WRR's old holidays tradition made worse

 Even before being essentially acquired by Dallas' NPR station, KERA, WRR had a long tradition of playing classical Christmas music — and pretty much nothing but that — from the day after Thanksgiving Day through Christmas Day or beyond.

Barf me.

And, this year? It was made worse by playing US patriotic music on Thanksgiving Day.

Sadly, the CD player in my car stereo is on the fritz, so I have to go to either a classic rock station or else ... KERA! ... for a radio alternative.

Did the typewriter influence Nietzsche's philosophy?

Interesting thoughts here. Robert Hassan is not a philosophy professor, but one of communications, it should be noted. Nonetheless, he appears to have made some informed criticism about how adopting a modern (for his day) portable typewriter, by the different mechanics from pen and ink, and the different writing speed, may have influenced Nietzsche's thought process, and his thoughts.

That said, this is not implausible. Professors of literature, creative writing and psychology, along with those of neuroscience at times, talk about how journaling — when done with pen and ink — can have influence on our own mental attitudes.

Now, that means the question actually is, did it influence him THAT MUCH?

Here, I am at least moderately if not highly skeptical.

And, the idea that switching — albeit, a forced switch — from pen to typewriter "restructured his consciousness"? True, but in the sense of being a truism. ANYTHING we do restructures our consciousness, contra quasi-New Agers.

Beyond that, any change in Nietzsche's style of philosophizing may be correlational only, or correlational first, causal second. And, the growing tumor causing his growing blindness may have been the primary causal agent.

The "patron saint of the internet" — including the Sacred Heart of Acutis!

No, really, in a "you can't make this shit up."

Francis the Talking Pope has decided there should be a patron saint of the Internet, and per that link, he's got his boy.

Carlo Acutis, who died of leukemia in Italy in 2006 at age 15, will be canonized during the Jubilee for Adolescents on April 25-27, according to Vatican News. The church has attributed two miracles to Acutis, who was born to Italian parents in London and was informally known as “God’s influencer.”

I remember that, at one time, the Vatican was having outsiders, allegedly at least somewhat skeptical, look at the two alleged miracles.

I guess that's out the door, and instead, the miracles are marked "Top Secret":

The church has not detailed the miracles.

I think part of the deal is that Rome feels it needs a patron saint for everything.

In that case, per Monty Python:

Who's the patron saint of sperm?

Indeed, Rome DOES feel that. And per this Guardian piece on the modern canonization process, it started with — who else? — John Paul II.

Until 1983, when Pope John Paul II attempted to modernise the process, a Cause could not even be opened until the candidate had been dead for 50 years. (He reduced the waiting period to five years, halved the number of miracles required, and did away with the office of the “devil’s advocate”, established in 1587, whose role was to raise objections to every case.)

That last part gets back to what I said above. Before JPII, these "devil's advocates" wouldn't be members of the Vatican hierarchy and could theoretically not even be Catholic.

Other changes have happened over the decades and centuries. The need for an "incorrupt body" was tossed eons ago, for example.

Essentially, like a "god of the gaps," you have "saints of the gaps" now. Their "miracles" are far fewer because of modern scientific knowledge. And, it doesn't allow for further medical and scientific advances, nor in the case of medicine, does it allow for secularly "miraculous" spontaneous remissions.

Here's Jacalyn Duffin, a historian, and a hematologist, on that:

“The truth is that sometimes things happen that have no scientific explanation. If I can’t explain it, who am I to tell the patient, who believes that she can explain it, that she is wrong?” Duffin said. “Why can’t we have miracles and not believe in God? Wonderful things happen that cannot be explained.”

Exactly.

Acutis? He even has a sacred heart, like Jesus!

This autumn, a fragment of Acutis’s pericardium, the sack that encircles the heart, toured North America.

Oy.

And, this is why Spanish Catholics mocking Aztecs for human sacrifices with bleeding hearts, and their modern successors, have no room to talk.

If a patron saint of the internet isn't enough, surely a patron saint of social media is next. Besides saints of the gaps, you get sainthood of the gaps.

