About

This is a personal blog and the content is determined by my personal interests.

15 thoughts on “About”

  1. Who are you? I have enjoyed your pieces about Pope Francis, relgious liberty and the development of doctrine. I am a Catholic priest, a Legionary of Christ working in Mexico. My family background is traditionalist, sedevacantist. I am familiar with traditionalist arguments, but I have learned to appreciate the Magisterium of the Church without succumbing to Modernism, by trying to think carefully about both of these things.

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    • Welcome! I am glad you liked the posts.

      While it is fairly easy for those who know me in real life to identify me as the author of this blog, I have good reason to refrain from publicly posting on this matter.

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  2. Hi !

    I’ve been following you for ages, but something isn’t clear to me. What changed in your beliefs ? It appeared that you had a transformation…

    Keep up your blog, I love reading it ! 🙂

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    • Glad you enjoy the blog.

      The change of opinion that was most relevant to why I created the blog was losing my religion, although that happened before I started the blog, in December 2014. Even that was not some sudden transformation, but the result of two decades of thought. I did not mention that in the main “About” statement because (for one thing) I don’t like the idea of quitting and starting new blogs whenever you get new interests. If I become interested in architecture and this becomes an architecture blog in the future, I’m fine with that. In that sense the blog is defined by a person, not by some particular opinion or interest.

      Still, it has been three years since I started (actually the first post was July 5, 2015), and that is plenty of time for change. Various things have changed since then:

      – Change in the composition of the readership. Originally virtually all my readers were Catholics, which gave me a good reason to emphasize points of agreement with Catholicism and play down points of disagreement, namely to avoid antagonizing my readers. As far as I can tell there is more variety in the readership now, and that affects how I write, although I certainly try to avoid letting it affect the actual content of my opinions.

      – Change in my personal motives. Again, at first I was more interested in explaining things to people. And again, with a mainly Catholic readership that meant starting from things they accepted. That is the only way to explain something to someone: start with what they already accept. At this point I have pretty low expectations in this regard. I mostly expect people not to keep following. That in part is why I wrote “Start at the Beginning”. Instead, my current motives are more to work things out in detail for myself. If other people learn something from it, that’s great, but it’s secondary. 🙂

      There might be other things, but mostly I don’t think there was any deep transformation of my opinions since 2015 except in terms of thinking things out more clearly and in more detail. I might be wrong about this. One of the things I have mentioned on the blog is that sometimes people change their mind about things so slowly that they never even noticed that they changed their mind. It’s entirely possible that has happened to me, since three years is a significant period. If you notice things like that, feel free to point them out or ask about them; but do it in the comments on the specific pages where you notice them.

      Thanks!

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      • Hi !

        Can you explain a bit what you meant by “losing my religion”? I highly doubt you’re speaking of the R.E.M. song. 😀
        Were you catholic? Did you move on to atheism?

        Sorry for the personal question.

        Keep up the great thought ! 🙂

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        • I was a Catholic, and I am no longer religious.

          I don’t call myself an atheist, but that is partly because I do not want that social identity. Or rather I do not want any social identity at all, in the relevant sense.

          But it is also because of some disagreement with atheist positions. What I think is something along the lines described here: http://praxeology.net/unblog03-04.htm#02

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          • Theological logicism, heh? Interesting view. Not really different from mine. I’m too close to panentheism and transtheism to disagree; despite being a catholic — with deep oriental leanings, close to orthodoxy.

            Perhaps you heard of Eurigena and Meister Eckhart? I’m a fond of negative theology, which is often more liberating than anything else. Especially seeing God as “nothingness by eminence” (non irrationabiliter per excellentiam nihil esse dicitur). Even the Desert Fathers were wary about saying that “God exists” is, if badly understood, is perhaps one of the grossiest idolatries…

            (Sorry for polluting your About space. ^^’ Perhaps you have a mail I can send you something?)

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            • Yes, my position is not far from Eastern apophatic theology, and may even be consistent with it, depending on precise interpretations. Even western Catholicism has similar strands in it, although I suspect that in my social circles you would be considered a dangerous heretic (not as bad as my status as an apostate, though.)

              I don’t know whether you have read this particular early post: https://entirelyuseless.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/true-and-false-religion/

              What I am saying there implies that practicing a religion or not practicing, or people practicing different religions, do not necessarily disagree on an intellectual level. For example, a large part of the reason I do not practice a religion is due to my personality. I would be reluctant to practice a religion without fairly robust “fundamentalist” ideas about the literal truth of its doctrines. But someone else who felt more need of the social aspects of religion and cared less about exact doctrines might well hold the very same opinions that I do, but still choose to practice a religion.

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      • Just found your blog today, and I’m intrigued. I “lost my religion” when I was 18, though it was never really mine. I was raised Mormon, and never held much faith in its teachings or the concept of God-the-father. It’s funny, but all the political strife occurring this year has me rethinking my youthful prejudice of traditional values and the concept of God in general. I don’t believe in God-the-father, but I do believe in God-the-ideal–similar to the concept of Tao, or the Way–the collective’s notion of how an ideal individual behaves in the world. Curious if you’ve heard of Jordan Peterson? He approaches the concept of God as a powerful cultural metaphor that’s been evolutionarily and psychologically driven by nature as the conceptual glue holding society together. My partner and I, both agnostics, just started watching his biblical lecture series on Youtube. Highly recommended.

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        • Hi, JB. Yes, I know of Jordan Peterson’s work.

          As you can see I haven’t been updating the blog much recently. Hopefully that will change at some point, but until then, the most interesting way to read this blog is to use the chronological archives, starting at the beginning, rather than working back from the most recent stuff.

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  3. Hello @entirelyuseless, I really liked your post “Start at the beginning” and adopted it for all the blogs I read. Unfortunately, the wordpress interface makes it uncomfortable to do so, because there is not even a full list of blog posts, sorted chronologically (think slatestarcodex: https://slatestarcodex.com/archives/) and the “good” method requires a ton of scrolling and clicking. Would you mind introducing such a chronological “all posts” archive?

    Thanks a lot,

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