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Monthly Archives: October 2009
Atheism, Reductionism, and Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
The poem below by Walt Whitman expresses emotions akin to my own after I had recently spent a full day, and most of an evening, attending lectures by Richard Dawkins and other scientists at an atheist conference in Burbank, Ca.: When I heard … Continue reading
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Tagged astronomy, atheism, atheist, biology, evolution, God, poems, poetry, Richard Dawkins, science, Walt Whitman
3 Comments
Was Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Canto 56, in Which He Calls Nature “red in tooth and claw”, the Product of His Reading Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species?
Nope. Canto 56 is part of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, a long poem of 131 cantos, and it was written in 1850, fully nine years prior to the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859). Why, then, is … Continue reading
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Tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, atheist, biology, Charles Darwin, evolution, nature red in tooth and claw, philosophy, poems, poetry, Richard Dawkins, science, shiva
5 Comments
Does Emily Dickinson Call Herself “the only kangaroo among the beauty” in One of Her Poems?
No. But she does in one of her letters. In Emily Dickinson’s letter (dated July, 1862) to Thomas Higginson, a chief editor of The Atlantic Monthly, she writes this delicious, somewhat erotically suggestive, and arguably even naughty, paragraph: Perhaps you smile at … Continue reading
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Tagged australia, Emily Dickinson, kangaroos, masochism, poems, poetry, poets, sexy
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I Like This Matt Stone and Trey Parker Introduction to Alan Watts
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Tagged 1960s, agnosticism, alan watts, atheism, atheist, Buddhism, eastern philosophy, philosophy, religion, south park, Zen
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PZ Myers and Albert Camus: Two Very Different Kinds of Atheists Inhabiting Two Very Different Kinds of Atheism?
I think that atheism, especially at its most strident, is capable of choking its own life energies by nihilistically clearing the “ground of being” of any larger meaning, and then killing off the ontological mystery by not going to imaginative literature … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, Albert Camus, atheism, atheist, existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, literature, philosophy, PZ Myers, Simone de Beauvoir
11 Comments
Entry Level Shout Radio Job Openings: Only Malignant Narcissists Need Apply?
In the Wikipedia article on “malignant narcissism” (a phrase coined by Erich Fromm in 1964), the list of symptoms associated with it struck me as rather parallel to the traits that you tend to encounter when dialing into right-wing shout … Continue reading
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Tagged glenn beck, malignancy, Michael Savage, narcissism, Politics, psychology, religion, right wing, rush limbaugh, shout radio
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The Narcissistic Abyss
No, not blogging. This:
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Tagged cancer, death, doctors, fitness, health, hypochondria, life, narcissism
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The Last Cancer Generation?
Yesterday, when I walked into a class of (mostly) 20 year olds all staring back at me, I had a thought: this may be the last cancer generation. 80% of all cancers are diagnosed in people after the age of fifty, … Continue reading
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Tagged cancer, death, fear, fitness, Halloween, health, hypochondria, life, woody allen
2 Comments
Ah, Gray Sunflower, Forget Me Not! The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Moscow UFO Mothership/Cloud
When looking at the above video today, I thought of Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra” (in which Ginsberg eulogizes a soot covered dead sunflower). And it made me think: what makes this UFO-like cloud (seen last Wednesday over Moscow) beguiling? And … Continue reading
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Tagged aesthetics, aliens, edmund burke, philosophy, reductionism, schopenhauer, science, sublime, the beautiful, the sublime, UFO sightings, UFOs
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Moscow’s UFO Mothership Cloud Akin to the Hexagon on Saturn?
Moscow’s recent eerie UFO “cloud and sun mothership” phenomenon (see here) reminded Jared Burton of the hexagon on Saturn—which I knew zip about. But Jared linked to this interesting article, and I found this on YouTube: And here’s the Moscow UFO … Continue reading
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Tagged aliens, astronomy, Halloween, reason, saturn, skepticism, strange, UFO sightings, ufology, UFOs, weather, weird things
4 Comments
UFO Mothership, or Just Sun and Clouds?
Last Wednesday there was a large UFO disk-like shape, apparently backlighted by the sun, that hung over Moscow, and the video of it has gotten a lot of YouTube attention: The Sun says this about the phenomenon: The video has appeared … Continue reading
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Tagged aliens, astronomy, motherships, science, skepticism, true believers, UFO sightings, UFOs, weather, weird things
31 Comments
H1N1 (Swine Flu): Listen to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), Not Rush Limbaugh
Here’s the CDC’s recommendation regarding swine flu vaccination, as reported in the Washington Post: The first swine flu precaution that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests for parents: As soon as a vaccine is available, try to get … Continue reading
Mental Hospital Break
High school students wander around an old, abandoned Michigan mental hospital. Because the psyche is often thought about as a structure (metaphorically), there’s something poetic and sublime about their drifting from one wrecked and abandoned room to another: The video also called … Continue reading
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Tagged devils, gospel of Luke, Halloween, health, life, mental health break, mental hospitals, psychology, ruins, sublime, the mind
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Mental Health Break
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Tagged art, dance, freedom, life, love, music, psychology, the ontological mystery
1 Comment
Atheism: More Than Cool Reason?
One of the narratives that atheists like to tell about themselves is this: We are the brave facers of the truth. There is no God, and death is the end of individual existence. We have reached conclusions that are unpleasant to many, but it … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheists, behavior, contingency, God, Motivation, philosophy, psychology, religion, Richard Dawkins
5 Comments
Existential Confusion for a Sunday
I don’t know how the can opener works either: And the universe is expanding:
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Tagged agnosticism, atheism, atheist, Catholicism, existentialism, faith, God, Judaism, life, religion, the Holocaust, woody allen
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