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Monthly Archives: February 2011
“A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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Tagged henry wadsworth longfellow, hope, life, poem, poetry, psalm
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God: The Ghost Writer Who Isn’t There?
At Slate this month, Jesse Bering reflects on the human inclination to project mental properties (such as beliefs and purposes), not only onto people, but animals, inanimate objects, and God: When others violate our expectations for normalcy or stump us with … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, authors, authorship, critical theory, God, Islam, Jesus, mind, Mohammad, philosophy, psychology
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The Global Financial Crisis 101
Perhaps the most honest, clear, and perceptive take on the international financial crisis to date:
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Tagged bankers, comedy, economics, finance, fraud, Great Depression 2.0, humor, life
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A Bit of Happy News for the Weekend
Willem Buiter is Citgroup’s chief economist, and here’s CNBC today reporting his forecast for the global economy over the next 40 years: “We expect strong growth in the world economy until 2050, with average real GDP growth rates of 4.6 percent … Continue reading
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Tagged 2012, armageddon, economics, End Times, good news, happiness, life, optimism, pessimism, reason, the future, weekends
4 Comments
Rick Santorum Cheers the Crusades
Politico reports this week that, in a recent speech, Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential hopeful, defended the Crusades. Yep, those Crusades. Seriously. Here’s Politico: “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part … Continue reading
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Tagged Christianity, fundamentalism, God, Islam, Jesus, Muslims, rick santorum, the crusades
18 Comments
A Christian Dialogues with Two Atheists
I think that the below dialogue between a Christian and two atheists is informative. How would you answer the atheists’ questions (if you are a religious believer)?
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, faith, God, hell, Jesus, philosophy, psychology, reason, religion, the Bible
16 Comments
Heart of Darkness: Kill Them All?
I find the following recent comments of reporter Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times jarring: [I]t is just plain heartbreaking to be in modern, moderate Bahrain today and watch as a critical American ally uses tanks, troops, guns and clubs to … Continue reading
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Tagged evil paradises, freedom, Heart of Darkness, human rights, Islam, Joseph Conrad, protest, the middle east, Thomas Jefferson
1 Comment
Stanley Fish on What Distinguishes Us from Computers
At the New York Times this week, Stanley Fish offers the following as a key distinction between himself and a computer: [I]ts procedures do not track my practice. I am not self-consciously generating a pattern of statistical frequencies. I am … Continue reading
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Tagged artificial intelligence, calculation, computers, consciousness, life, mind, robots, stanley fish, the soul, turing test
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What’s an undergraduate education for?
I like the way Tim Lee, a CATO Institute scholar, thinks about undergraduate education: [T]he primary function of an undergraduate education is to allow the student to join a scholarly community, and in the process to soak up the values and attitudes … Continue reading
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Tagged college, critical thinking, education, liberal, life, philosophy, reason, the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson
5 Comments
Was Keats Right? Surfer-Physicist Garrett Lisi’s TED Talk
The poet John Keats famously wrote, at the end of his “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the following: Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. I’m not sure this … Continue reading
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Tagged beauty, Garrett Lisi, John Keats, philosophy, physics, poetry, truth
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John Boehner: If jobs are lost “so be it.”
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Repubican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, made the following retort to job losses from recently proposed federal budget cuts: “so be it.” Here’s the Los Angeles Times: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) dismissed concerns that the spending cuts … Continue reading
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Tagged America, charles dickens, economics, john boehner, john maynard keynes, milton friedman, philosophy, Politics, scrooge, the economy, the united states
10 Comments
YEC Watch: Are Albert Mohler’s YEC Views “Thought Crimes” Or Crimes Against Thought?
Albert Mohler, the man Time magazine once (weirdly) called America’s “reigning intellectual in the evangelical movement”, is a young earth creationist. And in a recent blog post he offered the following complaint against those who have concluded that the earth is old and plants and … Continue reading
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Tagged albert mohler, apologetics, atheism, evangelicalism, evolution, fundamentalism, God, Jesus, John Macarthur, science, the Bible, young earth creationism
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The Berlin-Auschwitz Question: Could You Be Happy in Heaven if You Knew What was Going on in Hell?
I don’t think I could. (Or at least I’d like to think that I couldn’t.) But there are a lot of people who say they believe in hell—that it exists—and yet they are also happy to imagine themselves enjoying heaven. How … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, Auschwitz, Berlin, Biblical literalism, fundamentalism, God, hell, Islam, Jesus, punishment, the Bible, torture
22 Comments
Richard Spiegel on Alvin Plantinga’s Sensus Divinitatis v. Richard Dawkins’s Sensus Bullshititatis
At the Christianity Today website recently, a philosopher by the name of Jim Spiegel (who writes well, I must say) makes the following claim: [There are] moral and psychological dimensions to atheism, ones we cannot ignore. No argument there. And Spiegel … Continue reading
Do Atheists Suffer from Diseases of Perception? Philosopher Jim Spiegel Says Yes. Is He Right?
At Christianity Today this past week, the following explanation was offered by philosopher Jim Spiegel for why atheists are atheists: According to Scripture, the evidence for God is overwhelming. The apostle Paul says that “God has made it plain” that he … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, Christianity, critical thinking, God, Jesus, jim spiegel, philosophy, psychology
6 Comments