Finally? To switch from systematic or dogmatic theology to exegetical theology, per divisions within religious studies and religious criticism? How can you talk about patron saints for issues not mentioned in the bible? This is kind of like originalism vs non-originalism in US constitutional studies, but cutting across fundamentalist vs non-fundamentalist modes of exegesis.

Re-reading and rethinking Aron Ralston

 Per my Goodreads review, which I am expanding even more than I normally do on some of these blogged reviews, I read "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" nearly 20 years ago, soon after it came out.

This book hasn't aged that well. Or Ralston hasn't aged that well. Or, besides the accident recovery itself, my view of Ralston is different. Or, all of the above.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first read this nearly 20 years ago, not too long after it came out, as noted above. I might have written a review on my now-defunct Amazon account that I never transferred over here.

Anyway, had I rated it back then, it would have been 5 stars.

Today? 3.5, rounded downward.

Per others rating it 3 stars or less, obviously, and more noted by me on second read? The one-upmanship. The nearly getting two friends drowned in the Colorado below Havasu Falls. The nearly getting two friends killed in an avalanche just months before this happened, and having them both become ex-friends, and per Ralston, as of the time of the book, having never contacted him again.

I remember reading all of that on my initial read, but I don't think that stood out as much as it did with a second pass.

The accident itself? An accident. (I've gotten lost way backcountry in the Needles District of Canyonlands and had to spend an overnight on a canyon floor.) The not telling people details of his trip? Understand. But, there still seems to be a bit of arrogance behind it. Not a lot. But a small bit.

Beyond that? I'm more of a secularist, if I would, than at the time I read this book or got lost in Canyonlands. That was in 2004, and arguably partially my own fault. I saw someone high above me, exiting the particular canyon, after I first got lost, coming back out. I couldn't tell if they were ascending or descending, and didn't want to wait, so continued to try to find my own way. Fortunately, I remembered some tinajas with water in from the last monsoon rain (it was late July, obviously a lot hotter than for Ralston).

I remembered those tinajas after running through prayers to the Christian god, including Jesus, then Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, and even a Zeus or other ancient deities, as I recall correctly. Then, I stopped, and said that, I'm an atheist, and if I'm going out now, I'm going out my way. Shortly after that, I remembered the tinajas, hiked a mile, maybe a mile and a half, back down trail, and drank water with tadpoles in it. For whatever reason, I couldn't find my way back out that day. I did try crossing a bouldered area to the south, to try to get to a trail that would lead to one campground, then realized it was getting late in the day and I didn't need to sprain an ankle, let alone tear up knee ligaments or break a leg, so I wound up spending a night on the canyon floor.

But, I got out the next day. No rescue needed, fortunately. No book to write about it. No motivational speaker fees. (I have incidents more serious than that in my life, by far, which could have a book written about them, but that hasn't happened. Perhaps there is a small degree of bitterness, and not just toward Ralston. So be it.)

The one-upmanship is also reflected by a few other issues in the book.

Per places like 14ers.com, and Wiki, using USGS standards, there are 53 not 59 14ers in Colorado. (I've climbed six myself.) Tree line in much of Colorado is 11,500, not 11,000; it can push 12K in spots. Air at 14,000 feet is more like 62 percent of sea level than 50 percent. I checked out of curiosity eons ago, after either my second or my third 14er. It doesn't drop to 50 percent until you get above 18,000 feet. I noticed all of this when first mentioned, something I wouldn't have done on first reading of the book, when I had done only two 14ers, counting the drive up Pikes Peak a decade earlier, then hiking down 300 feet (per USGS) and back up.

Then, the motivational speaker part? His newest video on his speaker for hire website, his "hire me," is four-plus years old. The newest news, from when Obama made Browns Hole a national monument, is nine years old. Off YouTube, his Shitter page is almost 3 years old since last post; ditto on Facebook. And here, we're getting to the not aging well, with more ahead.

Per his Wiki page? That unborn son he thought was calling? Does he have much visitation right, having divorced his ex-wife 12 years ago after 2.5 years of marriage? Eighteen months later, he and his then-girlfriend filed mutual assault charges against each other. That might have dried up the motivational speaking.

