It's too damn hot here in Oregon today (100 degrees!) to slave over a hot laptop trying to cook up a blog post.
So, thanks to Marcel Cairo, my favorite after life medium (also, the only one I know), I've got a readymade Church of the Churchless sharing for this over-heated Saturday.
Marcel emailed me a link to Richard Carrier's "From Taoist to Infidel," titling his message It could be you.
Yes, indeed. I saw a lot of myself in this essay. And I'll bet a lot of visitors to this blog will see themselves similarly reflected in Richard's journey from Christianity to Taoism to whatever he calls his philosophical leaning now.
His essay was written in 2001. Amazon has a 2005 book by Carrier, "Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism." Naturally, I just ordered it.
In his piece Richard says:
I still cherish the memory of seeing a picture of three holy men travelling a road together, all laughing with each other. One was a Buddhist, another a Taoist, and the third a Confucian. This image is in fact a regular motif in China. There, the three religions, despite being so doctrinally and intellectually at odds, get along peacefully, even happily, a friendship that is celebrated in such artwork everywhere.
A few years ago I also wrote about the "Three laughers at the tiger ravine." Great way to live – with laughter.
(Reading note: I don't like excessively wide web pages filled with text. Really tough to read. The human eye scans narrow columns much more easily, something newspapers know. So make your browser window smaller or narrower, and you'll be able to read Richard Carrier's essay quite a bit more easily.)
Speaking as a person with a similar philosophical journey behind me, Richard Carrier scares me. His brief bio is surprisingly devoid of creative thought, despite the education specs provided.
Fundamentalist believers, Christians or otherwise, are severely emotionally damaged people. I am not interested in actively battling autistics, under some misconception that their moral compass makes them evil.
Yi.Kes.
Posted by: Edward | June 29, 2008 at 06:21 AM