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Tag Archives: Andrew Sullivan

The Effect of Nature on the Mind.

30-Oct-13

http://thehistoryhacker.com/author/ditliberry/page/3/ Andrew Sullivan quotes a University Bookman piece which quotes a lecture by Santayana on the effect that nature as – or can have, if we let it in – on the American mind.  When you are in nature: Everywhere is beauty and nowhere permanence, everywhere an incipient harmony, nowhere an intention, nor a responsibility, nor […]

Easter 2013 and New Hope.

01-Apr-13

http://busingers.ca/author/bu-singers I went to Easter Mass at the church of Saint Francis Xavier in Brooklyn, a pretty church in Park Slope which does not, despite its name, appear to have any formal connection with the Jesuits. Some years ago it might have been difficult for me to feel the joy the holiday seemingly required – often […]

Jesus and the Second Amendment.

29-Jan-13

Andrew Sullivan has a very short and sharp rebuff of a National Review piece which claims that God supports individual gun ownership, as part of a “Biblical” right to self-defense.  In general, I hate the word “Biblical,” because it implies a simplicity which only ignorance can accept uncritically; the first Christians recognized many holy “books” […]

In the Pseudo-Catholic Parallel Universe…

16-Nov-12

Those of us with conservative Catholic friends had to deal with the usual Facebook nonsense about how it all was coming to an end on Election Night – I couldn’t stop snipping at one of them, “Yes, a terrible night for legitimate rapists everywhere,” which indeed would make it a bad night for a certain […]

Sigh. Christians.

05-Apr-12

Andrew Sullivan has been thinking about Christianity lately – what’s happening to it on a large scale.  I don’t think he’s doing a great job expressing himself on this topic, and I think he is aware of this.  I think he’s fighting the good fight, but something about it is daunting and indeed depressing. For […]

Andrew Sullivan on the New Atheists.

11-Nov-11

I utterly agree with him: I have written about Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins before, as well as their spiritual progenitor Bertrand Russell.

Aristotle, Sullivan, Occupy Wall Street, and the Middle Class.

27-Oct-11

From Andrew Sullivan’s superb piece on Occupy Wall Street: There is simply a limit beyond which economic inequality threatens democratic life, when the majority suspect that a tiny minority has fixed the system beyond repair through the existing institutions, and when the powerful minority begins to think of its own interests as distinct from the […]

“Fundamentalism is Rationalism in Religion.”

22-Sep-11

I still find Sullivan good on most topics beside religion, but his defense of religion as transcending tenet is worth a look.  It contains the nugget “fundamentalism is rationalism in religion.”  Moralism and rationalism don’t wash too well with a God conceived of as a union of is and is not. The transcendent God tends […]

Excitable/Orwellian Andrew.

05-Sep-11

I am as big a fan of Andrew Sullivan as can be, but I was impressively disappointed by his memorial of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  I don’t disagree with the general point, that ten years on what is most salient is that our “homeland security” response – invasion of foreign countries, unregulated torture of […]

Empiricism and Fundamentalism.

28-Apr-11

A must-read piece from Andrew Sullivan on fundamentalism and reason in religion.  He does things like re-translate the beginning of John’s Gospel – “In the beginning was reason. And reason was with God. And reason was God.” – which is a completely acceptable translation.  The word usually translated “word”, logos, means much more than that and is […]