MetaCatholic

A few things that have caught my eye recently, offered for your delectation, together with an advance apology. My hosts are undergoing some major upgrades and this blog might be on the blink for a couple of days starting late tomorrow. (The outage today was just a sign of how badly the upgrade is needed!)

• Duane Smith has an interesting post on Does the universe have a purpose? His answer is, of course, “No”, but he does want to stress human self-made purpose in the universe. I think he, and a number of people he cites, underestimate the significance of the anthropic principle as much as some theologians overestimate it. The fine-tuning of the universe suggests a direction towards the emergence of life. One cannot call this direction “purpose” without postulating God (or something like God), since purpose implies intent. But that direction of the universe is certainly consonant with purpose, and I would say it causes problems for sheer happenstance. (The get-out clause of a multiverse seems to me to be as non-scientific an answer as God, postulating what can never be verifiably known or falsified, and which in any case falls to Occam’s razor.) Purpose, however, remains a theological question, not a scientific one.
• Mayfly has a fascinating review of a book on charitable giving in America. The book claims to show that conservatives are more generous than liberals, and as a proportion of per capita income, poor people are more generous than the wealthy. It seems to have challenged its author’s preconceptions and may confuse yours and mine as well.
• Lingamish criticises a common preacher’s ploy of asking what the “therefore” is there for. He points out that it doesn’t really work for the Greek use of οὖν. It sits alongside some of my own criticisms of etymology in sermons as a sort of parallel point. Blog on, David!
• John Hobbins shares a recurrent dream of his to have the world learn Hebrew. He goes, methinks a little OTT, even for those in sympathy, and Duane Smith calls him on his statement that it’s a cultural priority. Duane finds several other things that rank as higher cultural priorities, from stochastic processes (randomness and probability – are we back to the fine-tuning of the universe here?) to Latin.
• Stephen (aka Q) posts in two parts on Defilement and Sin, and the various confusions between the two. The discussion, and his practical points are interesting, but it does seem to me that the confusion lies in the way these concepts are unified in Torah. His distinction seems to me to belong to late Christian tradition, which having at one point settled on a difference between moral and ritual law, still doesn’t know quite how to assign specific laws to these categories. But his hermeneutical discussion is interesting. (PS Stephen, are you named after a mythical text or a mischievous super-being from another continuum?)
• Finally, a new blog. Polymath, entertainer, logophile, and comedic genius, Stephen Fry, has entered the blogosphere. Long may he post.