The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church

Results of some polling show that the trends are a little more serious than many believe to be the case. The author's point at the end about believers and personal contact is important, as is the abstractness of the view of Christianity many reject. A faith is first and formost a matter of warm links between people. I'm not sure that abstractions and arguments work well or deeply as "ties that bind," whatever other purposes they may serve.

The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church Christianity Today A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Heart of Our Hearts

Heart of Our Hearts - Daniel Foster - The Corner on National Review Online

As Mr. Foster relates, Elie Wiesel has an open letter to President Obama regarding Jerusalem and peace. His words echo with memory and the sorrow of millennia.

What has been widely discussed...

...for a long time by many scholars is that the Jewish Scriptures have a considerably older history than extant texts allow us to confirm. However, a steady drip of interesting evidence continues to set the general verification level at older and older periods. Here is the latest.

Holy Smoke! (er, maybe...)

This may or may not be relevant to our last couple of weeks' discussions about theories of interpretation of faith narratives. Did you ever wonder what Moses saw on the mountain? One set of theories reports that one of the nuclei of factuality in these accounts of the revelations to Moses is that the accounts have some details that might resemble a volcanic event. At any rate, that's what I thought of when I saw these pictures from currently-active Mount Redoubt in Alaska. These photos and many more are posted at the Alaska Volcano Observatory website. They also update their page several times daily, as events develop with Redoubt and her sister volcanoes.

Some comments by David Hume

"Taxes when carried too far, destroy industry, by engendering despair." (Political Discourses.)

"National debts cause a mighty confluence of people and riches to the capital. ("Of Public Credit," Political Discourses.)

"The best taxes are such as are levied upon Consumptions, especially those of luxury." (Essays and Treatises.)

"Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy."

"Necessity calls, fear urges, reason exhorts." (Political Discourses)

"A regard for liberty, though a laudable passion, ought commonly to be subordinate to a reverence for established government."

"There is one certain means by which I can be sure never to see my country's ruin: I will die in the last ditch."

"Excessive severity in the laws is apt to beget great relaxation in their execution." (Political Discourses.)

"Men do not normally reason with one another, men impact on one another as billiard balls do; it is custom that leads men to do things as they do; it is custom, often concealed from the actor, which drives him to do things of which he is naturally ignorant as to why and for what purpose he does them." (Enquiry.)

Current Reading

An amazing novel of "dystopian philosophical fiction:" Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. I'm about halfway through. If you make an effort to "translate" the other-world vocabulary, you can follow (or teach) much of the history of philosophy, especially philosophy of religion. It's about faith and reason, sacred and secular, clerical and lay, all turned inside-out, on a post-apocalyptic, suspiciously earth-like planet called "Arbre". In this journey epic, an intrepid fellowship navigates its way through a world that is not only physically hostile, but intellectually cannibalistic.

Wherever you go ...

... someone's preaching. Sometimes they know what they're doing; sometimes they don't. Should religion be left in the hands of amateurs?

See here: http://www.minyanville.com/articles/airlines-dis-alk-ckr-Alaska-TRLG/index/a/20267