Monthly Archives: February 2011

“A Psalm of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Posted on February 28, 2011 by
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God: The Ghost Writer Who Isn’t There?

Posted on February 28, 2011 by

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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The Global Financial Crisis 101

Posted on February 28, 2011 by

Perhaps the most honest, clear, and perceptive take on the international financial crisis to date:

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Three Ohio Bucks Locked in Life—and Death. Why Is This Poetic?

Posted on February 26, 2011 by

A distressing scene to contemplate was recently recounted (with photos) in Field & Stream: [T]hree Ohio bucks somehow locked antlers while battling near a small creek. When one deer slid into a shallow pool, it sealed the fate for all three, … Continue reading →

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What Would Oedipus Say?

Posted on February 25, 2011 by

Freud’s Totem and Taboo in a nutshell (and with nuts). Amusing, but perhaps a minute too long.

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A Bit of Happy News for the Weekend

Posted on February 25, 2011 by

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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Rick Santorum Cheers the Crusades

Posted on February 24, 2011 by

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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A Christian Dialogues with Two Atheists

Posted on February 24, 2011 by

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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Heart of Darkness: Kill Them All?

Posted on February 24, 2011 by

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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Stanley Fish on What Distinguishes Us from Computers

Posted on February 23, 2011 by

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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What’s an undergraduate education for?

Posted on February 22, 2011 by

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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Was Keats Right? Surfer-Physicist Garrett Lisi’s TED Talk

Posted on February 22, 2011 by

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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Using Aristotle’s Four Causes to Analyze Literature

Posted on February 22, 2011 by

When Aristotle looked at, say, a tree and asked what caused it, his answer began with matter and form: a tree is a product of the raw matter it is made of (water and wood fibers) channeled through a very particular form … Continue reading →

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John Boehner: If jobs are lost “so be it.”

Posted on February 21, 2011 by

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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YEC Watch: Are Albert Mohler’s YEC Views “Thought Crimes” Or Crimes Against Thought?

Posted on February 19, 2011 by

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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The Berlin-Auschwitz Question: Could You Be Happy in Heaven if You Knew What was Going on in Hell?

Posted on February 18, 2011 by

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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Richard Spiegel on Alvin Plantinga’s Sensus Divinitatis v. Richard Dawkins’s Sensus Bullshititatis

Posted on February 17, 2011 by

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 →

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How Likely is President Obama’s Reelection?

Posted on February 17, 2011 by

At the New York Times this week, Nate Silver lays out some criteria for an educated guess: I estimate that Mr. Carter’s approval rating was 31 percent, and George H.W. Bush’s was 39 percent, at the time of their respective … Continue reading →

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Close Literary Reading 101: Thinking about How Stories End

Posted on February 15, 2011 by

I thought it might be fun (at least for me) to lay out, in a series of short blog posts, some of the basic terms and ideas that I present to my students when talking about the “close reading” of literary texts. … Continue reading →

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Do Atheists Suffer from Diseases of Perception? Philosopher Jim Spiegel Says Yes. Is He Right?

Posted on February 13, 2011 by

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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