But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age. http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/03/michel_onfray_o.html
But Onfray has deliberately rejected the incestuous and corrupt Parisian mediatic-politico-academic microcosm and its seductive but ephemeral blandishments, and insists on living in the small Normandy town of Argentan where he was born, just 57 km. from Caen. Free from the distractions of urban mundanities, Onfray devotes his time exclusively to his intellectual work, which helps explain his astonishing output at such a relatively young age.
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/03/michel_onfray_o.html
The rest of it is well worth reading and might change your impression of Onfray.
Sarkozy: I'm no more able to prove the existence of God than you are to deny it. Onfray: That's no good. It's the person who posits the existence of something who must be able to justify it. Onfray strikes me as the idiot in that interchange: the very definition of religion is that you do not "justify" your faith/god in the same way as you justify something rationally or empirically. Sarkozy is in the right here.
Sarkozy: I'm no more able to prove the existence of God than you are to deny it. Onfray: That's no good. It's the person who posits the existence of something who must be able to justify it.
Onfray strikes me as the idiot in that interchange: the very definition of religion is that you do not "justify" your faith/god in the same way as you justify something rationally or empirically. Sarkozy is in the right here.
Sorry, B-K, but if that's what you think then I'm afraid you're the "idiot". It's not the "definition of religion" that you don't justify it - are you not aware of the LONG tradition of Christian theology which has attempted to justify its beliefs, e.g.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, formulated the famous "five ways" by which God's existence can be demonstrated philosophically: ... Two other historically important "proofs" are the ontological argument and the moral argument. The former, made famous by St. Anselm in the eleventh century and defended in another form by Descartes, holds that it would be logically contradictory to deny God's existence. http://mb-soft.com/believe//text/argument.htm
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, formulated the famous "five ways" by which God's existence can be demonstrated philosophically:
... Two other historically important "proofs" are the ontological argument and the moral argument. The former, made famous by St. Anselm in the eleventh century and defended in another form by Descartes, holds that it would be logically contradictory to deny God's existence.
http://mb-soft.com/believe//text/argument.htm
Onfray is quite right the onus is on the person claiming something to give reasons to support their claim - as Christian theologians have tried - unsuccessfully - to do. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Onfray's latest book, Traité d'Athéologie (Paris, Editions Grasset), became the number one best-selling nonfiction book in France for months when it was published in the Spring of 2005 (the word "atheologie" Onfray borrowed from Georges Bataille). This book has just repeated its popular French success in Italy, where it was published in September 2005 and quickly soared to number one on Italy's bestseller lists. An acerbic, stylish, and erudite polemic against received religions in general and Christianity in particular, Onfray's latest book is a powerful antidote to the tsunami of religious fanaticism that is engulfing the Western world as well as the Islamic countries, and which is rapidly turning the United States into a theocracy. [NB] On the occasion of the publication of his Traité, Onfray debated on French national TV a panel of Catholic theologians that included the new Cardinal of Paris, Monseigneur Vingt-Trois (and swatted them all down like flies).
Onfray's latest book, Traité d'Athéologie (Paris, Editions Grasset), became the number one best-selling nonfiction book in France for months when it was published in the Spring of 2005 (the word "atheologie" Onfray borrowed from Georges Bataille). This book has just repeated its popular French success in Italy, where it was published in September 2005 and quickly soared to number one on Italy's bestseller lists.
An acerbic, stylish, and erudite polemic against received religions in general and Christianity in particular, Onfray's latest book is a powerful antidote to the tsunami of religious fanaticism that is engulfing the Western world as well as the Islamic countries, and which is rapidly turning the United States into a theocracy.
[NB] On the occasion of the publication of his Traité, Onfray debated on French national TV a panel of Catholic theologians that included the new Cardinal of Paris, Monseigneur Vingt-Trois (and swatted them all down like flies).
