson stuff to see if maybe, just maybe, I may have missed something of merit.  But it's just robotic crap compared to tunes of human meaning like these that can give a man pleasure from 8 to 80.  I can't imagine anyone but a freak relating to Jackson's "Bad" at the age of 80 even if he could relate to it at 8 or 18.

Patriotism and Jingoism

It is not uncommon to hear people confuse patriotism with jingoism. So let's spend a few moments this Fourth of July reflecting on the difference.

Dennett on the Deformation of the God Concept

I had an excellent discussion with Mike Valle on a number of topics yesterday afternoon.  The following post exfoliates one of the themes of our discussion.

One of the striking features of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking 2006)  is that Dennett seems bent on having a straw man to attack. This is illustrated by his talk of the "deformation" of the concept of God: "I can think of no other concept that has undergone so dramatic a deformation." (206) He speaks of "the migration of the concept of God in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) away from concrete anthropomorphism to ever more abstract and depersonalized concepts." (205)