In other words, the post-accident part of this book hasn't aged well. Also, I don't believe the hyperbole at the end that, because of everything he gained, he wouldn't trade getting his hand back. (I was in a car wreck eight years ago; fortunately, my shattered left arm healed to near 100 percent of normal. But, had I lost it, yes, today, I'd still want it back.)

Per Neil Young, maybe he has faded away more than burning out. If he's reasonably content with that, fine.

Finally, I note what one other lower-star reviewer noted: Aron hiking with the Discman and headphones. Would he have heard the chockstone shifting more quickly without that? We don't know. We do know that he wasn't experiencing all of nature because he couldn't hear it.

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Top blogging, third quarter of 2024

 It's a bit late, but, here goes.

We're going to start with the top two, then drumroll from 10-3, for a specific reason.

No. 1 is from Oct. 31, 2019, my "Gun Nuts in the name of Luther" piece about Armed Lutheran Radio.

No. 2 is from June of 2023, my take on the "Lutefash" troubles in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. I posted the first to an ex-Lutheran sub-Reddit, and dropped the second in comments to another post, both in late September, or maybe early October, just after the transition to a new quarter.

And, both are election-related, too.

Now, 10-3.

No. 10? From February, dropped on r/secularism about two months ago, my piece about how secularists take the climate crisis more seriously than either fundagelicals or "liberals" not just of Christianity, but any world religious tradition.

No. 9 is definitely from October, a new, brief piece about the latest dumbery at r/AcademicBiblical.

At 8, an oldie but a goodie from 2007, more proofs that the Buddha was not the Buddha.

No. 7, early November, a highly critical review of Steven Mithen's "The Language Puzzle."

No. 6? Based on a chance encounter at Redwood National and State Parks, my thoughts, with photos, on that old Latin phrase about aesthetics: "De gustibus non disputandum" in natural beauty.

No. 5? I dropped the link to this piece from a year ago into a biblical criticism blogging circle. It's my thought, riffing on Paul Davidson, about how Josiah probably wasn't Josiah, tied with how Moses Wilhelm Shapira probably DID find a proto-Deuteronomy.

No. 4? Also put on a biblical criticism blog circle, my 2009 piece on Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism.

And at No. 3, from September, my critical review of a book allegedly about refugee musicians and select other artists.

Nature's God: Apparent Gnu Atheist's bad history

Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book caught my interest at the library, but at the same time, grokking the introduction made this secularist see enough for the skeptical antennae to go up. With that, let's dig in, on another extended version of my Goodreads review, to look at just what is wrong with this book

First, I knew most of the Ethan Allen story. Interestingly, Stewart does not relate the Allen deathbed anecdote, whether it's true or not. Supposedly, an "orthodox" minister told Allen that the angels were waiting for him, and he replied: "Waiting, are they? Well, goddammit, let them wait!"

I also knew a bit of Thomas Young's history, though I did learn more about him in this story. And, yes, "story" is a good name for this book. (Stewart, per another Goodreads reviewer, makes historical mistakes covering the pair of them and smallpox inoculation, too; that's another reason this is "story" and not "history" at bottom line.)

First of all, Stewart appears to be not just an atheist but quite possibly a Gnu Atheist, with all that entails. (I can't tell if he thinks this for sure, but his latest book, on U.S. slavery and emancipation? He may be one of those people who claims Lincoln was an atheist.) That gets you dinged right there, because it's totally not true. Second: His "The Truth About Everything" book makes me wonder how much of a scientism person he is. I think the first-in-order reviewer is themself.

Secondly, much of what I said about Epicurus and Epicureanism in my review of “The Swerve” deserves repeating.

First, the inventors of atomic theory, Democritus and Leucippus were pre-Epicurean and even pre-Socratic. Greenblatt never mentions this. Nor does he mention that Greek philosophers in general were anti-empirical, and therefore antiscientific, as we know science today. (Indeed, one could argue that Archimedes and Eratosthenes were the only two real scientists the Hellenistic world produced.)

Ergo, especially if we start "modernity" with the Enlightenment and not the Renaissance, Epicureanism was not "how the world became modern." Not even close.

