Week-old pizza from the back of the refrigerator …
• Here’s an idea for a novel: “two down-on-their-luck entrepreneurs who stumble upon the idea of reviving for-profit idolatry. Selling statues of household gods to the masses, and building a neo-pagan religion around it.” Um, I think that people have been doing this for some time.
• Circus Breivik. Norwegian scholar of esotericism Egil Asprem analyzes the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. (He wrote about the shootings for the current Pomegranate.)
This trial will be about two things: psychiatry and ideology. Two drastically conflicting reports on Breivik’s mental health have already ensured this. Added to this, of course, is Breivik’s own clearly stated wish to be judged as sane, and have his actions confirmed as ideologically motivated.
• Teaching classical philosophy to Brazilian schoolchildren:
I assured the students that until the nineteenth century hardly any philosopher was an atheist. Plato’s Euthyphro—with its argument about the relationship between ethics and the will of the gods—gets us into a lively discussion.
* This is called “edgy, irreverent outreach” by some of today’s Christians Jesus Followers. I think the pastor needs to look up “pathos” in the rhetorical dictionary, because he is doing it wrong. But to be fair, some long-ago saints would have agreed with him.
• Alcohol “sharpens the mind.” But “beer goggles” are real too.
I clicked through to Pastor Kevin Child’s page. His dead bunny ad is mild compared to comments like this one: “I have been suspicious from the jump about the avalanche of sentiment toward “anti-bullying.”…I am hesitant about “protecting” the tender sensibilities of one whose demeanor eagerly invites comments because of his/her lifestyle choice.” Ick…