Blog Stats
- 2,951,233 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Anonymous on Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: Stacked Corpses
- Anonymous on Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris: Is This What a Rising Christian Political Star Looks Like?
- Anonymous on Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris: Is This What a Rising Christian Political Star Looks Like?
- Anonymous on Christopher Hitchens Recites From Memory Wilfred Owen’s Great Anti-War Poem, “Dulce et Decorum est”
- How Meditation Changes The Brain | Addiction Treatment Strategies - addictions on Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together: The New York Times Says 8 Weeks of Meditation, 30 Minutes a Day, May Change the Brain
- Anonymous on Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible’s “Night of the Living Dead” Passage
- Anonymous on John Wayne Cast as Hamlet: A Great Joke About the Plays and Language of Shakespeare
- Anonymous on John Wayne Cast as Hamlet: A Great Joke About the Plays and Language of Shakespeare
- Anonymous on Book Review of “Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation”
- Anonymous on Book Review of “Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Martyrs, and the Book of Revelation”
- Anonymous on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Anonymous on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- LG Zambanini on Hanger 18: 1950s Military Clerk-Typist, June Crane, Claims That There Were Alien Bodies Stored at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio
- Sonny Walteco on Josh Timonen: Richard Dawkins’s Judas Iscariot?
- Sheilah V Madrid on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
Top Posts
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Organization: Is Jeremy England The Next Charles Darwin?
- The Coexist Bumper Sticker v. The Fiction Bumper Sticker
- Free Will Objectivism Fail: Two Mathematicians Demonstrate that Ayn Rand's Philosophy is Incoherent
- What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- The Gospel of Jessica Christ
- Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible's "Night of the Living Dead" Passage
- Daniel Dennett v. David Chalmers on consciousness (with Terence McKenna putting in his two cents)
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
Tweets by SantiTafarella-
Tag Archives: doubt
The Case for Doubt in a Single Paragraph
If you already believe something, should you attend to the opinions of naysayers, complexifiers, and qualifiers? It depends on whether you’re coming to an issue for therapy or truth. And the quality of the second opinion matters. Every liberal should … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, critical thinking, doubt, God, philosophy, Politics
8 Comments
Quick Thought: Why Do We Make of Faith a Virtue?
We all need hope and optimism, but this world provides very little actual evidence or good reasons for thinking hopeful and optimistic thoughts (such as that we survive the body after death, that God exists, or that our political leaders … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, doubt, doubting thomas, Jesus, religion
14 Comments
A Poem on the Death of God
PROCESSIONAL (After Thomas Hardy’s “God’s Funeral”) I. At twilight, a people-train prepared to move. Dead God carried at the front; mourning contagious. I am my own sadness at the death of God. II. I saw Him. He first appeared a man. Then a … Continue reading
Why I Am an Agnostic and Not an Atheist
As Thomas Aquinas formulated it, I think the first cause argument is sound. To stop the infinite regress, there must be a first cause that has no cause and a first condition that has no conditions, and, as Aquinas puts … Continue reading
An Update on My Request to Mayor Parris for the Expression of a Moment of Doubt at City Council Meetings
I’m a member of the doubting community, not the faith community, and since my local city council in Lancaster, CA., gives an alternating member of the faith community a turn every two weeks to say a sectarian prayer at the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, doubt, faith, God, Lancaster, Mayor Parris, prayer, religion
22 Comments
The End of Faith Through Critical Thinking
Here’s the Pew polling numbers on God belief: __________ And here’s University of Chicago geneticist Jerry Coyne’s tart take on what the numbers tell us: [P]racticing science erodes one’s religious belief. Sounds right to me. Critical thinking on weekdays and … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, critical thinking, doubt, evolution, jerry coyne, reason, science
10 Comments
In Praise of Doubt, Not Faith
Physicist Neil Turok: I think that if science is to overcome the disconnection with society, it needs to be better able to explain science’s greatest lesson: that for the purpose of advancing our knowledge, it is extremely important to doubt … Continue reading
My Ongoing Agnostic Jacob-Wrestle with the God Question
