Apologia, Inc.

Apologia, Inc. strikes another blow in the eternal war with True Unbelievers, Ltd. ... Roger Scruton, a little less inscrutable and a little more lucid than usual, has penned an anti-Dawkins/Dennett, et al. whup-down in the virtual pages of Axess... teetering at times perilously close to stained-glass Cartesianism, though lite on the piffle (but, my goddess, what was all that folderol about various "conditions" and how "astonishing" they all were/are/is????).

I set it as my blog epigraph today, but since epigraphs on Blogger don't show up in the archives (they didn't used to, anyway), I want to share with you one of my favorite lines from Scruton's essay, in all its direct, noble, Henry Adams-esque beauty: "The great tapestry of waves and particles, of fields and forces, of matter and energy, is pinned down only at the edges, where events are crystallized in the observing mind."

OK, I wouldn't have gone with a passive verb in the final clause. But... a lovely and important riposte to the wishful thinking of materialists everywhere and their dorm-room dream of atoms and the void--the Real as a load of billiard-ball kibbles scrupulously adhering to the Ideal Gas Law... Scruton gets into a very interesting and admirably pithy meditation on consciousness as he approaches his peroration (even giving a shout-out to my homie Krishna!!!), including further wonderful observations that I'm tempted to quote but want to make you read because Scruton is one of the good guys and seems to evolving towards the tantric-empiricist school that includes, among others, Yours Truly and chaos theory rock star Stuart Kauffman (I swear I'm going to blog about Kaufman's new book, and the linked article...one day... )...

if you ever wondered what Nietzsche meant by "God is dead," and how that could actually be an affirmation and how Nietzsche could actually be a deeply spiritual writer--the answer is in the last three paragraphs of Scruton's essay, though he's a bit more nostalgic, it sounds like, for the C of E than for the Eleusinian Mysteries.

What else is going on? Sophia and I are finally scheduled to close on our new house tomorrow, after many scary and frustrating delays... "Temple of Doom" might not be the best name for it, since it's not just mine but Sophia's and her kids'... "Temple of Webkinz"?? "Temple of Cartoon Network"? "Temple of Algebra"? It will be a temple of love... and poetry... and the Divine in all Her polyfloral, mellifluously shifting forms... growing vinelike up the walls of matter to kiss Herself in the sunlight of spirit...