blake johnson

The Humble Boast: Ignorance Is A Two-Way Street is a post about the frequent mis-categorization of all religious people as right wingers. What I found interesting, though, was this paragraph at the end:

“Religion” itself - depending on your interpretation of the Greek - means “reading” or “re-reading.” I prefer the latter translation, which implies that religious study requires constant analyzation, and then re-analyzation. This not only applies to religious texts, but life in general. Understanding - in the broad, esoteric sense - is gained through constant evaluation.

Something that occurred to me while reading this post is that the author’s interpretation of religion as “re-reading” and continual reevaluation is strikely similar to Nietzsche’s process of “becoming” where man attempts to continually remake himself. Of course, it is rather amusing when we find a similarity between religion and Nietzsche’s philosophy.

A friend pointed out an excellent feature article The “Without a Doubt” by Ron Suskind in the Sunday’s NYTimes magazine about the way in which President Bush’s administration has been shaped by George W.’s faith. There is a section of the article which I find particularly disturbing:

The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Maybe the postmodernists out there feel right at home in this philosophy, but it makes me rather uncomfortable.

The Rev. Prof. Peter Gomes provides his take on the gay-marriage issue in Massachusetts. Here’s a nice quote from it:

“Judicial tyranny” is a phrase usually heard from those whose prejudices have not been sustained by a court’s decision. Happily, the fundamental rights of citizens in this Commonwealth and republic are in the long run defended against another form of tyranny even more dangerous, the tyranny of the majority.