Posted by A friend of mine who is both a genius and a philosopher shows the good things he sees in a series I have just excoriated. So for the sake of equal time, here is his take:
The only practical points I have to mention are these:
About philosophers: I’m a practical applications guy. I’m the grandson of a coal miner and immigrant worker, and all the intellectual stuff in the world only matters to me as it has direct application in life. In my life experience, and after more years of college than I can shake a stick at I have met a LOT of would-be and actual philosophers, and read even more of them, 98% of them are self-absorbed and self-important douche-nozzles whose lives discredit most everything they say. So by and large my take on philosophy is disgusted and hostile.You will, necessarily, argue definitions between TRUE philosophy, the love and pursuit of wisdom, which is a good and godly goal, and philosophy as now practiced in modern times, which having incorporated epistemology necessarily rules out a successful conclusion to the pursuit of wisdom, becoming therein a reprehensible self-indulgence, as one cannot state “nothing can truly be known, and then debark on a pursuit of knowledge”. That leaves aside the emotional ties to the dozens if not hundreds of young men and women whose faith, and thereby their souls, have been destroyed by the “philosophers” of this age (Kant, Voltaire, Hume, etc.).
As for the review: In the first story Metachronopolis is revealed as endless towers built on nothingness and mist, doomed to nothingness and mist, and providing ultimately only nothingness and mist.
A friend and ally’s review site, Lagrandil, has put up an overwhelmingly negative review of one of my favorite new books, City Beyond Time. It is one of the few times I will be forced to disagree, in detail, with my friend Bruce the Monk.
Warning: there are spoilers in both the review and my response.
So, here is my response:
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Lagrandil 
1) You are using a bad definition of epistemology. Epistemology is defined as the study of how we know what we know. The idea that we cannot know anything is an epistemology, and a self-contradictory one at that.
2) We have a word for people who call themselves philosophers and aren’t. It’s “sophist”. The word philosopher should no more be tainted by those who illegitimately claim it than the word “Celtic” should be tainted by the pretensions of the KKK. I have many disagreements with Mr. Wright, since I cannot believe that Mary didn’t sin nor that the earth is millions of years old, but the man is not a sophist.
3) I will not abandon truth because it “leaves aside the emotional ties to the dozens if not hundreds of young men and women whose faith, and thereby their souls, have been destroyed by the “philosophers” of this age”. We win the fight of truth by calling evil by its name, not by calling it what it wants to be called. The solution to preserving the souls of our children is not to call Kant a philosopher, but decry philosophy. It is to stop entrusting our children’s education to pagans whose explicit mission is to destroy our religion. When the orcs say they want to eat our children, and then demand we call them elves, we should not call them elves and send our children to be eaten, then blame the gorram elves for our negligence!