Category Archives: origins

A Mini-Course In Rhetoric For Writers. Concept 2.3: Rhetoric Is Sexy

I’ve decided to attempt the first draft of a college-level textbook, writing it directly into my blog, bit by bit. Feedback and recommendations in the thread comments are welcome, either encouraging or critical. The first chapter is a mini-course in … Continue reading

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

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

Scientific Method For Poets: What Is Scientific Method, Exactly, And Can It Be Separated From Our Values?

Scientific method. If we’re not engaging in self-deception, trying to ad hoc our way across the bridge from logical possibility to the actual truth of a matter, we see that we have a variety of genuinely objective tools ready-to-hand to … Continue reading

Posted in atheism, atomism, beauty, david hume, edward feser, Lucretius, origins, philosophy, science, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Evolution Lowdown: Earth is a Big Blue Petri Dish in Space

__________ In the video above, from Harvard Medical School, bacterial evolution is on display in real time. At the end of the video, there’s even an overlay of the the branching family trees that developed in the experiment. That’s the … Continue reading

Posted in aesthetics, atheism, atomism, beauty, climate change, Genesis, God, Lucretius, origins, science, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?

Not to be crude, but gays and lesbians may function in humans as akin to the large clitorises in bonobos. In the bonobo female, the clitoris is unusually large, and it’s used to bond socially with other females. They rub … Continue reading

Posted in atheism, beauty, feminism, Genesis, God, hillary clinton, origins, Uncategorized | Tagged | 5 Comments

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Fish

Buddhist mandala meets Jackson Pollock: how one obsessive-compulsive fish gets another fish to notice him, bringing her under his spell. The Japanese puffer fish signals sexually by making art circles. The pattern tells the female: “Lay your eggs in the … Continue reading

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A Brief History of Everything: Lucretius and Giordano Bruno Would Have Loved This Video by Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

And they would have been astonished–astonished!–at how thoroughly atomism has vanquished Platonism–and supernaturalism generally–from the story of cosmic creation, evolution, and our origins. _____ Also, I notice that, toward the end of the video, Neil deGrasse Tyson sounds for all … Continue reading

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