Blog Stats
- 2,372,037 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Vincent on A Guided Meditation With A Little Help From A Wallace Stevens Poem (“The Plain Sense Of Things”)
- tayoulevy on A Guided Meditation With A Little Help From A Wallace Stevens Poem (“The Plain Sense Of Things”)
- Santi Tafarella on How do you spell relief? R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N?
- Vincent on How do you spell relief? R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N?
- Vincent on Why I Still Like Jesus
- Anonymous on What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- Anonymous on On Having No Head: The Headless Squid Bowl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, And The Cosmos’s Undirected, Mutually Interdependent Arising
- Vincent on On Having No Head: The Headless Squid Bowl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, And The Cosmos’s Undirected, Mutually Interdependent Arising
- Santi Tafarella on On Having No Head: The Headless Squid Bowl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, And The Cosmos’s Undirected, Mutually Interdependent Arising
- Vincent on On Having No Head: The Headless Squid Bowl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, And The Cosmos’s Undirected, Mutually Interdependent Arising
- Delphinium Flower on Four Hundred Fifty Antisemitic Verses In The Gospels And Book of Acts
- Nick Reid on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- newscluesandafewblues on American Nazis at Jefferson’s Statue: That Image from Charlottesville I Can’t Get Out of My Mind
- andrewclunn on American Nazis at Jefferson’s Statue: That Image from Charlottesville I Can’t Get Out of My Mind
- Anonymous on American Nazis at Jefferson’s Statue: That Image from Charlottesville I Can’t Get Out of My Mind
Top Posts
- What is a Human, Really? Thinking about Definition via Aristotle
- How Crazy is Dr. David Jeremiah?
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Children Experimented upon at Auschwitz
- Ludwig Wittgenstein for Beginners
- How Many People Could the Ancient Colosseum in Rome Hold?
- What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Saint Ranieri, Meet George Jetson: Deconstruction Illustrated with a Catholic Painting
- Adam Smith and Capitalism for Beginners
-
Recent Posts
- A Guided Meditation With A Little Help From A Wallace Stevens Poem (“The Plain Sense Of Things”)
- On Having No Head: The Headless Squid Bowl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, And The Cosmos’s Undirected, Mutually Interdependent Arising
- Partially Excited States: An Interview With Charles Hood
- American Nazis at Jefferson’s Statue: That Image from Charlottesville I Can’t Get Out of My Mind
- Distract, Maul, And Dominate: Donald Trump’s CNN Wrestling Video GIF And Hitler’s Reichstag Fire
Recent Haiku Tweets
- Perfect. twitter.com/newsundayheral… 8 months ago
- RT @goldenglobes: At tonight's #GoldenGlobes we honor Hollywood legend Meryl Streep with the prestigious Cecil B. Demille Award. https://t.… 8 months ago
- If Trump establishes a Muslim registry, and calls on Muslims to provide their names, this agnostic will be joining them. #registerasamuslim 10 months ago
- #DonaldPGroper Donald P. Groper. Donald Trump is done, right? 11 months ago
- #DonaldPGrabber Donald P. Grabber. Donald Trump is done. 11 months ago
Monthly Archives: September 2010
A Muslim Rises to the Existential Occasion, Protecting a Jew from Some “Christians”
A little reminder about making hasty generalizations about people:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, humanity, Islam, Jesus, Jews, Judaism, love, muhammad, Muslims, peace
29 Comments
Atheists Top the Religious in Religious Knowledge
A recent Pew Survey on religious knowledge has found that atheists do better on a battery of religious knowledge questions than Jews, Christians, Mormons—indeed, anybody else. Out of 32 questions, atheists, on average, managed to answer about 21 of the questions … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheists, Catholicism, God, idiocracy, Jews, Martin Luther, mormons, Muslims, Protestants, psychology, transubstantiation
3 Comments
In a word, I hate all the gods?
