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Tag Archives: Dostoevsky
Absent Good Reasons and Evidence, Trust No One
I don’t like this t-shirt. It cheer-leads obfuscation, mystification, authority. A better statement would be, “I’m a professor. If I make a claim, doubt it and ask for the reasons and evidence I have in support of the claim. I … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, college, critical thinking, Dostoevsky, psychology, reason, The Grand Inquisitor
1 Comment
Why was Socrates Put to Death?
At Slate, David Auerbach summarizes philosopher Rebecca Goldstein’s take on why Socrates died: Goldstein [in her new book, Plato at the Googleplex] argues that Socrates was ultimately executed because he deferred to no one’s authority and tore down Athens’ idealized … Continue reading
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Tagged authority, Dostoevsky, mystification, philosophy, Socrates
5 Comments
Burger King in Russia, Circa 2011
Thought experiment. Imagine resurrecting the following figures from the Russian and Soviet past: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Czar Nicholas, and Lenin. Show them the ad below. Tell them this is what is being promoted to Russian youth as desirable in the year … Continue reading
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Tagged burger king, capitalism, Communism, Dostoevsky, globalism, hamburgers, lenin, life, Russia, Soviet Union, Tolstoy
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I Plank, Therefore I Am
. If you don’t know what planking is, it’s where you have somebody take a picture of you lying, typically face down, rigid as a board, in an unexpected place. You then post it on the Internet. In the above photo, for … Continue reading
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Tagged Albert Camus, atheism, atheist, Dostoevsky, Jesus, life, philosophy, plank, planking, the absurd, underground man, yoga
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Checkmate: Death and Determinism are the Two Absolute Truths of Atheism
It’s sometimes asserted that atheism admits of no ultimate or absolute truths, but in the “D Girl” episode of the Sopranos (Season 2) is a rather nice exchange between Tony Soprano and his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Malfi, that suggests otherwise. The exchange concerns … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, determinism, Dostoevsky, existentialism, francis crick, freedom, naturalism, nihilism, science, tony soprano
17 Comments
Top Secret America: An Alien Has Landed?
I just read Part 1 of the Washington Post’s investigative report on “Top Secret America.” Below is my brief digest of Part 1, accompanied by what I regard as the article’s key quotes. The full piece is here. The Washington Post calls the Fort Meade cluster of … Continue reading
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Tagged America, CIA, Dick Cheney, Dostoevsky, national security state, notes from underground, pentagon, secrecy, spies, top secret america, UFOs, underground man
6 Comments
Existential Flungness in a Twilight Zone Episode
The first ten minutes of this Twilight Zone episode is Rod Serling channeling Beckett, Kafka, and Sartre. It’s very cool. Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is not on YouTube. I know the ending, though, and will tell you what it … Continue reading
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Tagged Camus, Dostoevsky, existentialism, God, Kafka, life, philosophy, rapture, Sartre, truth, twilight zone, waiting for godot
4 Comments
An atheist’s despair at the universe’s apparent lack of purpose—and a plea for meaning?
Some of the lyrics: Give me something to believe. Cause I am living just to breath. And I need something more to keep on breathing for. So give me something to believe. Is atheism a dead end that leads to … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, Camus, Dostoevsky, existentialism, God, Nietzsche, Sartre, The Brothers Karamazov, theism
5 Comments
Structural Demolition and the Religious Psyche
Hmm. I understand the metaphor, but there’s also something vaguely disturbing about mixing a spiritual message with the primitive glee of tearing down a real building:
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Tagged 9-11, death, demolition, destruction, Dostoevsky, God, Jesus, life, underground men
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Adam Kirsch Reviews Zeev Sternhell’s New Book on the Enlightenment v. Romanticism
Are you an Enlightenment universalist, a brooding Romantic, or a Rorty-like Pragmatist trying to split the difference? Regardless of your answer, a new book has just come out with a very definite point of view on the question (the author … Continue reading
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Tagged Dostoevsky, isaiah berlin, philosophy, pragmatism, richard rorty, romanticism, the Enlightenment, thomas carlyle, Wordsworth
2 Comments
Can an Authoritarian Tree Produce Good Fruit? Thinking about John Calvin’s Geneva
After Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth? Here’s the historian Will Durant, from his book The Reformation (1957, pp. 473-474), on what John Calvin’s Geneva was like in the 16th century: Calvin himself, austere and severe, dreamed of a community … Continue reading
Meat Eating Combined with Running Makes You Smarter?
Well, not exactly. But according to Harvard scientist Dan Lieberman, it was a big factor in making you smart in the first place. Here’s his syllogism: Starting about two million years ago, our ancestors’s ever increasing ability to run long distances … Continue reading
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Tagged anthropology, biology, contingency, Dostoevsky, evolution, fitness, health, Kant, running, science, vegetarian, vegetarianism
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Notes from Underground
Who will speak from the insistent vantage of the ontological mystery? Against the best efforts of our contemporary advocates of scientism, positivism, and reductionism, below is a succinct explanation for why religion, poetry, Dostoevsky’s “underground man,” and Camus’s “Sisyphian hero” cannot just cede the … Continue reading
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Tagged Albert Camus, Camus, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, philosophy, poetry, Politics, reductionism, religion, science, the ontological mystery
4 Comments
Irony, Contingency, Solidarity: It’s Not Easy Being Green—Especially in Iran
Perhaps you’ve noticed that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was opposed in the recent election by a man with rather bold and outspoken followers who had a particular fondness for green. In fact, you may have observed that there’s a lot of … Continue reading
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Tagged Buddhism, Christianity, contingency, Dostoevsky, Hitler, Islam, Israel, Jesus, Kant, Mohammad, philosophy, Susan Neiman
9 Comments
“What is called resignation is confirmed desperation” (Henry David Thoreau)
Escaping from freedom into the ecstasy of resignation and submission (1967): Or another way to look at it: “Atheism is a ferocious system, that leaves nothing above us to excite awe, nor around us to awaken tenderness” (R. Hall).
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Tagged 1960s, 1967, Buddhism, Charisma, confirmed desperation, Dostoevsky, evangelicalism, Henry David Thoreau, Hinduism, krishna, yoga, Zen
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This Hans Holbein Painting of Christ after Crucifixion Sparked Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Imagination
While living in Bern, Germany, Fyodor Dostoevsky was mesmerized by the Hans Holbein painting below. Dostoevsky saw what the painting depicted as the pivot on which faith or unbelief must rest. One must either believe that God raised Jesus’s body from … Continue reading
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Tagged agnostic, atheist, Dostoevsky, faith, Fyodor Dostoevsky, hans holbein, Jesus, nature, nihilism, religion, resurrection, science
10 Comments
Quote of the Day
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote this arresting passage in his short story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”: [P]eople appeared who began devising ways of bringing men together again, so that each individual, without ceasing to prize himself above all others, might not … Continue reading
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Tagged Communism, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hegel, life, literature, psychology, Socialism, totalitarianism, utopia, utopianism, war
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