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- 55%: The Number of Americans Who Say That a Guardian Angel Has Protected Them from Harm (Source: USA Today)
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Woman in an American Field Hospital in Czechoslavakia, May 1945
- How Many People Could the Ancient Colosseum in Rome Hold?
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Anne Frank and Margo Frank in a Purim Holiday Photo with Other Jewish Children, February, 1934, and an Image from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Where Anne and Margo Died
- Near Death Experience (NDE) Watch: Waiting for Dr. Sam Parnia
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Children Lined up with Heads Shaved in a Croatian Concentration Camp
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Stacked Corpses
- Negative Capability Defined: Walking in Mysteries---and the Shoes of Others---with Keats, Shakespeare, Whitman---and Barack Obama!
- In Evolution We Trust?: England Puts Charles Darwin on the Back of Its Ten Pound Bank Note
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Image from the Concentration Camp at Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, 1945
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Children Experimented upon at Auschwitz
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Recent Posts
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Santi Tafarella’s Poem, “The Appearance of the Real”
. . . . . . . . Beneath a dormant tree in brown eggshell crisp leaves a child found a white branch with a red blossom. . The branch bent at its middle and the child, to hold … Continue reading
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Tagged autumn, Blake, childhood, crows, innocence to experience, John Keats, life, poems, poetry, reductionism, Santi Tafarella
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Evolutionary Biologist Francisco Ayala on Stephen Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell”
Evolutionary biologist, Francisco Ayala of UC Irvine, read Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell (2009), and raises some interesting issues and asks some rather telling questions: The human genome includes about twenty-five thousand genes and lots of other (mostly short) … Continue reading
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Tagged atheist, biology, creationism, evolution, extinction, Genesis, God, life, science, suffering, the problem of suffering, waste
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Why Evolution Isn’t True? With Tetrapod Tracks Predating Tiktaalik, the Origin of Land Animals Just Got More Perplexing
And the ID people are crowing. What happened? Well, just some tetrapod tracks that are way, way too early in the fossil record—predating even Tiktaalik. Tetrapods, you see, are vertebrates with limbs, but they don’t have fins. Tiktaalik is not even a tetrapod, … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, biology, evolution, evolutionary biology, Genesis, God, intelligent design, jerry coyne, reason, skepticism
11 Comments
The Contemporary World’s Metaphysical and Epistemic Grand Canyon: Are You a Brooding Romantic or a Rational Universalist?
In his essay, “Grandeur, profundity, and finitude“, atheist pragmatist philosopher, Richard Rorty, tries to walk us back from what he sees as our two chief metaphysical and epistemic precipices: romanticism and rational universalism. He starts with romanticism (84): The romantics became convinced … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, Daniel Dennett, deepities, God, John the Baptist, percy bysshe shelley, poetry, reason, richard rorty, romanticism, science
9 Comments
Joe Cocker, Spontaneously and Effortlessly Cool in 1970
This made me smile: Oops. It doesn’t embed, but it’s worth the click over. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RnjWLVyMps
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Tagged 1970, bohemian, buzz, cool, hippie, Joe Cocker, joy, music
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This is What the Tablet Future Looks Like?
Maybe. But contra the video, probably not this year.
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Tagged computers, Moses, sports, tablets, technology, the ten commandments
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How I Combine Richard Rorty’s Atheist Pragmatism with My “Spiritual Agnosticism”
It ain’t easy, and it requires a bit of Kant and Kierkegaard to get there, but below is what I believe at this point in my life, and how I have arrived at believing it. First, here is what I … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, being, God, john dewey, philosophy, pragmatism, Reinhold Niebuhr, richard rorty, the ontological mystery, truth, william james
6 Comments
Writing 101: Know Thy 21st Century Internet Audience
Below is Michael Kinsley today on the pre-Internet 20th century fluff still typical in old school journalism news stories. Kinsley highlights such stories’ archaic inclination: . . . to accommodate readers who have just emerged from a coma or a coal mine. … Continue reading
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Tagged audience, journalism, michael kinsley, newspapers, reading, writing
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Would Christian Brit Hume Have Said to Glenn Beck (a Mormon) What He Said to Tiger Woods (a Buddhist)?
