Mo' Dernity, Mo' Problems

Rome Post

General observations: Dirtier than NYC, although not ridiculously so. Lots of Churches, smoking, beeping, and scatters. The exchange rate stinks. The Romans transcend the bar /coffee shop dichotomy.

Aside from the scantily clad dancers, the gay dance club I went to was much less sketchy than the clubs I've been to in New Haven.

Staying in a hostel saved a lot of money, but there was a definite downside... Getting a good nights sleep could be a challenge, since people were making noise until well past midnight. And the people to bathrooms ratio wasn't so hot.

Next to St. Peters basilica there's a little Church that Pope John Paul II set aside for youth. Wish I'd found it earlier. I went to adoration, rosary, and part of a Mass there (mostly in Italian, but with some English and a bit of French) if you stay after Mass they have a social hour.

Saw the bones of St. Peter, went up the steps by St. John Lateran on my knees (as is required), saw the coliseum, tracings column, and the forums, went in the Pantheon and a number of other churches, visited a lot of Piazzas, and a few museums. Walked by the spot where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Spent thanksgiving with some lovely folks from the Academy American, one of whom I'd actually vaguely known from undergrad. Would have liked to have done a day trip to assess, but I didn't find the time.

Ate too much gellato.

On Friday night I stayed out dancing until around 3:30 AM, and I had to wake up at 6 to go to the train station. I also came down with a case of laryngitis, so that combined with the lack of sleep made the last bit of my trip pretty excruciating. Couldn't wait to get on the plane so I could pass out.

On the flight I started reading Christianity and Classical Culture. It looks at what the Augustan age attempted, both politically and intellectully, and the changes that occured under Constatine and after. So far it's a fun read... I know very little about ancient Rome, and this gives a good overview, connecting literature and politics.

The best thing I saw in Rome: Usually we only get to see the bottom 1/2. Doesn't have quite the same impact when it's just displayed on a monitor.

Excerpt from an Email Exchange

I wrote this in response to someone who asked why God doesn't make his presence more apparent.

Difficult questions. This line of questioning always makes me squirm...it's like - "Hmmm... you believe an all-powerful and all-loving being who never talks to you? Pretty ridiculous." A friend of mine who's an atheist often complains that faith is non-falsifiable... "Something good happened? God's will. Something bad happened? Also God's will! You haven't experienced God? That's because he's a still, small voice. So still and small it might just be your subconscious."

One thing that's helped me is the realization that things get more mysterious as we move up in the chain of being. At the bottom of the chain of being is pure abstraction - logic and math. We can know logical and mathematical truths with a certainty that's otherwise unattainable. When we study physics or biology we have to use adifferent method for finding truth - the scientific method. When we obtain truth using logic we call it a proof, when we obtain truth using science we call it a theory, or, if it's mostly held true over a long period, we call it a law. With science there's always the possibility that a later experiment will show our previous theory to be wrong, and it's possible to imagine the laws of the universe suddenly changing. Moving up to ethics - the human soul is higher in the chain of being than matter, and therefore it's harder to study. You can't conduct an experiment to show it's wrong to lie. Although it's blindingly clear that we've made progress in science, it's a lot less clear that we've made progress in ethics, and this is at least partly because ethics isan inherently more mysterious than science. So I think we can say as a general rule that the more being a being has, the more difficult it isfor the mind to know it. God, having the most being, is the most mysterious.

God could manifest himself to us and explain his will. Why doesn't he do that? Christ asked us to go and preach the good news. If God directly and incontrovertibly manifested himself to everyone, what wouldbe left for me to do? God could have used his omnipotence to convertmankind, but instead he uses broken instruments.

I'll close with a quote from Chesterton - "Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.