User:MerricMaker
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MerricMaker is the online moniker of a soon-to-be PhD student involved in Philosophy of Religion, Constructive Theology, Dari, Arabic, Islam, and the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. He only created this entry so that people would have some idea of who to blame.
He is active as a semi-professional/quasi-amateur chorister in an Episcopal Cathedral (although he is not Episcopalian). He views music more recent than 1672 with suspicion, and contemporary worship turns his stomach. Contemporary theology, however, is some tantalizing stuff. Unfortunately, the two rarely occur at the same time and place.
While defining himself as Christian, his faith grounding is a bewildering blend of pre-Nicene radical monotheism and artsy-fartsy pluralism undergirded by good old pantheism. He might be considered a modern-day Ebionite or perhaps some kind of mystic. He does not, by his pluralism, relativize religious experience to say stupid things like: "Nirvana is the same thing as Heaven," a statement which is not properly respectful of the traditions from which these highly nuanced ideas come. He simply recognizes that all faiths are internally-coherent systems of belief, each meriting the respect due a pathway to the Divine/Absolute/True Self/Nothingness, etc.
He is a competent, but undisciplined cook--reading recipies mostly so as to abandon them. He works well with fish and vegetables and is most comfortable in the Chinese and Southern White trash approaches to cookery (yes, he comes from mountain folk). He also makes a fine pasta carbonara.
He is devoted to a cat who is diabetic, and upon whose glucose level many schemes depend. This means that, vampire-like, he must return to his lair to periodically sample blood and shoot up the cat.
He has also recently come to the decision that Wikipedia is reality as determined by consensus among the lowest possible common denominator. Because it is anonymous no one need change whatever poorly-constructed position they might hold. They can simply put their fingers in their ears and pretend that they are the sole arbiters of truth in the universe. It is rare to find a contributor interested in furthering anything but their own agenda. Some are even careful to use NPOV and "Assume good faith" to shield their own lack of collaborative spirit. There is no impetus to grow as individuals, which is what discussion is for. To be blunt, this contributor has given up.
[edit] Writers/Dead People/Things/Ideas With Something to Them
John A.T. Robinson, Alfred North Whitehead, John Hick, Frithjof Schuon, Baruch Spinoza, John Donne, Meister Eckhart, Hafez, William Byrd, Wallace Tripp, Pantheism, Howard Thurman, Ziauddin Sardar, Alessandro Magnasco, Roger Zelazny, Billy Connolly, David Ray Griffin, Origen, Paul Tillich, Edinburgh, Atheism, Peter Abelard, Michel Foucault, William Shakespeare, Anatta, St. Gregory of Nyssa, James Hal Cone, Seung Sahn, Gestalt, Dead Like Me, Willie Nelson, Multiverse Theory, Superstring Theory, Roger Miller
