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Monthly Archives: May 2010
Would Friedrich Nietzsche have admired Ayn Rand?
Nietzsche scholar Brian Leiter has a rather strong opinion about this: This typically idiotic remark in a recent NY Times book review caught my attention: “Rand’s inclusion of businessmen in the ranks of the Übermenschen helps to explain her appeal to free-marketeers … Continue reading
A Great Arthur Schopenhauer Quote
This Arthur Schopenhauer quote is in Susan Neiman’s exceptionally interesting book, Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton 2002, p. 203): [T]he astonishment that urges us to philosophize obviously springs from the sight of the evil and wickedness in the world. If … Continue reading
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Tagged arthur schopenhauer, atheism, evil, pain, philosophy, psychology, suffering, wickedness
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The Gospel of Jessica Christ: The Incarnation (John 1:14)
Playing off the language of the NT (in the KJV), I’ve taken certain passages from the four gospels and put them into gender reversal (just to see what happens). I’ve also inserted a word firecracker here and there to add some … Continue reading
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Tagged Christ, Christianity, feminism, gender reversal, God, Jesus, the gospel of jessica christ, women's equality, women's rights
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The Gospel of Jessica Christ: Prologue (Mark 1:1; John 1:1-5)
Playing off the language of the NT (in the KJV), I’ve taken certain passages from the four gospels and put them into gender reversal (just to see what happens). I’ve also inserted a word firecracker here and there to add some … Continue reading
This religious epidural is brought to you by Francisco Ayala
Geneticist Francisco Ayala, introduced with some soothing piano and string music, takes on the manner of a family physician, assuring his jittery audience of nonexperts that everything is just fine; there is no conflict between science and religion (and we can … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheist, biology, Charles Darwin, evolution, francisco ayala, intelligent design, jerry coyne, Nietzsche, NOMA, science, stephen gould
6 Comments
Nietzsche’s checkmate: does atheism lead to totalitarianism?
A.C. Grayling, an atheist author that I tend to otherwise love, calls the idea that atheism gave birth to communism and fascism a theist “canard.” But, as an agnostic who has been doing a good deal of Nietzsche reading lately, I’m not … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged a.c. grayling, apologetics, atheism, atheist, Charles Darwin, Communism, contingency, fascism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche, postmodernism, totalitarianism
15 Comments
Should community college professors watch what they say?
If community college professors are any indication, United States citizens, who normally pride themselves on their freedom of speech, are not quite as free to speak their minds as they might like to believe. Academe Online says community college professors are … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 1st amendment, college, community college, free speech, freedom, life, Politics, professors, speaking my mind, speech, teachers
2 Comments
Clothing police in Muslim Indonesia: for women, no jeans or short skirts
Indonesia is a country with 200 million Muslims, some of them relatively moderate in their religious practices, some conservative. And in a district within Aceh province, some are really, really conservative, instituting aspects of Shariah law (such as stoning for adultery). … Continue reading
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Tagged Allah, conservatism, equality, feminism, freedom, Islam, lesbian, Muslims, religion, shariah, women's rights
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Evil, Nietzsche’s “amor fati,” Prometheus, and Thomas Edison
What is evil? If we call evil whatever outrages a human imagination’s ordering will and vitality; that is, if we define evil in its relation to us, then we quickly notice that evil comes in three forms: There are natural evils that … Continue reading
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Tagged amor fati, evil, God, life, Nietzsche, philosophy, Prometheus, religion, science, technology, thomas edison
5 Comments
Feels like vacation
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Tagged freedom, happiness, mental health break, music, vacation
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Question of the Day
Would legalizing marijuana in a large state like California reduce narco-violence and smuggling on the border between the United States and Mexico? I don’t know the answer to this question, I’m just asking. It seems to me that if you legalize … Continue reading
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Tagged America, California, drugs, jaurez, marijuana, Mexico, pot, pot legalization, tijuana
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Existential Flungness in a Twilight Zone Episode
The first ten minutes of this Twilight Zone episode is Rod Serling channeling Beckett, Kafka, and Sartre. It’s very cool. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is not on YouTube. I know the ending, though, and will tell you what it … Continue reading
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Tagged Camus, Dostoevsky, existentialism, God, Kafka, life, philosophy, rapture, Sartre, truth, twilight zone, waiting for godot
4 Comments
Are atheism and secular liberalism ideologies in decline?
John Gray, reviewing the book God is Back (by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge), predicts, for the rest of the 21st century, the decline of Western secular ideologies (like atheism and liberalism): [A]s energy and power flows eastwards, the secular ideologies that … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, God, god is dead, liberalism, Noah, philosophy, religion, Richard Dawkins, secular humanism, social psychology
5 Comments
Have you seen “The Shelter”?
It’s a Twilight Zone episode that is philosophically interesting. I think of Rod Serling’s “The Shelter” as a profound meditation on Nietzschean v. Christian ethics, Darwinian survival of the fittest, zero-sum games, and living in a world where the civic culture … Continue reading
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Tagged bomb shelters, civility, civilization, dystopia, evolution, fear, immigration, Islam, nuclear terrorism, prejudice, terror, the twilight zone
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Even if the God of Christianity existed, would he be worthy of worship?
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book The Antichrist, says no: What sets us apart is not that we recognize no God, either in history or in nature or behind nature—but that we find that which has been reverenced as God not ‘godlike’ … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, Christianity, God, Jesus, Nietzsche, philosophy, psychology
4 Comments
Equal time alongside global warming: biblical armageddon theory comes to the classroom
Teach the controversy? I love the science-and-religion-in-harmony diorama at the 1:20 mark. Did you catch it? It has two smiling scientists and a priest glibly declaring—“We can all agree”—as a meteor hurdles toward Earth.
Is Christopher Hitchens’s rhetorical combativeness a form of compensation for having never served in the military? And is this compensation leading him to overstate the threat posed to the West by Islamic fundamentalism?
A recent Guardian profile/interview with Christopher Hitchens elicited a curious line of armchair psychoanalysis that I found interesting: In 2006, Hitchens’ wife, the American writer Carol Blue, told the New Yorker her husband was one of “those men who were never … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, Christopher Hitchens, fundamentalism, God, Islam, islamic fundamentalism, islamofascism, new atheist, psychology, Richard Dawkins
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Prometheus Unbound 