The Guardian published a review of an interesting-sounding book, and I thought I would share. The review itself isn’t anything special, I confess, but the book sounds good. It’s not available on Amazon Canada yet, but it appears to be an overview of the history of atheism and all its different forms.
The argument against the first five forms of atheism discussed in this book will be familiar to readers of Gray’s excoriating reviews and the greatest interest for some will lie in his discussion of the two final forms. One is entitled “Atheism without progress”, that is, without any assumption that human beings can be changed for the better…The final chapter, “The atheism of silence”, contains a surprise. It includes a discussion of a nearly forgotten author of a four-volume history of atheism, Fritz Mauthner, who argued for what he called “a godless mysticism”. Gray argues that there is in the end an affinity between the mystical element in Christianity, which stresses that God is beyond words and incomprehensible, and this form of atheism. “A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity and the difference between the two may be less than you think.”
Gratitude entry #11…Today I am grateful for planetary conjunctions. At the moment, in the sky, Venus and Mercury appear about two inches apart if you hold your hand straight towards them and measure. I’ve never seen Mercury before, or rather never realized it if I did. And for the last couple of weeks, I’ve looked at dusk and saw nothing. Mind you, I’m only doing naked eye visuals, nothing with a telescope or anything. But tonight, as I drove home, Venus was very obvious straight ahead of me, and faintly to the right, I could see Mercury. Nice of Venus to provide a simple easy arrow to find it.
I’m hoping on Sunday maybe, or possibly even Friday night, I might get a chance to try for it with the telescope. I’d love to see Comet Lovejoy too, and Orion is pointing the way, but just haven’t nailed it yet.
Gratitude entry #10…Today I am grateful for a new recipe for lasagna. No, I haven’t turned into Garfield. The lasagna was a vegetarian recipe that my wife found that uses the Epicure steamer. I had a long day at work, didn’t get home until late, had to heat it up after everyone else was long done and had left the kitchen, and it was really good. Even re-heated.
That’s it for today — just grateful for a good meal, something different than our norm. Onward in the journey…
Gratitude entry #9…Today I am grateful for an impromptu organizing session. As you can see from my blog, I’ve been on a “goal” kick. My wife, by contrast, is more on a “get organized” kick as her main goal, with her targets ranging from desks to playrooms.
As mentioned too in my goals, this year’s big goal for us together is a kitchen renovation. We have a decent amount of cupboard space in our kitchen, good size, but the island shape sucks. It’s got a small bend in it to make it more open going into the playroom and to give a bit more room by the table, but it really screws up the kitchen area when you’re loading the dishwasher.
But this isn’t about that. This is about 22 shelves we have in our cupboards. Today, out of the blue, we reorganized the stuff on 18 of those shelves. It wasn’t planned, it just sort of mushroomed and we went crazy in the kitchen. We turfed a few things, rearranged just about everything. Well, not quite. The cereal stayed put (it’s the only shelf high enough and deep enough). Time will tell if we got it right, but I like the basics so far. A bunch of related things were kind of spread out before, and they’re all together (tea, coffee, a teapot, hot chocolate, etc.). Our pasta sauce is with the grains they go with. We ditched the “extra” rice bag we had up on another shelf, poured it in a smaller container, put it with the other rice and the rest of the grains and pasta.
We also decided that we have a past affinity for alcohol that isn’t really current, so we have a lot of small bottles of stuff we don’t drink. I think the cottage will inherit some of it. We’re not crazy, we kept some. But really, when am I going to use a daiquiri mix or a blue curacao? I don’t even know if I spelled those right! About the only lament I had was a really nice bottle of vodka that I once planned to consume.
That’s it for today — gratefulness for an impromptu organizing session that looks like it was highly effective. Onward in the journey…
Gratitude post for day #8…Today I am grateful for my son, which is likely to be a common theme as I’m grateful for him every second of every day. He fills my bucket by just being.
But tonight we instituted the first official “Boys Night”. He pointed out to me that we’ve had lots of boys nights out, just the two of us, but I wanted him to see this one as something special that we plan, we commit to doing. Was it anything amazing? Nope, we just went out for dinner at McDonald’s, and then off to Chapters to spend the $$ he got for Christmas from his aunt Sharon. Mommy and Daddy added a bit to it and he bought more Magformers. It was awesome watching his brain work tonight, for two totally separate events.
First, before we left, he showed me the “worksheet” that he did at daycare. His daycare provider, Ana, has another kid a bit older than Jacob and she likes to give them homework while they are there — little math worksheets or spelling worksheets. Do you remember J is in Senior Kindergarten? It doesn’t stop him from beating the other kid (Grade 3) on some stuff, particularly spelling. This isn’t the fun part that he beats him, but that he can do it at all, and so well individually. But he showed me his worksheet tonight — Ana has upped the game for the new year. Jacob was doing his multiplication tables for 8x and 9x tonight. 20 questions? J got 17 of them right. Including nailing 9×5. When I asked him again on the spot what a couple of them were, no problem, he nailed them. I think I did multiplication tables in Grade 4!
Second, at the store tonight, he had a choice of three Magformers kits. And while I helped him a bit with his analysis of what was the difference between the boxes, he said “no” to one that was very similar but didn’t have wheels, and “no” to a much larger set that also didn’t have wheels nor the colours he wanted. He knew the other one was more expensive, more pieces, and just plain bigger, but it wasn’t what he wanted — he found the set he wanted, that met his needs, and with the exception of one minor change of mind (he found another set at the back of the shelf with better colours), he worked it all out himself. Then when we went to pay, I had given him too much, not knowing the exact price and wanting him to pay for it in person, but he knew that he didn’t have to give all of it to her and gave the rest back to me. He even commented that we saved money and we didn’t have to “use all of your extra money, Daddy”.
He may not have opened up about his day much today, as that is always hit or miss, but I had a good night and he went to bed happy. He also knows what we’re doing next week, and he’s down with the plan (and knows he can’t tell Mom what the project is!).
I go to bed with an extra full heart tonight. Thanks, cub.
