Blog Stats
- 2,634,717 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Anonymous on How Crazy is Dr. David Jeremiah?
- Analysis of the Primeval History in Genesis – Infinite Ocean on “Male and Female Created He Them!”: Was Adam a Hermaphrodite? And Does That Explain How Eve Could Be Taken from Adam’s Body?
- HarlowGold on This Hans Holbein Painting of Christ after Crucifixion Sparked Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Imagination
- Anonymous on Michael Jackson Pedophile Reality Check: Is It Mean to Suspect that Michael Jackson Might Have Been a Pedophile?
- eileen on Michael Jackson Pedophile Reality Check: Is It Mean to Suspect that Michael Jackson Might Have Been a Pedophile?
- Anonymous on Israel Knohl on Hazon Gabriel—The Vision of Gabriel—Qumran Stone Tablet That Seems to Predate Jesus’s Death by a Generation, But Talks about a Suffering and Resurrected Messiah
- WM on Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible’s “Night of the Living Dead” Passage
- Ellis Manfredonia on Which Religion is Best? The Admirable Superhero Criterion
- tj on Was Michael Jackson a Paedophile? British Millionaire Terry George, Now 42, Says the 21 Year Old Michael Jackson Regularly Used to Call His Home, When He was 13, and on at Least One Occasion Masturbated while George was on the Phone Line
- Johny knocks on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- Johny knocks on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- Anonymous on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- lgbtq autism on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Anonymous on Did You Know That Sartre, in the Name of World Revolution, Would Not Have Prevented the Burning of the Mona Lisa? Neither Did I!
- Yr mare on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
Top Posts
- Neutrino Speed-of-Light Watch: Stephen Hawking Refuses to Comment Yet
- What is a Human, Really? Thinking about Definition via Aristotle
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- How Crazy is Dr. David Jeremiah?
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Children Experimented upon at Auschwitz
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible's "Night of the Living Dead" Passage
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Michael Jackson Pedophile Reality Check: Is It Mean to Suspect that Michael Jackson Might Have Been a Pedophile?
- Adam Smith and Capitalism for Beginners
-
Recent Posts
- A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.10: Emerson’s “Circles”
- A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.9: Imitation And Emulation With An Eye On Competition
- A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.8: Selection And Editing
- A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.7: Audience And Rhetorical Strategy
- A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.6: Moving From First Sentence To Thesis
Recent Haiku Tweets
- AOC says it well. twitter.com/CNN/status/108… 2 months ago
- nytimes.com/interactive/20… 7 months ago
- RT @mrchan: So much has changed in America, and yet so much hasn't https://t.co/x2mthUr4Kc 9 months ago
- Perfect. twitter.com/newsundayheral… 2 years ago
- RT @goldenglobes: At tonight's #GoldenGlobes we honor Hollywood legend Meryl Streep with the prestigious Cecil B. Demille Award. https://t.… 2 years ago
Monthly Archives: October 2010
David Chalmers on Hard v. Soft Emergence with Regard to Consciousness
David Chalmers discusses hard v. soft emergence and why consciousness falls into the former category:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, brain, cognitive science, david chalmers, dualism, emergence, God, materialism, mind, philosophy, qualia
1 Comment
Spectres of Reality or the Reality of Spectres?
Shane McCorristine’s new book on ghosts titled Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750-1920 (Cambridge 2010) receives a good review from Jonathan Barnes in The Times of London: What interests McCorristine about these alleged outbreaks of the paranormal is … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheists, books, consciousness, david chalmers, ghosts, God, mind, psychology, spectres, spirit
Leave a comment
The Heart of Dante Alighieri
If you’ve never read Dante Alighieri, the following is written as an enticement for you to consider doing so. A Key Dante Biographical Data Point Dante was born in Florence in 1265, but he did not die there. In fact, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged beauty, Blake, dante, hell, Keats, life, love, poetry, Sophocles, The Divine Comedy, the inferno
2 Comments
A Good Jerry Brown Ad
I love California. I love Jerry Brown.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged America, California, economy, green jobs, jerry brown, meg whitman, Politics, yes we can
7 Comments
A God Delusion: Josh Timonen v. Richard Dawkins
One sad aspect of the lawsuit recently filed against Josh Timonen by Richard Dawkins is the way that it has inadvertently played out the atheist script generally: reduce an ontological mystery (a mystery of being) to a mere problem or function for rational … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, delusion, God, josh timonen, love, materialism, psychology, qualia, reductionism, Richard Dawkins
9 Comments
Qualia Defined
Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), admirably explains what philosophers and neuroscientists mean when they talk about qualia:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged brain, cognition, color, consciousness, love, perception, philosophy, psychology, qualia, self
1 Comment
Agnosticism and Marketing
At Marginal Revolution today, economist Tyler Cowen was asked about whether there are some especially good economic ideas out there that are hard to popularize, and his answer led to a brief digression on complexity and agnosticism: [I]t is hard to popularize … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, economics, green, marketing, memes, money, psychology, rhetoric
1 Comment
Dr. David Jeremiah’s El Cajon, California
This morning I heard on the radio a megachurch pastor by the name of Dr. David Jeremiah say some really wild things (even by fundamentalist standards). A description of what I heard him say in his sermon is here. Anyway, his megachurch is … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged California, Christianity, david jeremiah, el cajon, fundamentalism, Jesus, megachurches, suburbia, towns, UFOs
Leave a comment
A Stomp is Not an Argument: Rand Paul Supporters Tear a Wig off a Woman, Drag Her to the Ground, Then One of The Crowd Stomps on Her Head
Rand Paul supporters show their respect for Western liberal democracy, freedom of expression, and a woman’s right to approach Rand Paul: Message: Total message control. Don’t ever, ever approach Rand Paul. Ever. ——————- UPDATE: Here’s the unedited AP clip of the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged a gun is not an argument, Ayn Rand, conservatives, freedom of speech, kentucky, liberals, libertarianism, mobs, objectivism, rand paul, wigs, women's rights
8 Comments
How Crazy is Dr. David Jeremiah?
