personal and philosophical

Christmas Day began slowly, hung-over. Mat, who’d shadowed me all the previous night, confirmed that I’d eaten too little and drunk too much. So much for the exemplary foster-carer. He caught a taxi around ten to visit his father for Christmas (I gave him $40), after which he’s to visit his mother in the pm. I shuffled off my sloth eventually, wrapped my presents and took Sarah and Courtney to her mother’s for family dinner, the last one this eighty-one or –two year old is giving, she promises. She’d prepared an impressive spread, it must be admitted, and she started out on her best behaviour, helped by the fact or miracle that everyone turned up on time.

Turned out a pleasant afternoon, in spite of the Matriarch’s later tetchiness, and some funny glitches. At lunch, Catherine mentioned the ‘Les Gentilhommes’ video, done some months ago, but first viewed by me the previous night. The matriarch hadn’t a clue what we were taking about, so I was asked to explain, how Les Gentilhommes was a group of men who meet regularly to cook meals and drink wine under the tutelage of Yanni the chef, and we recently catered for a wedding, and a video was made of this occasion… and I was just getting into my stride when Matriarch interrupted with some concern about her own meal which indicated that she wasn’t paying the slightest attention to what I was saying, so, distracted, I limped to a quick finish, and the matter died. I did get a sympathetic/ironic look from Catherine at least.

A restful afternoon also perhaps because the Matriarch’s a Tedious Teetotaller who won’t let alcohol cross her threshold. We probably all benefited from the alcohol break in the middle of the day, though I was still dead tired by home-time at 9.30 (we went to John and Debra’s in the late afternoon).

Returning to philosophy, I spoke to Sue, one of our friends, on Christmas Eve, about my interest in arguments against the existence of God. She was interested if not exactly sympathetic. I spoke briefly about the problem of evil, considering that God supposedly had all these positive attributes, depending perhaps on which or whose god you were referring to… ‘But I think it’s the same God, that they’re all referring to, don’t you?’ she responded. Before I could answer, I was whisked away to rescue my baked fetta from the oven. Such are the hazards of hosting, and I spoke no more philosophy that night, though Sue did mention that she’d like to pursue…

Now, this claim of Sue’s is certainly not accepted by Theodore Drange, who considers that different theists refer to different gods. He differentiates and discusses the gods of Evangelical Christianity, Liberal Christianity and Orthodox Judaism, but why stop there? Even within the Judeo-Christian tradition you can divide and subdivide into an almost infinite variety of believers and their personal gods.