Category Archives: God

A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists

Posted on September 13, 2020 by Santi Tafarella

As an English professor who is also active in the environmental movement, organizing an annual environmental conference at my college, I thought it would be productive to write out to myself what I think meditation is in relation to the … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, beauty, Darwin, david hume, Emerson, feminism, God, Lucretius, meditation, philosophy, poetry, Uncategorized, writing | 8 Comments

No Dogs in Heaven (A Coronavirus Poem)

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Santi Tafarella

NO DOGS IN HEAVEN It’s their morning walk; one shall be taken. He’s masked, she’s not. They match in sweaters. He is black, but time has made him blue and atheist. She is bleach white, a poodle. Reaching the porch … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, beauty, coronavirus, donald trump, God, Lucretius, philosophy, poetry, reason, rhetoric, Uncategorized, writing | Leave a comment

The Religion Tree (a poem)

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Santi Tafarella

THE RELIGION TREE I. The leaf doesn’t fall far from the tree, and we are all leaves on the same tree, and will take our leave from here. II. The yellow leaf signals fall, the green leaf, pride before the fall. … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, beauty, critical thinking, Genesis, God, meditation, philosophy, poetry, Uncategorized, writing | Leave a comment

Spring, without God (a poem)

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Santi Tafarella

SPRING, WITHOUT GOD   God gave me a rose, And God is love. The rose made me   Sneeze, and I have Asthma. The rose Landed   Me in hospital, Which can’t be right If God is love   And … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, beauty, critical thinking, Darwin, God, Lucretius, meditation, philosophy, poetry, reason, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.9: Imitation And Emulation With An Eye On Competition

Posted on October 17, 2018 by Santi Tafarella

Concept 2.9. Imitation and emulation with an eye on competition. The ancient Greek teacher Longinus is among the first thinkers to address what would become a recurrent theme in the history of writing, and most especially, literary criticism: the sublime … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, critical thinking, donald trump, education, edward feser, God, Hegel, philosophy, reason, rhetoric, science, writing | Leave a comment

Pareidolia, Google Deep Dream, Wittgenstein’s Aspect Seeing, and Friedrich Nietzsche

Posted on September 29, 2018 by Santi Tafarella

The below YouTube video on Google Deep Dream strikes me as an important reflection, not just on artificial intelligence and art, but on the human condition in the sense that pareidolia (projecting images, moods, ideas onto things) is far more … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, beauty, david hume, edward feser, God, Lucretius, meditation, philosophy, poetry, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Miracle, Mystery, and Authority in the Catholic Land of Oz: Edward Feser vs. Pope Francis on the Death Penalty

Posted on August 4, 2018 by Santi Tafarella

Pope Francis is changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church–a summary of Christian belief–to declare that the death penalty is now “inadmissable” for Catholics. Here’s The New York Times: Pope Francis has declared the death penalty wrong in all cases, … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, atomism, david hume, edward feser, God, philosophy, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Self Calming: 86 Ways To Activate Your Parasympathetic Nervous System

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Santi Tafarella

Below is a concise self calming list I recently brainstormed for myself–and I thought it might be helpful for others as well. I keep a copy on a single piece of paper in my pocket and look at it periodically … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, beauty, Bernie Sanders, david hume, edward feser, God, Lucretius, meditation, philosophy, poetry, science, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Poet’s Fictions (A Poem)

Posted on September 29, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

THE POET’S FICTIONS   No hurry, no preference; Nothing simple, Nothing personal. One fire, Great silence.   Bring your rebellion. Bring your solidarity. Imagine the bent nail, The struggle, the birth. _____

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, beauty, edward feser, God, Lucretius, meditation, poetry, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

On Having No Head: The Headless Squid Bowl, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, And The Cosmos’s Undirected, Mutually Interdependent Arising

