Tag Archives: empathy

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

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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“Cool Braining” Should Be The New Phrase For Yawning

Or, perhaps, “empathy enhancing.” __________ I take from the above video that maybe “hot heads” should not just count to ten in an effort to not blow up at other people, but perhaps try yawning (“cool braining” or “empathy enhancing”) … Continue reading

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Health Care Insurance Reform Quote of the Day

Robert Wright, a guest blogger for Andrew Sullivan this week, makes a great point about health care and rationing: What more is there to say about Sarah Palin’s now-famous claim that President Obama’s health-care plan features “death panels” that will … Continue reading

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Quote for the Day

G.K. Chesterton: The madman is not someone who has lost his reason. The madman is someone who has lost everything except his reason.

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I Am an Empatheist

Atheist biologist Jerry Coyne asked his blog readers today to coin one word that could be used for atheists who are accomodating—rather than combative—in their attitudes toward religion. Here was my response: Since you’re obviously talking about people like me, maybe … Continue reading

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My Favorite Bible Verse?

Maybe Micah 6:8 in the King James Version. It has the quality of an elegant mathematical formula, a reduction of religion to elements that I, as an agnostic, can absorb and endorse: He hath shewed thee, O man, what is … Continue reading

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Weekend Hot Links

They’re everywhere. Andrew Sullivan and his husband find themselves walking in the background of a famous heterosexual couple’s photograph . . . more Slate deconstructs the conservative Republican War on Empathy . . . more Camille Paglia worries about the obsessive and … Continue reading

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Barack Obama on Empathy

From The Audacity of Hope : “It is at the heart of my moral code and it is how I understand the Golden Rule — not simply as a call to sympathy or charity, but as something more demanding, a … Continue reading

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Negative Capability Defined: Walking in Mysteries—and the Shoes of Others—with Keats, Shakespeare, Whitman—and Barack Obama!

In a letter dated 22 December, 1817, the poet John Keats coined the term “negative capability” and defined it this way: I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & … Continue reading

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