A little Against the Day semi-religious day to celebrate?

[Ian Livingston]

Someone recently posted a link to an NYPL presentation of a Zizek
lecture titled, "God Without the Sacred." The emcee introducing The Z
says of him that he is a self-described "Christian Atheist," a term I
have been contemplating since hearing. It holds some juice, I think.
It is easy to say of yourself that you are an atheist because you
cannot rationally believe in theistic agencies causing transient
temporal effects in the lives of individuals. On the other hand, our
metaphorical web is nevertheless constructed of threads bound to the
framework of Christian thought and traditions, if we are raised in the
West. Even if you never attended a church in your life, much of modern
science is founded in Judeo-Christian beginning-and-endgame frameworks
that necessarily imply some sort of theistic influence on the nature
of what scientists eventually define as real, so your thinking is
influenced by Christianity by way of your secular education. I suppose
it's useful to acknowledge that up front when engaging in
philosophical speculations. Maybe, too, when writing definitive novels
reflecting somewhat of the ethos of an era. Jung seems similarly
inclined in his explicit embrace of the foundations of Western culture
and psychology while turning to a more neutral, scientific means of
quantifying the impact of what we try very hard not to know about
ourselves.

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting question.  I'd say certainly not a Christian -
> but almost as clearly not an atheist.  A pagan, a believer in chthonic
> forces, a Bloomian neo-gnostic daemon worshiper...
>
> On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 2:51 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> We seem to know from his books that TRP likes Christmas...as happy time.
>>
>> We think he is probalby no longer a Christian. See books, passim.
>>
>> But in Against the Day he dives furthest trying to get to The Word itself
>> through the Orthodox, Coptic, Byzantine Christian tradition, which claims to
>> be unbroken---when he tests Christianity at all......
>>
>> So, Merry Against the Day Christmas?
>>
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> --
> Richard Ryan
> New York and the World
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
> Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
>                                 --Robert Frost
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."