Rev Dr Sparky on Real/igion

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Look further. Go farther.

    My older sister was brilliant, bossy, opinionated, obsessive about detail, and passionate about certain issues she had identified as crucial for maintaining civilization as we know it: good manners, attention to duty, unrelenting love for one’s children, clear and practical progressive principles. She cared nothing for religion, but followed politics passionately, applying steely logic to…

  • “my barbaric yelp…”

    I am deliberately misquoting Walt Whitman because: 1) It seems like a catchy way to introduce a post about Yelping; and 2) Mr. Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is still alive and essential. I think I do some of my best writing on platforms like Yelp. I don’t do it all that often, and I’m not…

  • God, Bespoke

    You’re “spiritual, not religious.” You sort of believe in God, “But not a man with a beard on a throne.” (You always say that. Pretty much everyone always says that.) Maybe you’re a cultural Jew or Christian or Muslim, just not observant, or you’ll laugh and say you’re a “recovering Catholic.” You used to go…

  • Welcome to Hell. Please enter your username and password.

    It’s insane. Every day, every hour, my precious and irreplaceable time on earth is being used up — siphoned away — setting Usernames and Passwords and Security Questions. Every productive activity I ever want to do online has to be Protected, whether it’s worth protecting or not. If my computer reboots or updates, my bank becomes stand-offish, claiming it…

  • Look who’s talking now

    In which I awkwardly but sincerely introduce myself to you. If you think about it, with seven-and-a-half billion other personal stories to follow on the planet, it’s pretty audacious to say on a blog platform, “Hey! Look at me! Look at what I wrote!” But that’s what writers do these days, and now I’m doing…

  • Holding hands, holding truth

    This is the time to hold hands. We are down to that minimum grace: to hold hands, tight, one with another, and form a chain of humanity to stand against the losses and challenges our species will face in the coming decades. These decades, I believe along with many others, mark the endgame: the period…

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