Arbitrary Marks

If, for Kierkegaard, Religiousness A is characterized by an individual’s attempts to achieve self-annihilation in order to attain god[1], then the secret, discussed in Four Upbuilding Discourses is that such religiosity is ultimately futile. The self, he says, is “capable of nothing at all” with regard to the external.
This is an [...]

If you’ve been reading my blog for a few years, then you may have noticed a gradual shift from the topic of religious pluralism (either in metaphysical or epistemological terms) to the topic of consciousness/mind.  That’s because I think, rather than starting with a highly convoluted set of truth claims, experiences and practices embedded in [...]

I nearly called this a "linkfest", but the occasion isn’t festive. This post will contain links as I find them to the ongoing situation in Myanmar, particularly the religious-political links. It seems I’m not the only one dissatisfied with the coverage, see Diane Winston at HuffPo. Below for links.

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The title of this post is from an article published in 1996 in Pacific Affairs, Vol. 69, No. 2.  In a little under twenty pages, Josef Silverstein surveys the history of Myanmar (then Burma) and the development of concepts of political freedom.  Aung San Suu Kyi, the central figure in the democratic movement, has been explicit [...]

So why are the Theravadan Buddhist monks in Myanmar leading protests for democracy? That was my immediate question when I saw the news. In looking over the coverage of the protests, the stories I read mostly said things like the monks are the "highly revered moral core of Burmese society" and then moved [...]

I’ve been negligent in not drawing attention to this story, which has been going on for a while, but is now heating up.  Monks and nuns in Myanmar had been protesting peacefully for democracy. At first the police were respectful.  Soon, though, things grew violent, with police opening fire on protestors and eventually barricading monks in [...]

Due to coursework (imagine that), I’ve procrastinated on writing this post. Too, it seems like I’m painted into a corner, so to speak. If I try to avoid skepticism about personal communication, then am I committed to embracing any claims about a Superbeing? But skepticism about human communication and identity leads us [...]

I laughed out loud when I moderated this spam comment, so I am letting it through, below the fold (de-linked, of course). I immediately thought of this sketch by Monty Python. And the levels of irony were too much to pass up.

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Jeong and Patrick have some thoughts in response to my thought experiment about the revelatory Superbeing.  I have a draft follow-up, but no time to put it up until this evening.  I do think that there are a lot of questions bound together here, and Jeong hits upon one of them: how we understand personal [...]

Because I haven’t gotten any bites on my earlier post about religious experience, I’m going to wait another day before putting up my tentative thoughts. Take a look at it and see if you have any intuitions.
In the meantime, I am going to draw your attention to a new site which purports to be [...]