Birthday Watch: April 26th

St. Augustine of Hippo entered the church on Easter day, April 26, 387. His mother Monica prayed for his conversion for 33 years.

Scots philosopher Thomas Reid, b.1710. “Reid believed that common sense (in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He disagreed with Hume, who asserted that we can never know what an external world consists of as our knowledge is limited to the ideas in the mind.”

Scots philosopher David Hume, b.1711. An atheist, or at least a skeptic, Hume had very little faith in religion or in the reason of man.
“The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator.”

“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.”

The name of Desmond David Hume, of LOST fame, is probably a reference to philosopher David Hume. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the naming of Desmond is supposed to tell us about his character or about the plot and themes of LOST.

One thought on “Birthday Watch: April 26th

  1. Could it just be that “Desmond” means “man of the world?” I had always assumed that this was why he is always everywhere, travelling the world, sailing on ships, etc…that the name was a descriptive term rather than an association. It also probably reaffirms the similarity with David Hume–not faith, not science, just reality. The world as it is.

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