Friday, October 30, 2009

Inspiration to Blog

A couple blogs I've recently revisited have inspired me to become active as a blogger. The blogger on one [http://bethelburnett.blogspot.com/] is a Christian clergyman and on the other [http://schoonmaker.wordpress.com/] an apparent perpetual student of philosophy.

What it is about them that inspires me to start blogging is that in both instances I see that the blogger's chosen area of concentration, religion for one and philosophy more generally for the other, contribute little to their capacities to understand the world in the contexts of modern science and contemporary information aggregation and dissemination. Both bloggers make explicit and implicit claims of sound understanding in these contexts and both claim to have studied these areas in some depth. Yet those same lenses they choose to look through leave them with distorted conceptions of the world and unable to recognize or remedy their misunderstandings.

This makes sense to me since neither philosophy nor religion has a standard it can use for correctness the way science uses nature. Neither is accountable for its conclusions and neither is expected to provide reliable answers for any matter they address.

In neither case do I mean the bloggers any ill-will. I want to address some of the ideas of these two because they reflect the flawed thinking embraced and perpetuated by many. Most people living in modern societies are completely dependent on science and technology for every bite of food and every drink of water; every home, school, hospital, and church; every antibiotic, birth control pill, vaccine, and analgesic; every e-mail, text message, video game, cable show and facebook friend; every birth, death, personal relationship, and conception of attractiveness; every desire, goal, and idea about meaning and purpose. Science and technology provides many of these things directly, and what it does not provide, it impacts in many ways from many directions.

In my first few posts I'll discuss some of these two blogger's specific notions and explain how religious and philosophical tools they use leave them ill-equipped to understand the science and technology based world they live in.

20 comments:

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Kiwiatheist said...

Russ, I enjoyed your contributions to John Loftus's blog and thought it might be interesting to see whether you wrote one of your own. Well, it seems that you do, albeit sporadically. Can I just encourage you in your endeavours - I thoroughly enjoyed your JL contributions and would love to see some of your thoughts in greater depth. Here's hoping I can convince you to get to it more often ;-) Mike

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Unknown said...

Hey... I'm not sure if you respond to posts here anymore... But I was wondering if you could recommend any books to me about debunking miracles. I heard you've investigated miracle claims for over 40 years- so I'm sure you know a thing or two.

Thanks, Andy

-blessed holy socks, the non-perishable-zealot said...

Whoa. Dude. How do you know God DOESN'T exist, thinking on the whorizontal? Lemme wanna gonna givest unto thee, my good and just liege, a true story of me humble existence --- Whetha or not you wanna believe makes no difference to God and the Liar when you croak, dude - totally irrelevant. We're mortal with levels of sin on our shoulders which MUST be paid for. You have 2 choices if you don't believe (the axiomatic 'fork-in-the-road): either continue on in thy unbelief and we'll see what Jesus does with ya after gives you EVERY, BLOODY, CHANCE to repent in your mortal existence ...or repent and start to follow. I'm going Upstairs, dude, where I can party-hardy for eternity around size B cup, young women. YOUR choice. YOUR demise. Jesus has ABSOLUTELY nuth'n to do with your lackOfaith: ever hear of FREE-WILL?? God totally respects FREE-WILL. And if you wanna journey to the Abyss o'Misery, who's bloody fault is that?? TOTALLY your own. See ya in Heaven after you read this. God blessa youse -Fr. Sarducci, ol SNL

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