Second, he cherry-picks who was influenced by Lucretius, and how much, and how much influence they had. The late Renaissance world didn't see a flowering of Giordano Brunos.

Extending on that? Epicureanism may be a very good moral philosophy. As some kind of philosophy of science? Bupkis. As a political philosophy, tohu w’vohu, as it just doesn’t really say anything. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers more on how not just Spinoza, but 17th century philosophy in general, was still mired in the Socratic world on many issues, and yes, mired is correct, and hence, Whitehead's encomium to Plato is wrong.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in its Epicurus page, further tackles the issue of "the swerve," which may or may not have originated with Epicurus; details of it are only discussed in Lucretius and Cicero. Related to that are larger issues with the atomism of Democritus and Leucippus, and why their ideas should in no way be conflated with today's atomic theory world. Basically, Epicurus, if one were to reference cosmology of the last century, was the Hellenistic version of steady-state Fred Hoyle or something kind of like that. Also per SEP, on its Democritus page, it should be remembered that whole atomism project was philosophical, not scientific.

Related? Stewart’s note that Bruno became so infatuated with Lucretius that he couldn’t explain Copernican theory correctly. Gassendi had that problem, too. See here.

AFAIK, Copernicus himself was uninfluenced by Lucretius and Epicurus. Besides, heliocentric theories existed back in ancient Greece. It wasn't until Ptolemy's version, which also through in epicycles to try to make planetary motion all based on perfect circles, that geocentrism took off, later boosted by the Christian church. (Copernicus' theory, as Kepler got more and more precise information on planetary motions, actually required MORE epicycles than Ptolemy. Then he had the light bulb moment to think of ellipses and poof.)

Also related? While Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons didn’t invent them into existence, nonetheless, it certainly offered the idea that Epicurean cosmology wasn’t the final answer. Even more so for Herschel's discovery of Uranus. I'm sure that if Napoleon had asked him about Epicurus, Laplace, whose nebular hypothesis of the solar system's origins put a wrap on Enlightenment-era science, would have said he had no need of that hypothesis, either.

 

All of this is important to note because the Enlightenment was about extending the world of science. The term "scientist" wasn't coined until post-Enlightenment 1833, but, the idea of a "natural philosopher" being called something that didn't have "philosophy" as part of the title extends into the 1700s. But, really, not into the 1600s. So, in that sense, Epicurus, Lucretius, Spinoza and Locke are all at least somewhat irrelevant to trying to scientifically ground what would eventually become political science. Ditto for Hobbes. Even today, 250 years later, you can have David Graeber and David Wengrow postulating a theory of everything that is largely wrong, and that also, per Stephanos Geroulanos in "The Invention of Prehistory" is also wrong on its "framing."

Next? The idea that Spinoza was more important of an influence on American deism, the revolution, etc., than, say, Locke? Laughable. He may have been an influence THROUGH Locke; different story. And, it doesn’t fit with his Epicurean thesis, anyway; Epicurus had no real influence on Spinoza. That’s per a place like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where Epicurus isn’t even mentioned in the entry on Spinoza.

Per Gilbert Ryle, I could say that Stewart is committing something kind of like a category mistake, but that’s too charitable. Rather, he’s committing something kind of like a category conflation, which entails much greater willfulness.

Side note? Spinoza's first name actually is neither "Benedict" nor "Baruch." It's "Bento," from the Ladino.

Related? The idea that Locke was a sekrut radical is laughable. To riff on Cervantes, it’s tilting at Gnu Atheist skyhooks. And, it's no wonder that Stewart has to repeatedly talk about how other academics disagree with him. Later on, Stewart accepts that most American deists were the “clockwork god” folks, the “Newtonians” (this sets aside that Adam Smith was a “clockwork god” deist at the time of the American Revolution, which not only undercuts Stewart but is also generally hated by classical liberal economists, no matter that it’s true.) But Stewart never extends that same courtesy, or whatever we should call it, to Locke. Why not? IMO, it’s because it upsets Stewart’s program. If Locke really was a Newtonian, that means American deists weren’t dissembling in their Newtonianism, nor that they "really" had some Spinozist semi-atheism as their Ultima Thule.