Let’s posit that God exists and is, ultimately, the First Cause behind all appearances, but is hidden. What would we find when looking about the universe? We would find material secondary causes everywhere, but God’s direct action nowhere. And that’s exactly … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, atheist, critical thinking, doubt, God, Jesus
Leave a comment
Father Knows Best: Charles Sanders Peirce on Using Authority to Fix Belief
In 1877 the great scientist and logician, Charles Sanders Peirce, wrote a mercifully short, but not simplistic, essay for Popular Science Monthly titled, “The Fixation of Belief.” It’s a stunner. I stumbled across it in a 1964 anthology of philosophy essays, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, authoritarianism, authority, charles sanders peirce, doubt, faith, quran, reason, the Bible, the pope
2 Comments
The Grain of Sand Argument for God’s Existence
Here are some famous lines from William Blake: To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. It’s one thing … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, atheist, doubt, God, mind, philosophy, physics, reason, sand
5 Comments
The Sensus Dubium: William Lane Craig on What to Do about Doubts (and What You Should Really Do about Doubts)
If you are an evangelical Christian, and you start to doubt the claims of Christianity, here’s my summary of the three key things that philosopher William Lane Craig, of Talbot Theological Seminary, advises you to do: Doubt your doubts. Instead of doubt, rely on your inner … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, critical thinking, doubt, faith, reason, science, sensus divinitatis, sensus dubium, warrant, william lane craig
2 Comments
The Evangelical (and Republican) Cult Explosion
Karl Giberson is an evangelical, a biologist, and an intellectual. And he’s fighting the “good fight” against that (larger) cultic part of evangelical subculture that is epistemically closed to secular scholarship. By calling the mass of evangelicalism cultic, I mean that it has created … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnosticism, America, apologetics, atheism, atheist, decline, doubt, God, Jesus, John Macarthur, psychology, social psychology
6 Comments
Our Ten Public Virtues and Why It’s So Difficult to Think Clearly
Jonathan Kay’s Among the Truthers was reviewed by Jacob Heilbrunn for the New York Times this past month, and, in discussing the cult-like epistemic closure characteristic of so many people in America, this part of the review jumped out at me: As Kay … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, conspiracy theories, critical thinking, doubt, faith, God, madness, religion, Sarah Palin, virtue
8 Comments
“The Age of Doubt”: Christopher Lane’s New Book on Victorian Agnosticism Looks Interesting
At New Humanist is an essay by Christopher Lane (adapted from his recently released book on doubt and agnosticism among the Victorians). Here is Lane writing about the (failed) defensive maneuvers taken by the Christian faithful against the rising cultural tide of religious doubt: … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, atheist, doubt, God, humanism, Jesus, philosophy, psychology, religion
1 Comment
Who’s the Pillar of Salt Here?
Imagine yourself a teen or young adult church member in America, but you have doubts. What happens when you express them? At Christianity Today, Drew Dyke, the author of Generation Ex-Christian (Moody), shares his disturbing interview discoveries: Almost to a person, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, agnosticsm, apologetics, atheism, atheist, de-converts, doubt, ex-christians, Jesus, Lot's wife, skepticism, the Bible
Leave a comment
Think v. Blink: When Reasoning, Should You Be Attentive to Your Emotional States?
When reasoning, should you be attentive to your emotional states? I say yes. To illustrate why, let’s pretend that a friend of yours comes to you with the following claim: I’m pregnant. Should you believe her? Perhaps your blink (your first visceral … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged blink, critical thinking, doubt, emotions, psychology, reason, skepticism, think
Leave a comment
Anne Rice Abandons R. Rex Parris-style Christianity
R. Rex Parris, the Lancaster, California mayor who last year proclaimed his city to be a “Christian community,” is perhaps the practitioner of the kind of obnoxious and authoritarian Christianity that Anne Rice has decided that she simply can no longer … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anne rice, apologetics, atheism, atheist, doubt, faith, God, Jesus, r. rex parris, reason, the emperor's new clothes, vampires
25 Comments
Aristotle on (what ought to be) a source of social shame
A great Aristotle quote: It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aristotle, college, critical thinking, doubt, faith, fitness, intellect, life, muscles, reason, skepticism
Leave a comment
Prometheus Unbound 