To gage Brit Hume’s sincerity in extending a nationally televised public invitation to Buddhist Tiger Woods to become a Christian (for the proper sort of “forgiveness” supposedly not available to Woods otherwise), I think that we can ask one simple question: … Continue reading
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Tagged bill kristol, Christianity, Fox News, glenn beck, God, James Dobson, Jesus, Judaism, mormonism, Politics, religion, tiger woods
14 Comments
Jesus and John the Baptist Depicted in Their Mothers’ Wombs—with Halos!
This is a trippy Armenian Christian image of Mary meeting up with Elizabeth while Jesus and John the Baptist are still in their bellies: The softness and sympathy of the women’s exchange of glances—so humane and accessible—is rather curiously contrasted with the mature and severe … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, God, gospel of Luke, Jesus, John the Baptist, Mary, religion, the virgin mary
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Fox News Christian Brit Hume’s Invitation to ESPN Buddhist Tiger Woods
Ah, when television news and sports personalities collide—over religion! This today at National Review: Brit Hume’s comments on Fox News Sunday — “I don’t think that [Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian … Continue reading
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Tagged brit hume, Buddhism, Christianity, God, golf, Jesus, Judaism, religion, sports, television, tiger woods
4 Comments
Scott Lively’s Role in Fomenting Anti-Gay Hysteria in Uganda
If you don’t think that there is any real danger in the rise of 21st century American religious authoritarianism, watch this: Oh, and how many times have you heard Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or Sean Hannity speak out against the “anti-sodomy” … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, gay equality, gay rights, glenn beck, God, homosexuality, James Dobson, Jesus, lesbian, rush limbaugh, Sean Hannity, uganda
7 Comments
An Apt Quote Against Ireland’s New Anti-Free Speech Blasphemy Law
C. Bradlaugh, quoted in Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner’s Penalties Upon Opinion (1934): Laws to punish differences of opinion are as useless as they are monstrous. Differences of opinion on politics are denounced and punished as seditious, on religious topics as blasphemous, … Continue reading
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Tagged blasphemy, blasphemy laws, censorship, free speech, free will, freedom, hypatia bradlaugh bonner, ireland, John Locke, john stewart mill, libertarianism, the mind
2 Comments
“Horton Hears a Who”, Alvin Plantinga, and a Tree Stump in Ireland
In Dr. Seuss’s famous children’s book, Horton Hears a Who, an elephant equipped with giant elephant ears can hear the voices of very, very tiny “people” that really are there, lurking among the grasses. Others cannot hear them (because they … Continue reading
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Tagged Alvin Plantinga, apologetics, atheism, atheist, Calvinism, epistemology, God, horton hears a who, Jesus, salvation
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The Emperor Has No Clothes
And I’m not seeing this either:
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Tagged Catholicism, Christianity, God, idol worship, ireland, Jesus, psychology, religion, social psychology, the virgin mary, trees, veneration
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Pretty Good Reasons Not to Believe in God Watch: Time and Chance—and Space!—Happeneth to Them All
I’ve never heard it put quite this way, and I know that it is implied within numerous arguments for atheism, but I think, by just making it explicitly present to consciousness, that this is a pretty good reason to doubt God’s existence: … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, God, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, multiverse hypothesis, philosophy, religion, space, time
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A Profound Job-Like Meditation on Suffering
And probably now illegal to perform in Ireland: I think the secular blogs—and I include mine among them—should call for a boycott of Ireland’s tourism industry until its anti-free speech laws are rescinded. I’m in. 20th century journalist, I.F. Stone: [N]o … Continue reading
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Tagged atheist, blasphemy, Calvinism, Catholicism, censorship, free speech, ireland, Islam, Job, medievalism, suffering
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