thoughts in and out of season
A correspondent criticized my statement in Science, Rationality and the Good to the effect that “‘rationality’ is itself an evaluative term, and to say a proposition is rational is to say that it should be believed—an evaluative statement”:
… More ...In science, a proposition worthy of belief needs to comport with reality. A proposition comports with reality
There’s some interesting history on the Supreme Court’s anti-religious turn in the last century in an article by a couple of Catholic social scientists, Is American Democracy Safe for Catholicism? It seems that the big change occurred around 1940, when the Court stopped talking about “civil liberty,” a traditional conception that recognized the common good, … More ...
Here’s an article relevant to recent comments on liturgy: Eamon Duffy on the abolition of fasts post-Vatican II. The basic point is that man is not wholly determined by thoughts divorced from externals. Specific practices help constitute religion even when the connection to doctrine is fairly loose. Some notable points in the article:
Found on the web:
I got another note from my Finnish correspondent, who continues to express some dissatisfaction with conservatism (he is specially concerned with Russell Kirk). As in the past (here and here) his questions seemed worth editing and passing on, together with my attempts to answer them:
… More ...Finnish Correspondent: Nothing changes. When communism failed,
More odds and ends:
Current events update:
In comments on a recent entry, David Sucher was quite skeptical that either modernist urban design or its contrary has anything to do with religion or general political divides like liberalism and conservatism. He also wanted to know just what I meant by “modernist urban design.” Since the issues are interesting, my views need … More ...
Another poll that looks into the red state/blue state divide in American politics that we’ve discussed before: Americans deeply split over politics. The main conclusion is that
… More ...“married and single voters live not on different planets, but different solar systems, when it comes to their politics and values … Republicans have a problem
Like most right-wingers I’m rather down on George W. Bush, but I did find the Bush Conspiracy Theory Generator rather amusing.