Rosenhouse dishes Gutting

I wrote disparagingly the other day about the vague nonsense Gary Gutting pushes in his NYT column, The Stone. It seems Jason Rosenhouse is also not impressed.

As always, I love the way Rosenhouse dissects mushy-brained practitioners of apologetics. Go read it if you enjoy such things, as I do. (Perhaps "enjoy" is too mild a term. I relish JR's posts.)

Gary Gutting explains his wide stance

I've always wondered why the writing of Gary Gutting, who produces "The Stone", a philosophy column at the New York Times, is so mushy and ineffective. He hasn't written one solid column yet. I know because I've read quite a few of them. He is the king of accommodationist thinking, always trying to find a parking spot for religion.

In today's column, I found this:

Critics outside the Church will ask how I adhere to an institution that has so many deep flaws.  My first response is that the Catholic tradition of thought and practice is the only stance toward religion that, in William James’s phrase, is a “live option” for me — the only place I feel at home.  Simply to renounce it would be, as I said at the outset, to lose my self-respect — to deny part of my moral core.

Gary, no one finds a moral core in Roman Catholicism. Because it's just not there. But thanks for answering my question about why you always present religion as compatible with reality.

But it's not, Blanche; it's not.