Anthony B. Pinn: from the Black church to atheism

The more I see Anthony B. Pinn, the more I like him. Also, he turns out to be a fellow Buffalonian. Sunday March 9 he gave a talk in Washington DC under the auspices of the Center for Free Inquiry and its affiliate African Americans for Humanism, in conjunction with the publication of his memoir Writing God's Obituary: How a Good Methodist Became a Better Atheist.

Because the arguments concerning religious beliefs, religions, God, etc., are all old hat to me, I'm not interested in them, and I find storytelling much more valuable, as seeing how people develop and react to their social and ideological environment in context is more revealing to me. In Dr. Pinn's case, we see his total immersion in family and church in childhood, his growing pains and doubts in adolescence, his experience of a diversity in New York city he had not known, and the conclusions he drew from the discrepancies between Bible belief and coping with real world issues. He also gave his reasons for continuing to intervene in Religious Studies rather than to wash his hands of the whole subject as many of his fellow atheists would prefer. One of those reasons is to seek to minimize the harm caused by religion.

There were a few audience members so convinced of the power of reason they could not fully appreciate how it could be resisted to the last atom of one's being. I tend to be pessimistic about the prospects, but we all have our job to do.

So by all means, check out Dr. Pinn, see him if he shows up in your town.

William R. Jones, Jr., author of 'Is God a White Racist?', dies

Here is an obituary:

Rest in Peace – Rev. Bill R. Jones, Rev Josh Pawelek, July 20, 2012

Jones died on Friday, July 13, 2012, close to his 79th birthday.

I have posted about him several times. One of my posts is referenced in this obituary:

Ralph Dumain has a helpful review of Is God a White Racist? here. 

Descartes' Bones & The Best of All Possible Worlds

I never got around to continuing my review of Russell Shorto's Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, nor did I ever get around to reviewing Steven Nadler's The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil. The former has objective content that merits attention regardless of Shorto's spin on the subject suggesting a moral for our time. Shorto is a journalist. Nadler is a serious scholar of Spinoza and of that period. Here is a paragraph I wrote on 21 July 2010:

The last two books I'm reading are about early modern philosophy: Russell Shorto's Descartes’ Bones and Steven Nadler's The Best of All Possible Worlds. The latter is about the theological-metaphysical problematic of Leibniz, Malebranche, and Arnauld. [This] . . . coincidentally dovetails with parts of the former book, which I'm still reading. Nadler refrains from drawing too many conclusions from this material, unlike Shorto, who thinks like a shallow journalist in reading today's conflict between faith and reason into the past. However, one can draw more severe conclusions from Nadler's book, should one choose to adduce the evidence presented therein to condemn Christianity—not just religion in general but Christianity in particular. I will write about this, assuming I can catch up to my proliferating ambitions.