Dr. David Jeremiah is the pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California, and I only know this because, when I dropped off one of my daughters at school this morning, I tuned into a Christian radio station and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged armageddon, atheism, craziness, creationism, david jeremiah, End Times, fundamentalism, garden of Eden, Genesis, Jesus, madness, psychology
236 Comments
The God Conclusion v. The God Delusion: Keith Ward Tries to Tackle Richard Dawkins
Philosopher Keith Ward has probably written the best book attempting to counter the antitheist claims in Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin 2008). Ward’s book is titled Why There Almost Certainly is a God: Doubting Dawkins (Lion 2008), and on page 11 … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, God, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, materialism, matter, mind, philosophy, psychology, religion, Richard Dawkins
3 Comments
For the Trapped Chilean Miners, Maria Campillay Heeded an Inner Call
In the Los Angeles Times last weekend, a worker at Camp Hope was profiled. Her name is Maria Campillay: Maria Campillay? She’s a social worker in the neighboring town of Caldera who took an indefinite and unpaid leave from her government … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged belief, chilean miners, Dante's Inferno, hell, love, Maria Campillay, psychology, solidarity
11 Comments
Adam and Eve and White Racism
When white Evangelicals and fundamentalists show picture books to their children depicting Adam and Eve and all the early humans (such as Noah) as white, it is no different from Afrocentrists teaching their kids that all great Egyptians were black, and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged africa, afrocentrism, apologetics, God, history, Jesus, John Macarthur, Mesopotamia, psychology, racism, san bushmen
16 Comments
William Dembski: Noah’s Flood May Have Been Global
At Panda’s Thumb Jack Krebs has an interesting post on the famous IDer, William Dembski, and his apparent drift towards belief in young earth creationism, including the idea that Noah’s Flood was a global historical event. Krebs, for example, quotes William Dembski recently … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, evolution, fundamentalism, Genesis, geology, intelligent design, noah's flood, religion, science, william dembski
2 Comments
Total Message Control Solution #1: Just Handcuff Any Journalist Who Asks Questions That You Don’t Want to Answer
Total message control (that is, the Palin model) was on disturbing display on Sunday in Alaska. This from Glenn Greenwald: [P]rivate “guards” working for GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller forcibly detained and handcuffed a journalist as he tried to ask the candidate questions … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alaska, authoritarianism, conservatism, free speech, journalism, Politics, rush limbaugh, tea partiers, tony hopfinger
Leave a comment
Once a University Lecturer and Atheist, Father Lazarus El Anthony Talks about Being an Anchorite
Lazarus El Anthony was a university lecturer in literature and philosophy in Australia, an atheist of 40 years and a Marxist. Then his mother died. And he entered the desert. And:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anchorites, atheism, atheist, Egypt, God, Jesus, life, mothers, philosophy, psychology, the desert, thoreau
8 Comments
Why Do Super Brainiacs Drink More Alcohol Than the Rest of Us?
It appears that super smart people tend to be bigger consumers of alcohol than average and dull people, and Andrew Sullivan has an armchair theory for why this is the case: It’s what Oakeshott called “the ordeal of consciousness.” When you have … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged alcohol, atheism, Ayn Rand, brains, critical thinking, hypotheses, hypothesis testing, intelligence, IQ, Karl Marx, orson welles, wine
14 Comments
The Source of the Moral Life
Love. A righteous outrage at encountering something ugly and unjust or a response to something beautiful that captures the heart. An epiphany. Like this:
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, God, life, love, morality, religion
Leave a comment
