Daily Archives: March 15, 2009

Corrective Lesbian Rape in South Africa

The Guardian today reports on a truly horrific phenomenon in South Africa: Gangs of men who target lesbians for rape and humiliation (so as to “correct” their “unnatural” behavior and learn how to enjoy men and be “normal girls”). If you can … Continue reading

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The Dumbing Down of Christianity: Where are Christianity’s Contemporary Flannery O’Connors? And Why Hasn’t Christianity Been Able to Assimilate Modernism, Particularly the Implications of Evolution, Auschwitz, and Contemporary Biblical Archeology?

In the Times of London today, Andrew Sullivan has an interesting essay on “the broader crises facing established religion in the West”: the serious dumbing down of Protestant and Catholic religion and its failure to absorb the implications of Modernism. Sullivan … Continue reading

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“God’s Funeral”: A Poem by Thomas Hardy

Christopher Hitchens has often said he’s glad to see the Old Nobodaddy go—but Thomas Hardy was more sanguine. There’s no Schadenfreude in this poem of Hardy’s, and a fair amount of regret. Stanzas VI-IX are especially apt and sad and … Continue reading

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Fareed Zakaria’s GPS is the Best Political Talk Show on Television

I’m blown away by the consistently high quality of Fareed Zakaria’s CNN Sunday show, “Fareed Zakaria’s GPS.” He always seems to find, for his show, the super smart among the super smart, and they always seem to have a thought provoking, … Continue reading

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Embracing the Blonde Hay

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What Sort of Agnostic Am I, Exactly?

If I were to locate myself within a “tradition” I would say that I fall within the pessimist tradition. I think that the generally pessimistic existentialists (as loosely grouped) see it right: Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Gabriel Marcel, Camus, Sartre. I … Continue reading

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Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism: Passing Through Auschwitz, the Rings of Saturn—and the Multiverse Hypothesis?

One reason that I’m an agnostic (and not a theist or an atheist) is that both theism and atheism have very large hurdles between them and certainty. Theism (for instance) has never adequately dealt with the problem of extreme suffering. … Continue reading

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