In introducing his new book, To Set Prometheus Free, philosopher A C Grayling explains his choice of title by referring to Aeschylus’s play, Prometheus Bound, and quoting from it: As so often, the Greeks themselves understood with a preternatural clarity … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aeschylus, agnostic, agnosticism, atheism, atheist, existentialism, Karl Marx, percy bysshe shelley, philosophy, Prometheus, walker percy
3 Comments
A Swami for a Sunday
Swami Satchidananda is my all-time favorite Hindu guru. His name consists of a combination of three terms that, taken together, sum up rather nicely the Hindu spiritual quest: that which is (sat); that which is consciousness (chid); that which is bliss (ananda). … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bhagavad Gita, death, flow, gurus, Hinduism, life, meditation, philosophy, Swami Satchidananda, yoga
1 Comment
Go with the flow? Six plausible options for dealing with change
What is the proper response to this burning, bleeding, milk secreting, honey babbling world? It seems to me that the range of responses are pretty limited, and can be boiled down to six plausible options: acceptance and celebration (go with the flow) … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Apollo, Bakkhai, dionysos, Dionysus, Euripides, existence, flow, God, life, meaning, philosophy, psychology
5 Comments
Johann Hari Makes the Case for the Pope’s Arrest
Eloquent. Shocking. Pro-Catholic. Johann Hari on Pope Joseph Ratzinger’s flagrant criminality, and why he should not be above the law (and notice Richard Dawkins standing behind Hari): Andrew Sullivan, a Catholic, has also been wise to Ratzinger. Here’s some of what Sullivan said, … Continue reading
In Your Trance You’re Not Unfortunate: Atheism vs. Theism in Euripides’s Bakkhai
In scene 3 of Euripides’s ancient tragedy, Bakkhai, is a brief passage that overbrims with implications for the atheist vs. theist divide. Addressed to the anti-theist Pentheus, king of Thebes, a messenger calls on him to reconsider his hostility toward the divine and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, delusion, Dionysus, Euripides, God, Greek tragedy, illusion, Jesus, literature, Richard Dawkins, tragedy
3 Comments
Christine O’Donnell Says That Young Earth Biblical Creationism Has as Much Evidence Supporting It as Evolution Has
The GOP’s Delaware Senate nominee, Christine O’Donnell, has a history of saying rather ridiculous things about matters of science. Here, for example, is something that she said on CNN about the merits of reading Genesis chapter 1 literally, and how … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, biology, christine o'donnell, creationism, evolution, evolution v. creation, Genesis, God, Jesus, origins
5 Comments
Big Bang Buzz: Is Some Huge CERN Hadron Collider News on the Way?
Physicists are excited. The Washington Post this week has a very brief article, absent details, suggesting that maybe the CERN Large Hadron Collider has started to pick the lock on the Big Bang and the so-called God Particle (the Higgs boson): … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged black holes, cern, experiment, geeks, Genesis, large hadron collider, particle physics, physics, reason, science, the big bang
Leave a comment
The “It Gets Better Project” at YouTube
What would your older self say to your younger self, if you could? That’s the premise behind the It Gets Better Project: older gays and lesbians attempt to persuade gay and lesbian teens contemplating suicide to refrain and look with … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, California, Colorado, don't ask don't tell, gay, gay marriage, gay rights, homosexuality, James Dobson, Jesus, John Macarthur, lesbian
4 Comments
The Question Biologist Matt Rainbow Would Ask an Imam
Yesterday, I interviewed an American imam, Kamal Al-Khatib. Originally from Jordan, he has lived in the United States for 24 years and heads a mosque in northern Los Angeles County. Joseph West, a Muslim friend and coworker of mine, video taped the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged biology, dialogue, God, Islam, Jesus, kamal al-khatib, koran, matt rainbow, muhammad, Muslims, religion, the quran
Leave a comment
Quick Thought for the Day: Atheists are Like Frogs
Atheists are like frogs in the proverbial pot of hot water. They look through their glass across the stove at the hell realms of religion, critiquing them as psychologically warping, but have conveniently forgotten that they themselves are in a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged archetypes, atheism, atheists, boiling water, cognitive dissonance, existentialism, frogs, hell, jerry coyne, projection, psychology
5 Comments
The Theist’s Hell vs. The Atheist’s Hell: Which is Worse for Children to Learn About?
Startling the mind of a child (or a vulnerable adult) with threats of hell is manipulative and, yes, even abusive. I see no sense in denying it. But there is a premise that underlies the condemnation of hell preaching that deserves scrutiny: … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, child abuse, existentialism, heaven or hell, hell, innocence to experience, Jesus, Nietzsche, the devil, William Blake
27 Comments
The Prodigal Son (and Daughter) Culture
Should we call our time the era of the prodigal sons and daughters? Chris Hedges, from page 44 of his book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009): We are a culture … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnosticism, atheism, Chris Hedges, culture, fundamentalism, Jesus, reason, Sarah Palin, television, the doubting community, the prodigal son, Voltaire
3 Comments
The Decline and Fall of the Reason Empire
Chris Hedges, from page 44 of his book Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, 2009): We are a culture that has been denied, or has passively given up, the linguistic and intellectual … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, capitalism, Chris Hedges, Christianity, freedom, Islam, janus, Jesus, literacy, muhammad, reason, the roman empire
7 Comments
What I Believe, and What Islam Teaches
On Wednesday, I’m scheduled to interview an American imam. But I’m a member of the doubting community, not any faith community, which means that I trace my intellectual lineage to people like these: Rene Descartes. Descartes made the first principle of his life, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Abraham, Allah, America, atheism, atheist, God, Islam, Jesus, Muslim, Santi Tafarella, the doubting community, Thomas Jefferson
15 Comments
