― Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat
Rain, rain, rain; and yet more rain, and...
I am in the third day of a head (becoming chest) cold.
In other words, a good day to do a post to the Blog.
Actually, I have been out and about somewhat, including a visit to a local coffee shop to meet up with interesting people, and some minor shopping.
There is no longer any drama to report on the house project. All the interesting work has been done (you recall, knocking down walls, building a sun-room and extending the deck, agonizing choices about colors, painting, and the like). As I have remarked elsewhere, lately it has been clean up, fix up, and repair. To do myself justice, I have just about finished painting the deck and put up an outdoor clothes line (something you can hang out the washing to dry on, saving lots of energy). Hardly anything sufficiently of note to post in another place.
Meanwhile, this is a update on "the state of Me".
Which, apart from this cold (mercifully tending to be brief or at least not too inconveniencing), is not so bad at all.
In fact, I have been greatly enjoying some learning on several fronts. Driven by personal need and also the need to do another posting to the Belief Blog, I have been reading in cosmology, particularly books by Brian Greene (The Fabric of the Cosmos, and The Hidden Reality, and would really like to get to reading his The Elegant Universe) Although these have been best sellers, I will admit that it takes some fortitude to read them all the way through. If you live in the US, these books have their video counterparts in the Public Broadcasting Service's Nova series. Since PBS has the copy-rite, these may be accessible via the Internet elsewhere. I get them by streaming video from Amazon.com.
While I decline to have TV (one of the more pernicious components of current life), I do have a TV set and special router to access a wealth of information via broadband Internet and streaming video. And no interminable and constant interruptions by commercial advertisements!
Getting back to cosmology...these readings provide an excellent review of the progress astronomy, physics, and mathematics have made over the last two hundred years in describing the world around us and, indeed, our own very selves.
A remark by Einstein (that he believed in Spinoza's God) has taken me back to review the work of this amazing Seventeenth Century philosopher and then, sideways as it were, into that century when scientific empiricism was beginning to stir, and intellectual life was beginning to set itself loose from the bondage of religious authority and the 'armchair' thinking of traditional philosophical analysis. Despite that I had four years study of Philosophy in my first degree, I had paid little regard to Spinoza. Par for the course, really, as until recent times, he has been greatly overlooked. A book I have enjoyed and found extremely useful is by Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic, which delightfully tells the tale of Leibniz and Spinoza, and their parallel ideas.
Spinoza laid the foundation for the argument for separation of church and state and, as importantly, for the separation of scientific inquiry from subservience to theological dicta. Actually, he was the 'bad boy' of theology as well as philosophy, in an age when most thinkers still felt the need to doff their caps to religious authority. He pushed on into areas of thought and analysis too daunting for others, sometimes at great risk to himself. Spinoza forswore wealth to pursue philosophy, lived a life humble in all respects, making his living as a lens-maker. His excellence as an artisan put him in contact with leading figures in microscopy and astronomy. He had a wide correspondence that included Isaac Newton.
Nowadays, he has been rediscovered by cosmologists and also by neurologists (for his ideas on free will and emotions). Just in case you might want to follow up the latter, I recommend Antonio Damasio's book; Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain.
I have also gained a new respect for Jewish thinking in the matter of God. Especially Amy-Jill Levine's 'The Misunderstood Jew' and the most readable 'The Gifts of the Jews", by Thomas Cahill (a fast and informative read from Sumerian times, through the story of Abraham, to the return of the Jews to Canaan, with penetrating commentary on the lasting contributions of Jewish thought to our times).
If you want to get a better understanding of the Bible, I suggest you try: Whose Bible Is It; A Short History of the Scriptures, by Jaroslav Pelikan. If you can access the PBS Nova series, The Hidden Treasures of the Bible is an unbeatable modern summary of the history of the Hebrew Scriptures and a good match to The Gifts of the Jews, mentioned above.
None of this may interest you all that much but it will let you into what has been interesting me these last several weeks.
It is just over 50 years since my graduation from theological seminary and subsequent ordination to the Christian Ministry. It turns out that the mid-seventies onward (when I was more interested in clinical and neuro-psychology) was quite an exciting time for biblical scholarship, biblical archaeology, and serious inquiry into how theology might better serve modern thinking. It has been fun catching up.
