A Return

Sorry for the hiatus- more regular posting will resume shortly. In the meantime, here's some stuff that's been floating around in my brain:

“When enough people share a delusion, it loses its status as a psychosis and gets a religious tax exemption instead.” - Ronald de Sousa, Why Think? Evolution and the Rational Mind

"I have always said that the reason why philosophers are so disliked on university campuses is that we are brighter than anyone else and have trouble concealing the fact." - Michael Ruse, Literary Review of Canada

"As a phenomenon, I am in his debt because it turns out that - like Shakespeare and Coca-Cola - he is a brand, with brand values we respond to." - Gyles Brandreth on Oscar Wilde in the Times Online

"Pop sociologists would have us believe that the distinction between spirituality and religion arose in American culture about the same time as the musical Hair. Actually, the concept of spirituality (individualistic, mystical, pluralist) as distinct from religion (institutional, creedal, orthodox) originated in the 1830s with the flowering of Emerson's distinctive variety of Romanticism." - Michael Robertson in The Chronicle Review

"Er aber ging hin in die Wüste eine Tagereise und kam hinein und setzte sich unter einen Wacholder und bat, daß seine Seele stürbe, und sprach: Es ist genug, so nimm nun, HERR, meine Seele; ich bin nicht besser denn meine Väter." - 1 Kings 19:4