Tag Archives: atheism

Writing or Art? Mel Bochner’s “LANGUAGE IS NOT TRANSPARENT” (1970)

Posted on April 9, 2016 by

Is it art? Is this the sort of art one passes by impatiently as not really art? Notice that it has no conventional images in it, such as, say, a Madonna with child. Where Mary and the baby Jesus might … Continue reading →

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Hume Hearts Buddha, Picasso, And Einstein–But Not Nazis, Aquinas, Or Monotheism

Posted on July 30, 2015 by

Hume hearts Buddha. In Hume Studies (Volume 35, Number 1&2, 2009, pp. 5–28), Alison Gopnik has a fascinating essay–“Could David Hume Have Known about Buddhism?”–in which she writes the following: Hume’s argument in the Treatise, like Nagasena’s “chariot” argument, points to the … Continue reading →

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What’s Good About Monotheism, Again? What Part Of It Is Worth Treasuring And Rooting For? And Why, Exactly, Is God Always Gendered Male?

Posted on July 25, 2015 by

Robbed, killed, raped, enslaved–all in the name of God. Ain’t monotheism grand? Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East? ISIS and other extremist movements across the region are enslaving, killing and uprooting Christians, with no aid in … Continue reading →

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Has Darwin Put Adam And Eve In Checkmate?

Posted on July 20, 2015 by

The problem. Here’s the reality: Darwin upended special creation, leaving basically just one plausible chess move to anyone who accepts evolution and posits a literal Adam and Eve: the miraculous insertion of a soul into an already evolved species of … Continue reading →

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Genesis vs. Evolution–with Edward Feser to Religion’s Rescue!

Posted on July 19, 2015 by

The cake God bakes. In Genesis, to get a community with souls, God has a simple recipe. He: spends six days making heaven and earth takes inorganic matter–dust–from the newly created ground forms the dust into a man and places … Continue reading →

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Albert Mohler Calls Closeted Atheist Clergy “Charlatans and Cowards”

Posted on July 15, 2015 by

Who’s being the coward here? Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an unapologetic young Earth creationist, plays rough with secretly atheist clergy members who have talked in confidence to Daniel Dennett’s The Clergy Project, writing at … Continue reading →

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From A Lion Behind A Bush To God Behind The Oz Curtain: The Evolution Of God Belief

Posted on June 22, 2015 by

What is the relation between God belief and ignorance? I have a colleague in the science department at my college who said this to me yesterday (I’m paraphrasing): “I’m less sympathetic to the young Earth creationist of today than the … Continue reading →

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Justice Antonin Scalia Believes In Hell And The Devil–But Not Gays And Atheists

Posted on June 14, 2015 by

At Salon, Jeffrey Taylor’s summary of Antonin Scalia’s interview with New York magazine caught me for a loop. The man is seriously superstitious, living in a demon haunted world: [Jennifer] Senior interviewed Scalia for her magazine. She asked for his … Continue reading →

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The “Little Missionary”: A Child Healer in Brazil

Posted on June 11, 2015 by

Six years old. She’s called the “Little Missionary,” and the money is rolling in. Religion exploiting children. Is this a bug or a feature? Brazil’s evangelical revolution sees miracle healers take centre stage Poverty and technology contribute to boom of … Continue reading →

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Epidurals and Pains in Childbirth: Why Do Arguments Start and Stop Where They Do?

Posted on June 11, 2015 by

People often claim that they’re appealing to reason in argumentation, but the way they reason frequently reveals more about them than the truth. Put another way, an argument often says more about your inward passions, sensibilities, and imaginative world than … Continue reading →

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Buzz: Stephen Greenblatt’s Adam And Eve Book Coming Soon?

Posted on May 25, 2015 by

I don’t see the book listed at Amazon yet, but in an interview last year, Harvard’s Stephen Greenblatt, an atheist, said his next book would be on Adam and Eve. He’s also been teaching a course on Adam and Eve at … Continue reading →

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Is Atheist Sam Harris Sexy? Nagarjuna’s Opinion–And Thomas Aquinas’

Posted on May 19, 2015 by

Sam Harris is sexy, right? Perhaps you agree. But think again. How you answer this question says a lot about your orientation. Not your sexual orientation. Or at least not just your sexual orientation. It reveals something about how you … Continue reading →

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Three Things I Think Are True

Posted on May 16, 2015 by

At this point in my life, I think there are three things that are true–the first one being rather obvious: I am a limited being, embedded in the system I’m trying to explain. This means I cannot be wholly confident that … Continue reading →

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Holy Shit! The Atheists Really Are Coming!

Posted on May 12, 2015 by

From 16% to 23% of the American population. That’s how fast the religiously unaffiliated have risen in America over the past eight years. Stunning. The Republican Party and the Internet have ruined Christianity in America. Republicans have politicized religion, and … Continue reading →

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Let Them Eat (Or Not Eat) Wedding Cake: Religious Conscience, Gay Marriage, And Empathy For Others

Posted on April 29, 2015 by

With regard to bakers who might balk, out of conscience, in making a cake for a gay wedding, I think many of us who are heterosexual and support gay marriage have a problem: our empathy goes all in one direction–toward … Continue reading →

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Imagination, Desire, And Action Through Chemistry: My Theory Of Free Will

Posted on April 29, 2015 by

In terms of free will, I don’t think we have contra-causal free will (free will that actually interferes with and pushes around determinate matter). I think our brains are modular, governed by often contending impulses, and that sometimes–or even characteristically … Continue reading →

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How Do You Know? Factive Verbs in Relation to Political, Religious, and Scientific Discourse

Posted on March 3, 2015 by

I’m thinking about factive verbs this morning in relation to such things as global warming, God’s existence, evolution, the future of the stock market, etc. ESTABLISH, for example, is a very strong, emphatic verb, as in, “I’ve established the truth … Continue reading →

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From His Book, “Unweaving the Rainbow”

Posted on February 8, 2015 by

This is terrific. Richard Dawkins on death. And life.

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Letter Writers Heart Richard Dawkins

Posted on January 22, 2015 by

The beloved Oxford evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, reads out representative samples of the love he attracts from those who follow his work. __________ The tone and content of the letters remind me of numerous pronouncements made by famous theologians and … Continue reading →

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Hubble Zooms In On A Distant Island Universe

Posted on January 22, 2015 by

Some life perspective. In the below video released by NASA this month, the Hubble telescope does a gigapixel zoom-in on Andromeda, another island universe beyond our own. (It was Kant who first speculated that distant nubulae–tiny, blurry “clouds” visible in … Continue reading →

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