What a beautiful present on a Saturday morning! It is rare to see someone write on this set of issues with such precision and clarity. Gigantic kudos to Jeff Fecke, and a huge thank you to Mark Crispin Miller for sharing this with me! The F Word By Jeff Fecke | October 27, 2010 Please go comment on the original post! There are epithets that decent people shy away from using. One obvious example is the use of racist, ethnic,…
Sites for Recovering Jehovah’s Witnesses to Explore Scroll to the bottom if you’re not in the mood for this! Over the years, I’ve noted that the quality and helpfulness of former JW sites varies quite a bit. Some are very angry, while others are more compassionate. Some are able to create spaces to share insights with one another, some are more combative with peers. Some are focused on biblical interpretation, others on issues like abuse and shunning. More recently, I’ve…
I love humor, even when it’s aimed at my heroes. Jacques Derrida was hopelessly misunderstood by much of the American audience, but there is a grain of truth in much of this: The World’s Shortest Philosophy Books Dennett’s Philosophical Lexicon Philosophers’ Cause of Death Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? Fair enough. But really… let’s think about intellectual courage… Yeah, Derrida has a lot going on. He is sometimes very difficult to read. And it’s easy to make fun…
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” – William James Recently, I participated in an online discussion in the comments of an article written by a prominent friend/adviser to the late Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson & Jehovah’s Witnesses, by Firpo Carr The Michael Jackson case and the issue of child abuse are both important to me, but I didn’t really know who Firpo Carr was when I made my first comment. I’d…
I was re-reading a dissertation exam question, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that there has been no real transformation in my views on evil in more than a decade. Question: Compare the language of cause, analysis, description, and solution to evil in Augustine, Nietzsche, Schüssler-Fiorenza and one author of your choice (Buber). Identify juxtapositions, similarities, opposition, etc., amongst the authors, and situate your own view. The text of Augustine’s Confessions constructs an aesthetic metaphysics from within a post-Manichaean…
Just when I had loads and loads to blog about, I got knocked down by oak pollen. I just knew those trees were hostile. There is too far too much to tell, so here’s just a very quick summary. Equinox Weekend – Inconsolably depressed, and for no good, acceptable (rational) reason. Spiraling outside my will. Surrounded by a wall. Falling down a well. But then… the thunder quieted a little and – between the soundcracks of the whirlwind – I…