Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I think there are (to some extent, were, for a secularizing society such as ours) clear reasons of both distinctive personal importance and avoidance of deep-seated social conflict to provide special public allowance and prot…

In reply to mlyoung57. I guess my response here is the same as my response to John on heinousness. I don’t think a realist interpretation of religion is either necessary or sufficient for taking it seriously, and don’t think that fictionali…

In reply to John Davenport. I agree that there has to be a “heinousness” constraint, but I don’t think that’s specific to fictionalism. There has to be a heinousness constraint on anything we do, whether religious or otherwise, …

I really enjoyed that piece. Especially your entertaining, autobiographical story-telling. You are quite good at that (with a twist in format, you’d have some pretty good stand-up comedy). There is much of this that I cannot relate to “from…

In reply to John Davenport. Just as reconciling a “too heinous” limit on allowance of religious thought and practice is tricky, so is the idea of fictionalist religious thought and practice being too far removed from genuine virtue, value, …

This is an interesting new journal. As for religious freedom, I certainly think anyone is free to try out ideas from virtually any religion (maybe a few are just too heinous, but I won’t try to specify a limit here). And free to combine ideas fro…

Your original examples, Irfan, do show just how demanding a religious Sunni Islam is. Yet I think we can often distinguish between core aspects of a rule — e.g. prayer every day — from the most exacting details (which could become so finely…

In reply to mlyoung57. It doesn’t appear to have gotten a more-than-fictional audience… LikeLiked by 1 person

In reply to mlyoung57. God will punish you for that. Or at least “punish” you. LikeLiked by 1 person