This is an open-comment theology blog where I will post various theological musings, mostly in sermon or essay form, for others to read and comment on. If what I say here interests you, you may want to check out some of my books. Feel free to criticize, to critique, to comment, but keep comments to the point and respectful. Many of these posts have been published elsewhere, but I wanted them collected and made available to a wider audience.
These are prime examples of why I give MavPhil and some of the other philosophy postings a miss.
1. In the first article he speaks in such vague, round-about way that the reader must fill in all sorts of blanks. My mind came up with the narrative, "Guy became sick of suburban life, took a dangerous trip while ill prepared, died. Darwin award nominee." I'm almost certain that is not what a film was made about, but MP leaves too much to be filled in by the reader and never made a straight point.
2. This is a clear example of why folks, myself included, avoid philosophers. His very first point is mostly a long quote in Latin with no translation whatever. This is a textbook example of "must be this erudite to understand what I'm saying." It is a secret handshake, a way of informing those coming to hear what you have to say that they are too ill-educated to understand, so best they just move on.
Which is exactly what people do. If a great many people find philosophers and philosophy useless, the philosophers themselves carry much blame.
I hate things like this in philosophy or literature. When an author quotes a language the reader may not know to illustrate a point is annoying in the extreme.
3. I slogged through the rest of it only to collide with his conclusion that the Incarnation is not objective fact. He's just eviscerated the entire premise of Christianity, that God became Man. If that was not objective reality, however difficult it may be to comprehend, it all falls away. C. S. Lewis put it well, our choices are Liar, Lunatic or Lord. MP leaves us with only Liar or Lunatic by what he says here.
4. Then he signs off with the "jade's trick" of saying later he might clear up what subjective and objective means. This is similar to walking the reader along a path of reasoning, approaching a significant understanding or truth and then saying, "Of course we can't really know anything." This bait and switch drives me nuts. If you are not going to stand by the things you have just spent paragraphs saying, then why did you bother? It seems a way to avoid responsibility for what you have just said.
This only serves to feed the narrative that philosophy is little more than useless navel gazing. Such things do not serve the cause of making philosophy more universally accepted.
These are prime examples of why I give MavPhil and some of the other philosophy postings a miss.
ReplyDelete1. In the first article he speaks in such vague, round-about way that the reader must fill in all sorts of blanks. My mind came up with the narrative, "Guy became sick of suburban life, took a dangerous trip while ill prepared, died. Darwin award nominee." I'm almost certain that is not what a film was made about, but MP leaves too much to be filled in by the reader and never made a straight point.
2. This is a clear example of why folks, myself included, avoid philosophers. His very first point is mostly a long quote in Latin with no translation whatever. This is a textbook example of "must be this erudite to understand what I'm saying." It is a secret handshake, a way of informing those coming to hear what you have to say that they are too ill-educated to understand, so best they just move on.
Which is exactly what people do. If a great many people find philosophers and philosophy useless, the philosophers themselves carry much blame.
I hate things like this in philosophy or literature. When an author quotes a language the reader may not know to illustrate a point is annoying in the extreme.
3. I slogged through the rest of it only to collide with his conclusion that the Incarnation is not objective fact. He's just eviscerated the entire premise of Christianity, that God became Man. If that was not objective reality, however difficult it may be to comprehend, it all falls away. C. S. Lewis put it well, our choices are Liar, Lunatic or Lord. MP leaves us with only Liar or Lunatic by what he says here.
4. Then he signs off with the "jade's trick" of saying later he might clear up what subjective and objective means. This is similar to walking the reader along a path of reasoning, approaching a significant understanding or truth and then saying, "Of course we can't really know anything." This bait and switch drives me nuts. If you are not going to stand by the things you have just spent paragraphs saying, then why did you bother? It seems a way to avoid responsibility for what you have just said.
This only serves to feed the narrative that philosophy is little more than useless navel gazing. Such things do not serve the cause of making philosophy more universally accepted.