So just who are we all talking to, anyway?

I wrote a paper for one of my Master’s classes a couple of weeks ago, integrating what I’d absorbed from two textbooks into pages of my actual life.   Shortly after I got it back from my professor, a friend and I were discussing this very blog, which led to a discussion of philosophizing in general.   He lamented how lately, he’s seen an awfully lot of writing overwrought with words at the expense of actual ideas.   This guy is an intellectual himself, a prolific writer and thinker, so his comment gave me pause. 

As I’ve read for this particular graduate Communication class, I’ve worried more than once that some in my degree program seem to overstate the obvious.  I love taking a fragment of seemingly mundane human interaction, analyzing its details and its place in our lives to parse from it a deeper understanding of our connectedness, yet I can’t shake the underlying fear that many would meet our research with a big, “So what?”

I thought I’d share some thoughts from this particular paper here, and ask for the feedback of the ‘blog’s readership.  Based on responses I’ve received to previous pieces and the responses I’ve read here to the writing of others, I believe this audience falls toward the thinking end of the spectrum.  There.  I’ve laid out a blanket compliment.  Be nice when you pick me apart, then, please??

Here goes:

Drama unfolds around us continually, though the mundane events of daily life often blur into methodical sameness …

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Einstein’s God

At Dangerous Intersection, we have often encountered definitional issues when we’ve cnsidered whether someone believes in “God.”  During a recent vigorous exchange several of us invoked the “Einstein” version of God.  Although I had read a few quotes of Einstein regarding his beliefs, I had not comprehensively read Einstein’s own words describing his “God.”

The April 16, 2007 edition of Time Magazine features a new biography about Albert Einstein (Einstein, by Walter Isaacson).  For that reason, I jumped at the chance to read this Time article, which focused on what Einstein actually meant when he said he believed in “God.”  The bottom line? 

[Einstein] settled into a deism based on what he called the’ spirit manifest in the laws of the universe’ and a sincere belief in a ‘God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists.

Einstein was born to two parents who were Jewish “by cultural designation and kindred instinct, [though] they had little interest in the religion itself.”  Young Albert ended up attending a large Catholic school in his neighborhood.  While there, he “developed a passionate zeal for Judaism.” At the age of 12, however, he gave this up, concluding that “much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.  From that time on, he articulated (through many essays and interviews) a “deepening appreciation of his belief in God, although a rather impersonal version of one.” 

At a dinner party in Berlin, one of the guests publicly expressed amazement that …

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Confessions provoked by torture are OK, as long as the US is doing the torturing

We're all glad that the British sailors are back home.  Anyone following this story knows that these sailors were treated graciously by their Iranian captors.  Nonetheless, while in captivity, the British sailors admitted that they had been trespassing in Iranian waters when whey were apprehended. But notice some of the things that…

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Sam Harris and Christian Pastor Rick Warren discuss religion

You'll find this in the current edition of Newsweek.  Here's an excerpt regarding the source of morality in the absence of religion: WARREN:  Sam, what are the secular sources of an acceptable moral code?  HARRIS: Well, I don't think that the religious books are the source. We go to the…

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Maybe we’re feebleminded

As a nation, we seem to be making one boneheaded decision after another.

Iraq has to be the top of that list. We attacked Iraq because we couldn’t let “them” get away with what “they” did on September 11. I have heard numerous seemingly intelligent people utter this other nonsense. The only way this justification works, however, is if all people living in the Middle East are the same. There’s no basis for believing that everyone in the Middle East is “the same,” yet this truly seems to be the foundation of the thought process of many people. Someone from the Middle East attacked us, therefore we must attack someone in the Middle East. And by someone they mean anyone.

By this same logic, when someone in my neighborhood steals my car, I am justified asking the police to throw anyone from my neighborhood in prison. Anyone at all! The important thing is that I am mad or frustrated or embarrassed and I want to cast judgment some more quickly and see something done.

It’s truly amazing that intelligent people can fall for this kind of thinking, but many of us do.

Perhaps it’s because we have trouble categorizing. Take, for instance, the category “the poor.” I know many right-leaning people who claim that all poor people are deservedly poor. And they are lazy, as well as immoral and stupid. This allows many social conservatives to justify social Darwinism at the highest levels of government.

On the other hand, I …

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