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Monthly Archives: May 2010
Think big thoughts: two images from the 1909 Paris Air Show held at the Grand Palais
Maybe your life’s vision is set too low. Take the Paris Air Show of 1909 for inspiration, and think of how far people with vision, intelligence, ambition, and imagination managed to reach in just the past one hundred years. Can you imagine … Continue reading
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Tagged exhibition, flight, life, Motivation, Paris, planes, progress, reason, science, space, technology, vision
2 Comments
A delicious deconstruction of John Gray by A.C. Grayling
Of John Gray’s Black Mass, A.C. Grayling writes that the book: tells us that the world is in a bad way and that there is nothing we can do about it. Perhaps we can infer from this that his aim … Continue reading
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Tagged a.c. grayling, atheism, Christianity, Hitler, John Gray, progress, reason, science, secular humanism, stalin, the myth of progress
6 Comments
Enlightenment pessimist John Gray v. Enlightenment optimist A.C. Grayling
John Gray is a very, very tart-tongued skeptic of Enlightenment triumphalism of the Bertrand Russell variety, and he recently wrote a rather biting essay attacking A.C. Grayling for taking up, in the 21st century, Russell’s supposedly naive mantle: Russell fell victim … Continue reading
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Tagged a.c. grayling, apologetics, atheism, atheist, Christianity, God, humanism, isaiah berlin, Jesus, John Gray, the Enlightenment
4 Comments
Doubting the doctrine of hell: India disorients a Christian
One of Andrew Sullivan’s blog readers wrote this today: I’m a Christian . . . I think. I say, “I think” because a recent trip to India left me stumbling on the foundation of faith laid since my youth. I … Continue reading
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Tagged Ayn Rand, Christianity, doubt, fundamentalism, globalization, God, hell, howard roark, India, Jesus, The Fountainhead, torture
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Why, if you’re a humanist, Renaissance art is important to contemplate
Stefano Zuffi, in his new book How to Read Italian Renaissance Painting (Abrams 2010), explains: Wheras artists in the Middle Ages were not consciously ‘medieval’, artists in Italy between 1400 and 1600 very deliberately worked to bring about renewal. . . . … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, antonello de messina, art, atheist, Ayn Rand, dante, humanism, renaissance, renaissance art, st. jerome, the Enlightenment
3 Comments
The City of Lancaster, in California, is sued for offering sectarian prayers to Jesus before council meetings
Surprise, surprise. As fundamentalists so frequently do when obtaining power, the fundamentalists who dominate the Lancaster City Council (particularly the mayor, R. Rex Parris, and council persons Sherry Marquez and Ron Smith) have overplayed their hand, drawing a lawsuit against the city. … Continue reading
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Tagged ACLU, atheism, atheist, Christianity, church and state, fundamentalism, God, Jesus, prayer, r. rex parris, separation of church and state, sherry marquez
7 Comments
In heaven as it is on earth? Are religious mysticism and Hegel’s “aufgehoben” (transmutation) sublimated forms of masochism?
The 81-year-old sociologist Peter Berger thinks that they are. In his book on the sociology of religion, The Sacred Canopy (1967), he wrote this of mysticism (64): The extent to which the mystical surrender may be called masochistic varies empirically, … Continue reading
The resurrection of M. capricolum
Nobody really knows whether Jesus rose from the dead, but here’s a resurrection that you can know happened. PZ Myers explains what geneticist Craig Venter hath wrought: The experiment involved creating a strand of DNA as specified by a computer … Continue reading
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Tagged biology, craig venter, frankenstein, Genesis, life, PZ Myers, resurrection, synthetic life, synthetic men
2 Comments
Three Pretty Good Reasons to Doubt the Resurrection of Jesus
Below are three pretty good reasons to doubt the resurrection of Jesus: First, no agnostic or atheist needs to prove a negative. Burdens of proof fall upon those making a spectacular claim. If someone claims, for example, that an intelligent … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, Christianity, Easter, God, history, Jesus, John Macarthur, resurrection, skepticism
1 Comment
Messianic prophecy, Jesus, and an inconvenient fact
Am I impressed that the Hebrew Bible (the “Old Testament”) has numerous chapters and passages that seem to foreshadow Jesus’s ministry and death? No. Why? Because their predictive value is vastly diminished by an inconvenient fact: THE WRITERS OF THE NEW … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, bible prophecy, God, gospels, Jesus, John Macarthur, messianic prophecies, prophecy, religion, skepticism, the Bible
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If bees believed
If bees had religion, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect them to talk to an all-powerful and all loving Queen Bee and imagine her heaven as hive and flower? Our Mother who art in hiven, . . . It would … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, bees, critical thinking, Genesis, God, Islam, Jesus, philosophy, reason, religion, skepticism, the Bible
3 Comments
The first synthetic cell
Craig Venter crosses a threshold. This today in the New York Times: Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.” “This is an important step, we think, … Continue reading
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Tagged biology, cells, craig venter, frankenstein, Genesis, history, life, science
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Pam Reynold’s Near Death Experience
I’ve long found this the most intriguing near death experience that I’ve ever come across. The clip here is from a BBC documentary titled The Day I Died:
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Tagged atheism, atheist, cancer, death, existentialism, God, hope, life, near death experience, pam reynolds, theism
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The great I don’t know? An agnostic develops serious doubts about his agnosticism, and starts affirming “the great I don’t know”
At Andrew Sullivan’s blog today, an agnostic nurse writes movingly about his hospice work: I came into this experience as an agnostic who often had leanings to atheism, but while working with hospice patients my faith in something has been … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, atheism, atheist, death, life, near-death experiences, religion, the ontological mystery
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Apocalypse Now?: North Korea, a nuclear power, threatens full-scale war with South Korea
And this chilling sentence appeared in the New York Times story on the crisis: The motivations, health and even state of mind of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, remained cloaked in mystery. Got it? We don’t know whether, exactly, Kim … Continue reading
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Tagged apocalypse, Communism, cults, foreign policy, Jim Jones, kim jong-il, korea, north korea, oh shit, Politics, south korea, totalitarianism
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Imagine getting dressed up to attend a science lecture every Sunday morning
Karl Giberson recently made an observation that startled me: Most people think more highly of their religion than their science. Imagine trying to get 100 million Americans to dress up for a science lecture every Sunday morning — and then … Continue reading
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Tagged agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, atheist, church, humanism, life, religion, Richard Dawkins, science, social psychology
12 Comments
In case you’re having a bad day
The below video offers a bit of perspective. Carl Sagan: Astronomy is a humbling and character building experience.
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Tagged alone, astronomy, atheism, carl sagan, contingency, earth, existentialism, life, love, mental health break, perspective, psychology
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Backward Causation: William Dembski’s Desperate Ad Hoc Move, Ctd
One more thought on William Dembski’s recently published idea of “backward causation,” a term that he designates for salvaging the idea that death really did come into the world by the sin of Adam and Eve. Would you propose such a thing, … Continue reading
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Tagged Adam and Eve, adam's sin, agnosticism, America, apologetics, atheism, culture, fundamentalism, Genesis, intelligent design, the Bible, william dembski
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Prometheus Unbound 