Religion Needs A Conscience

            I discovered on Saturday that the song “Comme un Boomerang” that I’ve been learning doesn’t fit with my chronological approach to translating Serge Gainsbourg songs. It turns out that there is another song by him from 1966 called “Boomerang” and that the one I translated was published in the 1970s but not released until 2001. I’m not going to be obsessive compulsive about it though. I’ll finish the song because I like it a lot and then I’ll go back to the chronology.

I finally got an email from the Australian Boot Company telling me that I could replace my Blundies under warranty. But I got them from the store on February 12, 2015, so I wonder if the warranty is still good. Plus, I didn’t pay for them myself, as they were a gift from my friend Audrey, so even if it’s under warranty they might need notification from her as proof of purchase. I emailed them about it and the response was that it doesn’t matter. If the boot has damage that doesn’t fit with its age the warranty still stands and I don’t need proof of purchase. The manager’s exact wording was, “Once we have a go ahead from Blundstone Canada on a warranty, it’s a yes, no mater what. All I have to do is bring the boots in (I’ll remove the laces though, since I bought those to replace the old ones). That’s pretty nice and it seems like a rare policy for a company to have.

            I wanted to work towards starting my Philosophy essay but I had to do the reading of Averroes in order to answer next week’s tutorial question. I think I would have been able to start my essay last week if not for those stupid, complicated assignments that the TAs assign. Even though our responses are supposed to be short, I often have to read the text several times just to understand it enough to come up with a response.

            The question I chose was: What do you think of Averroes' argument that philosophical study of the world is mandated by religious law? How is this related to some of the arguments we've considered for God's existence?

            Here’s my answer:

            Religion needs a conscience in order to keep it from being too sure of itself. Philosophy can fill that role and also serve as a bridge between religions, because there are commonalities in logical thinking that may not be shared by the dogma of two given religions. Certainly the “proofs of the existence of god” that the Christian, Anselm and the Muslim, Avicenna have arrived at through their separate applications of logic are not incompatible with one another.