Daily Archives: March 12, 2009

KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING: A Great George Orwell Novel That A Lot of People Don’t Know

Below is an image of one of my favorite George Orwell novels. It’s the story of a poet who struggles with what to do with his life: Should he marry? Should he debase his gift for poetry by writing advertising copy … Continue reading

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Ricky Gervais on Charles Darwin and the Bible

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Can Columbia’s Famed Journalism School Adjust to the Times?

With traditional newpaper journalism imploding before its competition with the Internet, New York magazine asks whether Columbia’s journalism school is imploding with it. Money quote: Part of the problem is the perception that the situation is “a zero-sum game,” as one … Continue reading

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An Interpretation of Hamlet

Meghan O’Rourke has an interesting take on Hamlet: I had a hard time sleeping right after my mother died. The nights were long and had their share of what C.S. Lewis, in his memoir A Grief Observed, calls “mad, midnight … Continue reading

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15%

That’s the percentage of Americans, according to the Huffington Post today, who are religious NON-BELIEVERS. Those who fall under the designation “non-believer” represent a larger slice of the American population than those who call themselves “African American” or “Hispanic.” Money quote: A … Continue reading

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An Interesting Graph on Americans’ Faith in Various Institutions

Source: FiveThirtyEight.com FiveThirtyEight calls these numbers “losing faith in faith.” But I actually find them mostly encouraging. It suggests that most Americans are not under the spell of authority—and like cats, difficult to herd.

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“There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” This is the Atheist Bus Ad Slogan—BUT What, Exactly, Does It Mean?

Philosopher Roger Scruton thinks the bus ad means this: The new humanism “seems to have no consciousness of what is clearly announced between the lines of the text [ON THE ATHEIST BUSES], namely that there are no ideals higher than … Continue reading

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The God Delusion—and the Bush Delusion?

At Salon.com is a great cartoon that captures the delusionary nature (akin to religious delusion) of the Bush years. See it here.

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William Blake on Doubt

William Blake, in his “Auguries of Innocence” (early 1800s), has these lines on doubt:  He who mocks the Infant’s Faith Shall be mockd in Age & Death. He who shall teach the Child to Doubt The rotting Grave shall ne’er get … Continue reading

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The Atheist Bus Ad Campaign Moves to Germany

So says Spiegel today: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The brightly colored ads were part of a provocative campaign on British buses. Spain reacted with its own string of atheist slogans, and now a … Continue reading

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“Childhood, Abuse, and the Escape from Religion”: Is the 9th Chapter of Richard Dawkins’s THE GOD DELUSION Illiberal?

One of the chapters in Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (chapter 9) is problematic for me. It is the chapter titled, “Childhood, Abuse, and the Escape from Religion”, and leads off with this quote from Victor Hugo: There is in every village … Continue reading

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