I do love getting back to Eastern though.  I'm still friends with some of my professors and got a demonstration of the new Planetarium (thank you Dr. B!).  Apparently, there's only 30 planetariums with this powerful of a system in the world at present, and Eastern has one.   It's amazing - like actually flying through the universe.  Very cool.

After hanging out with Dr. B for a while I wandered over to Eastern's Coffee shop and set up my laptop to check out my e-mail.  Jim (AKA Qohelet), and my Friend/Mentor Frank (from FBC Pitman) showed up withing five minutes of sitting down and after downing some coffee we checked into the hotel (which has "high speed access" in every room, through a wire.  Why haven't hotels figured out that wifi is a commodity yet?  I mean, I'm blogging in the LOBBY!).

Anyway, we all headed over to the conversation after dinner and sat in for the first conversation.  What can I say but, "yea?"  I still have some questions for John Caputo (I really want to know if he has any room for an incarnation in his philosophy of religion), but man oh man it's just nice to sit down with a bunch of interested people, and listen as a conversation goes on.

The converstaion tonight saw Tony Jones tossing out some names and seeing the philosophers talk about names directly related to the names that Tony tossed out (hey, what do you expect?  It's a conversation with two academics they'll talk about what they want to talk about).  The conversation was engaging - and eventually moved into a discussion of how "good post-modernism" is creating an environment where religion once again has a voice in the conversation (and not as a beggar as it did during the modern period).   Ideas like rationality and reason have been kept - but are no employed in service to life, rather than being applied as the final arbitors of truth.  That's a good thing.

Someone in the conversation asked about Islam and if postmodernism is having any impact on the muslim world.  In a response that shocked me, Richard Kearney said that the suffis (a minority and frequently persecuted group of Muslims) were a Islamic group that would be good voice in the postmodern conversation.  This mystical islamic group, however, has been increasingly silenced in the face of Wahabbism.  I found this interesting because the one muslim I'm ever in conversation with hates the suffis (and says they they aren't muslims at all).  It's interesting because I frequently compare this person with some evangelical Christians who despise postmodernism and emergent for actually daring to speak it's language.  It looks like certatude is alive and well.

 Tomorrow we've got another session, and some seminars in the afternoon.  Right now, I need sleep.  More later...

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