I was listening to the local NPR station one evening and they were playing an interview with the author of a children’s book called “Tuck Everlasting”. The author’s name is Natalie Babbitt, and the book tells a story about a family (the Tucks) living way out in the middle of some forest. In their travels, they came across a spring of water one day, and took a few drinks from it. It turned out that this particular springwater has the power to make you immortal. They came across the spring a long, long time ago, and by all rights they should all be dead by the time of the story. But they (and their horse, which also took a few sips) hadn’t aged a day. And it don’t look like they are going to.

In the story, a little girl from a local village decides one day to take a hike in the woods, and happens across the same spring. She’s thirsty and is about to drink up, when someone in the Tuck family comes across her and yells out “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He runs toward her and leaps and tackles her in slo-mo, just as she raises her cupped hands to her lips. Well, maybe not (this book was written in 1975, before everything had to be a violent action-adventure in the Terminator style); but they still dissuaded her from taking that fateful sip.

There’s a lot more to the plot, but the leitmotif of Tuck Everlasting is about whether anyone should really want to live forever. Babbitt doesn’t think so, and thus  »  continue reading …

I read an interesting article on the RealClearReligion web site entitled “The Decline of Philosophy“. Hmmm, so someone else thinks that philosophy today ain’t what it used to be. I am presently listening to a CD course from the Teaching Company on philosophical metaphysics, and I too have some reservations about what modern philosophy is concerning itself with. The course is taught by Dr. David K. Johnson, a young philosophy professor at Kings College in Pennsylvania. Professor Johnson goes out of his way to make ontology relevant to the masses, and specializes in integrating pop cultural into his lectures, especially movies (he also repeatedly mentions his love for the sweet potato fries at Johnny Rocket’s).

And yet, so much of Dr. Johnson’s discussion and argument just seem irrelevant to me (despite my penchant for “deeper meanings” to things). Johnson’s lectures mostly boil down to a word games and battles between philosophers as to how cleverly they can apply the rules of logic. I get the impression from Johnson that he and his fellow modern philosophers certainly are very clever, but they don’t convey much that gives a better understanding of our selves, our lives and the environment and universe around us. Johnson has a very excitable lecturing style, and his enthusiasm almost bubbles over whenever he leaves us in a tangle of contradictory propositions and unanswerable questions. Ummmm . . . whatever happened to the old Greek philosophical notion that philosophy is to help us understand deeper truths? If Johnson’s course is any indication, philosophers today seem to be saying “there is no truth”.

The RCR article was written by a Catholic priest named Robert Barron (who is President of Mundelein Seminary near Chicago). Fr. Barron hasn’t taken notice of David Johnson, but he does open up his article by zeroing in on Dr. Daniel Dennett, who is one of the more outspoken proponents of “the new Atheism“. Barron believes that Dennett  »  continue reading …