Here's a response to our recent episode from C Derick Varn, aka Skepoet: Read his "partially informed review."
So, yes, other blogs that take the time to talk about us coherently will probably get a link-back, if you've not noticed that before. You may have to send the link directly to me, though, as my narcissistic Googling of our own podcast name has become much less constant of late. Come on, religion bloggers! Give us your take on the dilemma!
-Mark Linsenmayer
Ernest Prabhakar says
November 25, 2011 at 4:13 pm> Come on, religion bloggers! Give us your take on the dilemma!
Your wish is my command, Mark. 🙂
http://2transform.us/2011/11/25/partially-examined-assumptions-from-pel-46-plato-on-ethics-religion/
Mark Linsenmayer says
November 25, 2011 at 7:14 pmThanks, E. Matt didn’t say he didn’t like the personal God, but only that saying God is personal and also saying that He is Himself what Plato means by the form of the good (one way of interpreting “God is love”) doesn’t make any sense.
Our main point is usually to adequately treat the text. I’m gratified that you find our own views more fun to hear about, and there are definitely some episodes where I’d like us done with the exposition more quickly to give our own takes. In this case, the thesis I put out there that we’re justified in advocating any deep seated and still-approved-after-analysis need is something I was developing through the previous episode: if you’re a moral sentiment theorist, you need to be able to give the right verdict on cases like gay sex that plenty of people’s sentiments run against, but which the permissibly of really needs to be acknowledged by any educated person in this day and age.
So my point wasn’t to argue for gay sex in particular, and no one else in the discussion was going to be arguing on the other side of that anyway. (If you need an argument, go watch Brokeback Mountain or any number of other sources; the choice in light of such information about real people’s needs is to acknowledge that this victimless act is OK or admit to being a heartless bastard.)
My point was to throw out this phenomenological view of ethics to see how this could or couldn’t connect up with Plato, which we did discuss a bit. It’s an idea I returned to briefly in our M-P discussion (ep 48, not posted yet). Basically, outlining and defending your own view is much harder than discussing the text, and grad school did make us pretty sensitive to fast, sloppy formulations, and I think that, with the related sentiment that it’s the texts that folks are mostly interested in, not us, does inhibit us sometimes. Thanks for the food for thought on that account.