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

The headless squid bowl sometimes served in Japanese restaurants is odd and fascinating. It strikes me as a metaphor for the cosmos: it goes without a head. How strange. In a sense, even conscious beings like ourselves go without a … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, atomism, beauty, climate change, david hume, edward feser, Genesis, God, Lucretius, meditation, origins, poetry, science, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Distract, Maul, And Dominate: Donald Trump’s CNN Wrestling Video GIF And Hitler’s Reichstag Fire

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

“There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a free press” (Samuel Adams in 1768). However tense we may be with Trump as president, our republic is still functioning … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, Bernie Sanders, brexit, climate change, donald trump, edward feser, feminism, God, Ted Cruz, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

What Does It Mean For God To Exist, Think, And Act?

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

It’s always comforting to (seemingly) settle hard questions in thirty seconds. But as a matter of logic, if space-time is the condition for existence, and existence is bound up with space-time (as Einstein proposed), then in what sense could God … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, atomism, david hume, edward feser, Genesis, God, God, Lucretius, philosophy, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Trump and Authoritarianism

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

Clarity. A must-view, short video from Vox surveying some of the political science data on authoritarianism and its relation to Trump. A really excellent summary.

Posted in atheism, Bernie Sanders, brexit, climate change, donald trump, edward feser, feminism, God, hillary clinton, Politics, science, Ted Cruz, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Spring without God (a poem)

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

SPRING WITHOUT GOD   God gave me a rose, And God is love. The rose made me   Sneeze, and I have Asthma. The rose Landed   Me in hospital, which can’t be right If God is love   And … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, beauty, edward feser, God, Lucretius, philosophy, poetry, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Trump’s America Is Not My America

Posted on March 15, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

I don’t like the phrase “not my president.” I understand the sentiment, but I think it would be a more accurate reflection of that sentiment to say, “not my America.” Trump’s America is not my America in exactly the same … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, Bernie Sanders, climate change, donald trump, feminism, God, hillary clinton, Politics, science, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Tools of Manipulation vs. The Tools of Critical Thinking

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

In a recent article at The New York Times (“Why We Believe Obvious Untruths”), two cognitive scientists, Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman, claim that dispersed knowledge is a ready and overriding explanation for why people profess belief in foolish things … Continue reading →

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, Bernie Sanders, climate change, david hume, donald trump, edward feser, feminism, God, hillary clinton, philosophy, Politics, science, Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Can President Trump be Checked?

Posted on January 12, 2017 by Santi Tafarella

If liberal democracy is to survive this time of testing, we’re all agreed that Trump needs to be, at minimum, checked, but in terms of how to do that effectively, well, that’s a very difficult question. So far, the complexity … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, Bernie Sanders, brexit, climate change, donald trump, God, philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Information and Entropy for Beginners

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Santi Tafarella

Information. Physicist Brian Greene, in his book The Hidden Reality (Knopf 2011), gives a three word definition of information: “Information answers questions” (252). Curiously, in physics you can give a three word definition for entropy as well: entropy measures questions. (That is, … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, atomism, david hume, God, philosophy, science, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s Victory and The Ending of The Planet of the Apes

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Santi Tafarella

Well, I’m searching for something that reflects accurately the emotion evoked in me by this election result. When the past year was ongoing, it was the ending of Hitchcock’s The Birds that seemed the apt metaphor for what I was … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, Bernie Sanders, climate change, donald trump, edward feser, feminism, God, hillary clinton, philosophy, Politics, science, Ted Cruz, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Trump Can’t Read–And Yet Will Have The Nuclear Biscuit?

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Santi Tafarella

Samantha Bee here is being funny–and yet her theory is troublesome because so plausible. Maybe Trump can’t read. Or, at least, not well. Are we really about to elect–in the 21st century, and to the highest office in the land–a … Continue reading →

Posted in atheism, Bernie Sanders, donald trump, feminism, God, hillary clinton, Politics, Ted Cruz, Uncategorized | Leave a comment