Somewhat related? The American Revolution, and Constitutional revolution, was a moderate, and politically focused, revolution. The Articles of Confederation took a pass on a federal state church, and the Constitutional finalized that. That’s it.

The French Revolution didn’t IMMEDIATELY attack and abolish religion in general. But? By the time of Robespierre and Danton, though, it did. 

To put it another way, as I repeatedly told a British Gnu Atheist who commented at some of Massimo Pigliucci's old philosophy sites? None of the American deist founders were interested in anything close to what became laïcité in France. (Oh, and contra some French intellectuals and Francophile intellectuals in the Anglosphere, laïcité is not hard to grasp. It's just something that I reject.)

With that?

To the degree I determine a thesis in an ill-focused book, it’s that the founders wanted to inculcate a Spinoza-like semi-atheist deism, not just the Newtonian mechanical clock type, of god winding up the universe. IF SOME of the founders (Jefferson, maybe Franklin) wanted this, let alone tried to get it, it was as private individuals, not as founders of the American state.  Even there, the all caps is deserved. There’s a second part to Stewart’s thesis, and that’s the insinuation they halfway succeeded. Anybody who’s read Antonin Scalia’s pronunciamentos from the Supreme Court bench about “civic religion” knows this is to laugh, as far as the American state. Anybody who knows most “Nones” are not atheists or agnostics knows this is to laugh in terms of private belief.

Related? Being long-listed for a book prize is nowhere near as big a deal as being short-listed. And, the use of the word "heretical" in the subhed is another — this time provocative or click-baity — instance of fluffery.

Per one other reviewer, who said this would make a great 300-page book or a great 800-page one? A la Paine, it might make a good but not great 150-page screed. And Stewart, IMO, could never write this into a great, quasi-academic 800-page book. That’s simply not his interest, and I doubt he would change that. He could have dropped his philosophical incorrectnesses, though, and perhaps written up a straight 300-page history of deism and the American Revolution.

 

Note: For quotes from Allen that may not be in this book, and references to the likes of Elihu Palmer who is not at all in this book, go to this piece from non-Gnu secularist Ed Buckner.

Anyway, despite me grokking around here and there, it's not a total meh, because it had me doing some philosophical mind-honing. That's the main reason it's not one star for me. And, it's not a disappointment, per what I said at the top of the review. I wasn't expecting five stars when I picked it up, and by the time I grokked the intro, I wasn't expecting much more than a high three stars. Getting Ethan Allen better known, and Thomas Young much better known makes this book worth more than one star for other readers, or it should.

==

And, per the editorial blurbs for "The Courtier and the Heretic," his calling Leibniz "foppish" and claiming late 1600s Amsterdam was "licentious" is enough reason right to pass on anything else he's written.

This, near the end of that blurb?

For Stewart, Leibniz's reaction to Spinoza and modernity set the tone for "the dominant form of modern philosophy"—a category that includes Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger and "the whole 'postmodern' project of deconstructing the phallogocentric tradition of western thought.

That one word, in case you're wondering? Invented by Derrida. Nuff ced.

Well, no. Unlike the scene of "Wittgenstein's Poker" or the ongoing action of "Rousseau's Dog" in the David Edmonds treatment, nobody knows what Leibniz and Spinoza said to each other, so this is historical fiction at best anyway in that book. And, the two one-star reviews of it make clear that Stewart is a "good" strawmanner.

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Yet more biblical criticism problems at the subreddits

A briefer one than normal here, but just a few thoughts on the latest nuttery at the biblical criticism subreddits.

It is interesting that Colossians leaves out part of a Galatians parallel, but no, dood, it was not Pauline, and not written 60-64 CE. (And, that's the correct year nomenclature, too, of course.)

No, John didn't die circa 100 CE, and this guy has also apparently never heard of pseudepigrapha.

A good question here about the man of lawlessness vs the beast vs antichrist(s). Since I'm blocked there, I can't give the OP the answer he seeks, which is here. (That said, it's the same guy as in paragraph above.) Sadly, the only answer as of a month ago was from a fundagelical talking about different interpretations of millennialism. R/AcademicBiblical is going downhill on number as well as types of responses, as well as moderator actions, apparently.