Footnotes2Plato

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
–Alfred North Whitehead

Category: Religion

  • Religious Dialogue as Soul-Making: A Prayer to Buddha and Christ

    Why Religious Dialogue? Interreligious dialogue is not a distant possibility but a present necessity. This essay is a response to this need, but it is written also as an intrareligious dialogue. This is because the conditioned nature of my own personality, having been historically shaped into what it is by my unique imaginal participation in…

  • Buddhist and Christian Soul-Making

    So far as I know, John Keats coined the phrase “soul-making” in a letter to his brother and sister in May of 1819. He writes: “…suppose a rose to have sensation. It blooms on a beautiful morning. It enjoys itself–but there comes a cold wind, a hot sun–it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its…

  • The Spirit of Intrahuman Dialogue: A Meditation

    The following is a short personal reflection written for a course on inter-faith dialogue with Prof. Jacob Sherman. ————————– “Any interreligious and interhuman dialogue, any exchange among cultures,” writes Panikkar, “has to be preceded by an intrareligious and intrahuman dialogue, an internal conversation within the person” (p. 310, 1979). My personal interest in religion, broadly…

  • Meillassoux and Post-Secular Philosophy

    “So long as we believe that there must be a reason why what is, is the way it is, we will continue to fuel superstition, which is to say, the belief that there is an ineffable reason underlying all things” (After Finitude, p. 82). This belief, according to Meillassoux, is logically unnecessary, since there is…

  • Final Draft: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism

    I finished the essay on the philosophy and anthropology of religion, called “Religion and the Modern World: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism,” that I posted last week in rough draft form. Here is the conclusion: A naturalist panentheism builds its case for the existence and importance of God not upon logical or sensori-empirical proofs. Rather, the…

  • Religion and the Modern World: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism

    Religion and the Modern World: Towards a Naturalistic Panentheism “Dear people, let the flower in the meadow show you how to please God and be beautiful at the same time. —The rose does not ask why. It blooms because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself nor does it wonder if anyone sees it.”…

  • A taste of what’s to come…

    Two abstracts for the papers I am writing for courses on Carl Jung and the Philosophy of Relgion, respectively. ————————————————— “Uncovering the Unconscious: Psychology and the Soul” William James credits W. H. Myers with the discovery of “subliminal consciousness” (i.e., the unconscious) in 1886, a discovery James’ suggests is psychology’s most important insight into human…

  • My response to ‘Why Did God Create Atheists?’ @ AlterNet

    Why Did God Create Atheists? | Belief | AlterNet. …and my comment posted as a response: I believe Jesus answers some of these questions when he says that “the kingdom of heaven is within you,” but that many do not yet have the ears to hear or the eyes to see what this means. Of…

  • Noospheric Evolution: Science and Religion

    A few weeks ago, a contest put on by Discover Magazine was brought to my attention. The publication asked for short video submissions explaining evolution (by which they meant specifically Darwin’s theory) in a lucid enough way that even the most dim-witted of creationists would be able to grasp it. From Discovery’s submission page: “Think…

  • God is Three Things

    People are always talking about God, but they use the same word for three different people. Call it the Holy Trinity if you must. God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God the Father is the material world, all the stuff out there (points around). God the Son is the body, an incarnate…

  • The Essence of Religion

    Preface It has been suggested that all modern philosophy begins with doubt (JC, p. 80). When one philosophizes, they agree to take nothing for granted, and even to question themselves backward into a corner if need be. Cornering oneself in such a way becomes the goal of philosophical inquiry, as once trapped by one’s own…