In the end, pure existence (God) can be neither stated nor deduced logically

Strange Constellations from Larval Subjects by larvalsubjects

Here we have this dialogue among such different perspectives, yet there’s a fascinating cross-fertilization. Graham, for example, has mentioned that he’s read Kripke’s Naming and Necessity more times than any other work of philosophy, and after he told me this I could see it in every furrow of his thought. What strange cross connections and what promising new vectors of thought. Toscano put together an anthology on Badiou entitled Think Again – which, I felt, was a brilliant title for our time –but perhaps our time is the time of “start again”.

Re: The former Incarnations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—by Anurag Banerjee
by auroman on Mon 20 Apr 2009 09:30 PM IST Profile Permanent Link

Ah! You should read the works of Dr Ian Stevenson who died recently. He did painstaking research on reincarnation. He even found cases where wound marks caused by murder in previous lives appeared as birth marks in this life.

New Films on practice of the Integral Yoga from Sri Aurobindo Yoga Website by VladNesh
Dear friends!

Two new films: “Depression and Enthusiasm” and “How to open head centres” are added to the page “The Integral Yoga Practice”. These films explore two important objectives in Yoga - transformation of the Vital and opening the head centres to the Mother’s Force. You can see these films on the page: “The Integral Yoga Practice”

David Hutchinson, Debashish Banerji and Rich Carlson Respond to Sraddhalu
from Science, Culture and Integral Yoga™ by Debashish

We do not question the right of people to have opinions; what we question is the right to impose these opinions on others. The website iyfundamentalism.info demonstrates that this attempt to impose opinions and beliefs upon others, along with its corresponding demonizations of the author is tantamount to fundamentalism and contrary to the teaching of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We question the moral and spiritual purpose in censoring the opinion of a scholar by seeking punitive actions in courts of law, and the legitimacy of such a legal approach in any spiritual endeavor, least of all that of Sri Aurobindo.

Some things I've been reading: Cheshire, Butalia, Kakar, Dharwadker, and Malik
from The Middle Stage by Chandrahas

Lastly, here is an essay, "Mistaken Identity", on changing attitudes towards issues of individual and group identity by the British writer Kenan Malik, whose work I always read with care

("Historically, anti-racists challenged both the practice of racism and the process of racialisation; that is, both the practice of discriminating against people by virtue of their race and the insistence that an individual can be defined by the group to which he or she belongs. Today's multiculturalists argue that to fight racism one must celebrate group identity. The consequence has been the resurrection of racial ideas and imprisonment of people within their cultural identities.")

Malik is also the author of the recent book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy, and some the arguments made in that book – that Rushdie's opponents may have lost the battle, but they have won the larger war against free speech – are presented here in "Shadow of the Fatwa"

("Critics of Rushdie no more spoke for the Muslim community than Rushdie himself did. Both represented different strands of opinion within Muslim communities. Rushdie's critics spoke for some of the most conservative strands. The campaign against The Satanic Verses was not to protect the Muslim communities from unconscionable attack from anti-Muslim bigots, but to protect their own privileged position within those communities from political attack from radical critics, to assert their right to be the true voice of Islam by denying legitimacy to such critics. They succeeded at least in part, because secular liberals embraced them as the authentic voice of the Muslim community.")

More Agamben Notes: Il sacramento del linguaggio, §§22-29
from An und für sich by Adam Kotsko

§22. This section discusses so-called “ontological arguments” for the existence of God. Agamben claims that what’s really at stake in Anselm’s argument is that id quo maius cogitari non potest is the most fitting name for God — which ammounts to “that experience of language in which it is impossible to separate name and being, speech and thing.” Agamben highlights the places where Anselm explicitly mentions saying “God” (or the definition) as well as the original title Fides quaerens intellectum, which seems to link it up with the oath. The name of God, then, represents “the status of the logos in the dimension of the fides-oath, in which nomination immediately realizes the existence of that which it names.” He then says that Alain of Lyle and Aquinas do basically the same thing with the argument. In the end, pure existence (God) can be neither stated nor deduced logically: it can’t be signified, only sworn. A footnote discusses the place of the name in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Ultimately, we have to have faith in language.

[Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton - Product Description:

Terry Eagleton's witty and polemical 'Reason, Faith, and Revolution' is bound to cause a stir among scientists, theologians, people of faith and people of no faith, as well as general readers eager to understand the God Debate. On the one hand, Eagleton demolishes what he calls the 'superstitious' view of God held by most atheists and agnostics, and offers in its place a revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel. On the other hand, he launches a stinging assault on the betrayal of this revolution by institutional Christianity. There is little joy here, then, either for the anti-God brigade - Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in particular - nor for many conventional believers. Instead, Eagleton offers his own vibrant account of religion and politics in a book that ranges from the Holy Spirit to the recent history of the Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers. Amazon.co.uk.