Three Philosophers jolted my taste buds late Friday afternoon. I wasn't sure whether it was nasty or good, but I knew right away it was a beer to be sipped, not gulped greedily (though, if bad, perhaps beer bonged). I continued to drink it slowly--nursing it like a 105-year-old with the flu--letting my taste buds settle down after the initial jolt. By the middle of the bottle, I had concluded, "This is some righteous stuff." I give it an "8."
After the 60-minute beer, Marie and I went out to eat with some neighbors, then to the drinking club to visit with an old friend that came back to town for a visit (the digger who wrote this post). We then grabbed some McFlurries at McDonald's and joined the two oldest for some late night TV surfing and stand-up at Comedy Central.
Man, there was one comedian that was slaying me. It's difficult to convey verbal humor on the page, so I'll just mention one joke. Commenting on a news article that said there were "69 unprovoked shark attacks," the comedian said, "Do you really need to say 'unprovoked?' Are people out there, 'Hey shark, you lookin' at me? Take a bite on this, buddy.'"
Today, we pawn the Ms (Michael, Meg, and Max) off with my parents for about nine hours. They're going to my niece's third birthday party. I'll spend the rest of my day reading, writing, napping (five Oberons and the Three Philosophers have me feeling a little weak), and begging my wife to respect a man on a couch.
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I don't care how much work they put into it, I'm not drinking it: coffee made from dung.
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If you like literary history, you'll enjoy this piece about two Jacks (London and Kerouac) that wrote books about being on the road (published in 1907 and 1957, respectively). It's mostly about London. Excerpt:
In the years between 1907 and 1957 America changed radically--it became a world power and developed a full-blown mass culture--and those social and cultural changes are reflected in these two books. The Road depicts an industrial America in which hobos and tramps are an integral part of the system--"a reserve army of the unemployed," as Marxists have called it--who help keep wages down. On the Road describes a postindustrial America in which cars are everywhere, almost everyone can afford a car, a radio and a television, and the mass media shape the lives of American citizens. For Kerouac the way to break out of American conformity was to drop out, of course, to reject material possessions, embrace spirituality and seek out the "fellaheen," as he called them--the indigenous peoples of the world.
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I've always been intrigued by the Mormons. Some people logically tend to believe that bad theology produces bad people, but the empirical evidence offered by the Mormon population would refute such a belief decisively (almost as decisively as the flip-side empirical evidence offered by America's mass of lukewarm and renegade Catholics). The fantastic claims of Mormonism make me shake my head (especially their historical claims), and then I meet Mormons in real life and am consistently impressed. Hence my intrigue.
If you're similarly intrigued, you'll find a great discussion and links starting at this Ross Douthat post. I waded through a lot of the stuff, and here's what I came away with: Mormons admit that their historical claims (and maybe some of the theology) are incredible, but they're still a young church and developing their doctrines (by comparison to Christianity, their writers are the chronological equivalent to, maybe, Irenaeus). Moreover, they have no systematic theology, like, say, the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The upshot: You can't argue with them. If you prove them wrong on one point, they can claim that the point isn't integral to Mormonism. If you refute one claim, they can say that the claim shouldn't be taken literally. And the thing is, it is a young religion, so their dodging is understandable. It helps me see why so many join, especially when their rank-and-file members offer such a compelling example to the outside world.
Catholics and Christians of every stripe ought to take notice: The best apologetics are personal: the example offered by the believers themselves. The great Catholic apologist Scott Hahn mentions this a couple of times in his new book, Reasons to Believe. Mormons are living proof.
