Here are some of the fascinating, perplexing, gratifying, disturbing or otherwise interesting things that have crossed my inbox or browser of late:
“American Murder Mystery,” a well-written, if occasionally tin-eared essay on some alarming trends in urban and suburban crime. Who knew that Memphis was such a hellhole? Who knew that Florence, South Carolina leads the country in crime rate?
“The Skeptical Inquirer,” a brilliant evisceration of the sand-pounding stupidity of this new faction of chirping halfwits; more than that, it is a fine elucidation of a very old subject.
“China in Africa,” a disquieting report on the ruthless imperialism of China in Africa.
Finally, two essays from the indispensable Claremont Review of Books, the first, “Thoughts and Adventures,” on great Englishman Churchill, who has also been the subject of some considerable contention over at Taki’s Magazine, and the second, “Macbeth and the Moral Universe,” which exhibits Harry Jaffa at his best.
Comments (7)
"Pascal had already ruled empirical theism a dead end, a foolish hope for what we ought by now to know we were not going to get: clear material evidence of clearly immaterial being."
A "clearly immaterial being." What does that even mean?
and later
“It is the heart which perceives God, and not the reason”.
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know” .
LOL. That is virtuoso theological obscurantism.
Posted by Robert | June 23, 2008 1:01 AM
Gosh, I'm all in favor of clear material evidence of an immaterial being.
Posted by Lydia | June 23, 2008 10:28 AM
Lydia,
Tingley states that God is "clearly immaterial". Oh really? How does he know? He chastises those he disagrees with for seeking evidence for something he declares "clearly immaterial". This may be clear to him, but not me.
My neighbor told me that garden fairies had tipped over her bird bath. She had not seen the garden fairies tip over the bird bath, because they are invisible. So I asked her how she knew that there was even such things as garden fairies. She replied that she knew of garden fairies because of all their mischief making in her garden, like tipping over her bird bath.
Posted by Robert | June 23, 2008 11:56 AM
Robert, I sense that you may be a troll, so I'm not going to waste time with you. I am an evidentialist. My response was to the quotation from Tingley, because I fear it sounds a bit anti-evidentialist. I just wanted to register a dissent to the claim that we cannot have good material evidence of the existence of God and must be "skeptics" of the sort Tingley seems to envisage. I believe we have excellent material evidence of the existence of God, for he has not left himself without witness. I have doubts that Pascal's influence has been entirely benign in this regard and wish to align myself instead with the robust empiricist evidentialism of the Anglican and Dissenting respondents to the deists who wasted no time with "the heart has reasons that the reason knows not of" but went straight to the testimony of history. I had not read the Tingley article and was first alerted to its contents by Robert's comment.
Posted by Lydia | June 23, 2008 12:42 PM
Allow me to also give Robert fair notice that he is not dealing with an amateur here.
http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2007/11/a_cumulative_case_for_the_resu.html
Let me also take a moment to point him to our Posting Rules page, just as a precaution.
Posted by Paul J Cella | June 23, 2008 12:48 PM
Lydia,
I completely misunderstood your post, sorry. I thought you were aligning with Tingly, but I was clearly mistaken.
Paul,
I have no intent to flame this board, and I think it's unlikely I will find myself here often. I find the views here dark and strange, but fascinating.
Also, Tingley's "brilliant evisceration" has already been rebutted at length elsewhere.
Posted by Robert | June 23, 2008 1:10 PM
Thanks for the links, Paul. I'm reading the Jaffa article. He writes, "The message—I am tempted to call it the moral—of Macbeth, is the inexorability of the moral order." It reminds me of lines from Rez band:
"there is no heaven and there is no hell they still keep ringin up the mission bells dead men have no tales to tell but they still keep ringing up the mission bells"
(I feel free to cite REZ band lyrics as much as it appears that Chief Justice Roberts has now cited Dylan, in his Sprint dissent (hat-tip to K-Lo at NRO).
Posted by KW | June 23, 2008 1:12 PM