Buzzy Jackson is dismayed by “inspirational” books. Not so much because they exist, but because she “never encountered a single one that spoke directly to those of us with a secular outlook.” “Where was the motivating quote of the day for nonbelievers?” she asks. What she wanted was a Chicken Soup for the Soulless, depressing as that sounds on its face, for that one-fifth of Americans who claim no religious affiliation. She wanted a source of hope and comfort for “the atheists, the skeptics, the agnostics, and the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ among us.” Yet, on going to the bookstore, she found a void. If Chicken Soup for the Soulless didn’t exist, would it be necessary to invent it? Yes, apparently. Continue Reading »
Neuhaus, public intellectual? Yesterday, CBC radio ran a long segment on the legacy of Richard John Neuhaus. Native of Pembroke, Ontario, it's fitting that Canada's public radio would cover the publication of his biography, written by Randy Boyagoda, also a Canadian. RJN's a native son gone . . . . Continue Reading »
Dear brothers and hipsters, I, @SaulofTarsus, mimetically writing to you from my iPhone, do exhort you to excuse any exegetical errors. This week, suffering from #FOMO, all things became oppressive and dark—not in a Lo-Fi or Brennan kind of way, but in a terribly Normal kind of way. Aiming my . . . . Continue Reading »
The world was a dark and gloomy place until the Enlightenment came along, after which people began to think for themselves and break free from the shackles of religious authority. So we are told, once again, in The Moral Arc, a book by journalist Michael Shermer. For him, the Enlightenment did not merely accelerate humanity’s moral progress, but rather it reversed the moral regress characteristic of pre-Enlightenment human history. Since then, science and reason have been guiding humanity on a path toward justice, truth, and freedom. Continue Reading »
I went on a vacation last week and took with me Charles Singleton's beautiful updated edition of John Payne's translation of Boccaccio's Decameron. It's a perfect vacation book: large (952 pages in my edition), escapist (the characters retreat to the country to escape the Black Death ravaging Florence), and diverting. My intent was to read the tales of the book as they are told by its characters, ten per day. My vacation was cut short by unhappy circumstances, but my reading of the Decameron has continued, and continued to be a delight. Continue Reading »
