Rationality and Fideism

It wouldn't make sense to turn this blog into a compilation of blog posts that I find interesting. The premise of this place already has a vague clip-show feel to it, and something seems uncomfortably meta about just re-blogging old things that make me think differently than I did before. That said, perspective-changing insight can come just as well from the musings of people who write on blogger as it can from esoteric corners of Wikipedia and Ted. Your mileage may vary, but I think this example of Orthodox Yale debate nerd replying to atheist Yale debate nerd meets that standard:
Tristyn Bloom on crypto-fideism

As an aside, I have no idea how I wind up on such random parts of the internet.

Christianity has had such a privileged and overwhelming influence on our society over the centuries that the signal of orthodox Christian philosophy has been garbled by the noise of society. In the public sphere in the United States, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Tao seem exotic and countercultural, while Christianity seems bland and antiseptic. The ideas Ms. Bloom discusses are hardly bland, and seem at odds with much of the folk beliefs that are casually associated with mainstream Christianity. The message is that legalism is as dead a philosophy as relativism, and if the other way, that of following Christ and the saints based on some very sketchy writings that have survived the millennia, seems too murky for comfort, well, that's just part of growing up. I have a very different perception of what Christianity is and what its real teachings and insight are now than I had before moving away to college, and conceptions like these are much of what's driven that development.

There's more to those vanilla ideas than you think there is. Take a step back, clear your mind, and take a look.