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Monthly Archives: May 2010
If evolution is true, why do young earth creationists so often win public debates with evolutionists?
It’s sometimes said that evolutionists come out on the short end of public debates with creationists, and this is evidence that evolution is a weaker theory than scientists are generally willing to admit. But think about it. The idea that … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, biology, Charles Darwin, evolution, Genesis, psychology, science, social psychology
48 Comments
Are Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek Authoritarian Leftists?
At Dissent, Alan Johnson worries that two revered intellectual theorists, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, are increasingly sounding—it’s hard to be polite about this—old school authoritarian: I propose to write a series of posts on what I will call the “new authoritarian … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Ayn Rand, Communism, illiberalism, intellectuals, left, marxist, philosophy, postmodernism, Slavoj Zizek, Socialism, totalitarianism
1 Comment
An atheist’s despair at the universe’s apparent lack of purpose—and a plea for meaning?
Some of the lyrics: Give me something to believe. Cause I am living just to breath. And I need something more to keep on breathing for. So give me something to believe. Is atheism a dead end that leads to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, Camus, Dostoevsky, existentialism, God, Nietzsche, Sartre, The Brothers Karamazov, theism
5 Comments
Charles Darwin and the Looming 21st Century Eugenics Debate
By Victorian standards, and even by our own, Charles Darwin was a sensitive and liberal person—someone who clearly loved animals and human beings, and opposed slavery. And, like a theologian justifying God’s ways to man, I think that Darwin did … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged biology, Charles Darwin, eugenics, evolution, history, philosophy, racism, science, the descent of man, The Origin of Species
3 Comments
Alexander Solzhenitsyn on the Secular and Humanist West
As a thoroughly secular (and unrepentent) humanist, I nevertheless feel that there is some truth in what Alexander Solzhenitsyn had to say about humanism and the Enlightenment. Below are excerpts from a speech that Solzhenitsyn gave at Harvard in 1978. The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged alexander solzhenitsyn, atheism, critical thinking, humanism, reason, religion, Richard Dawkins, spirituality, the Enlightenment
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William Dembski’s Desperate Ad Hoc Move to Salvage Monotheism’s “Death Came into the World by Adam and Eve” Doctrine
There are few examples of ad hoc argumentation better than the one contained in William Dembski’s recent book, The End of Christianity. It is here that Dembski attempts to save a failed hypothesis—death came into the world by Adam and Eve’s sin—with this argument: … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Adam and Eve, apologetics, atheism, Christianity, evolution, fundamentalism, intelligent design, Jesus, theology, william dembski
2 Comments
Mental Health Break: A History of Western Art (Since The Renaissance)
What would Camille Paglia say?
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged art, Camille Paglia, decadence, mental health break, psychology
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What the camel told Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s “On the Three Metamorphoses” in a nutshell)
I love the burden of today. My lion’s “No” makes way; my sacred “Yes” is child’s play. Zarathustra had his say.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Ayn Rand, camels, children, Friedrich Nietzsche, life, lions, Nietzsche, philosophy, psychology, superman, thus spoke zarathustra, will
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What is amor fati?
What Friedrich Nietzsche took from Charles Darwin is the idea of radical contingency, and so Nietzsche’s amor fati (love of fate) is an embrace of all of life’s contingencies. Do you have the courage to embrace your existential situation (what Sartre called … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, contingency, Darwin, death, evolution, heaven, idealism, life, materialism, Nietzsche, philosophy, Platonism
1 Comment
Is Islam a violent religion in the same way that it is a patriarchal religion?
In a recent New York Times essay, Robert Wright attempts to complexify the “jihadi intent” narrative for the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, to which Jerry Coyne dismissively retorts: It’s social difficulties, mental illness, financial problems, and American depredations in the Middle … Continue reading
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Tagged 9-11, atheism, atheist, Islam, jerry coyne, Mohammad, Muslims, nonviolence, religion, robert wright, violence, women
49 Comments
The Is-Ought Distinction: What Would Nietzsche Say to Sam Harris?
Sam Harris has of late generated a lot of public discussion by reopening this can of worms: In the realm of values, is Hume right that no “is” should be governing our “oughts”? Put another way: Can science ever really arbitrate a human moral question? If science, for … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, Charles Darwin, david hume, ethics, evolution, God, Nietzsche, philosophy, Sam Harris, science, William Blake
12 Comments
A Great Quote on Theory Sludge
This quote comes from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, writing in the New York Times Book Review recently: The study of literature as an art form, of its techniques for delighting and instructing, has been replaced by an amalgam of bad epistemology … Continue reading
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Tagged art, books, coughing in ink, critical theory, derrida, literature, modernism, New York Times, postmodernism, reading, sludge, william butler yeats
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How many Americans call themselves either atheist or agnostic?
Actually, the number—at least according to a Pew poll of about 35,000 Americans from three years ago—is pretty small: just 4% (1 out of every 20 Americans). The religiously unaffiliated total is 16.1%, but most of the unaffiliated nevertheless profess to be believers … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, America, atheism, atheist, civil rights, God, polls, religion, Richard Dawkins, social psychology
3 Comments
Survival of the Physics: Quantum Darwinism?
Have you ever heard of quantum Darwinism? It’s not a form of New Age woo, but something that physicists are seriously exploring. This yesterday at PhysOrg.com: The basis of almost any theoretical quantum-to-classical transition lies in the concept of decoherence. … Continue reading
Muslim assaults cartoonist on a university campus
But don’t call his violence Islamofascism. This reported today by AP: A Swedish artist who angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog said Tuesday he was assaulted while giving a lecture at a university. Lars Vilks told The Associated Press a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, Christopher Hitchens, fascism, free speech, God, Islam, islamofascism, lars vilks, Mohammad, Muslims, Voltaire
12 Comments
A Little Reminder of Mitt Romney’s Willingness to Scapegoat Atheists and Agnostics for the Purposes of Uniting the Republican Party
Mitt Romney—in a speech to Republicans on December 6, 2007—tried to drive secular people like me to America’s margins as the invisible and dehumanized others. I bring this up now, in 2010, because Romney is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination … Continue reading
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Tagged Abraham Lincoln, agnostics, atheism, atheists, bigotry, conservatism, Jesus, mitt romney, mormons, Republicans, the doubting community
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The slow, but unmistakable, progress of religion in the direction of science, evidence, and reason
At least, according to Monty Python:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, Christianity, critical thinking, Halloween, Islam, philosophy, reason, Salem, scientific method, social psychology, witches
2 Comments
Prometheus Unbound 