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Tag Archives: George Orwell
10 Questions to Ask Before You Believe Something
How well does a belief that you currently subscribe to hold up under these ten questions? And wouldn’t it be nice if we all asked such questions before professing belief in something? Do I have any actual evidence for the thing … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, critical thinking, George Orwell, God, philosophy, psychology, reason, theism
9 Comments
Look
Really. Look. __________ No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking … Continue reading
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Tagged art, college, George Orwell, life, music, poetry, seeing, thoreau
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Give George Orwell a Statue Near BBC Headquarters
The exact site has yet to be settled on, but this is in the Telegraph today (quoting the artist commissioned to make the statue): George Orwell is regarded as something of a patron saint of political journalism so his presence … Continue reading
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Tagged Christopher Hitchens, critical thinking, George Orwell, intelligence, reason
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In Memoriam of Christopher Hitchens
On hearing of Christopher Hitchens’s death this morning, my first thoughts went to something he had once said as a play on Socrates: The unlived life is not worth examining. Christopher Hitchens lived a life worth examining. May his future … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, Christopher Hitchens, death, George Orwell, God, hitch, Jesus, life, Socrates
3 Comments
Jacob Wrestling the Irrational Animal: George Orwell on Critical Thinking
In London’s Tribune, George Orwell wrote an essay (“In Front of Your Nose,” March 22, 1946) with a number of great observations on critical thinking. The first is this: In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, critical thinking, Freud, George Orwell, God, Iraq, Jacob wrestling the angel, Orwell, Politics, reason, science
2 Comments
Critical Thinking Tip #6: Try These Four Fog Breaking Steps for Getting at the Truth of a Matter
Feel like you’re in a fog about what you should believe concerning a claim? Try running it through the following four criteria and see how well it holds up: The claim is accompanied by evidence. If evidence is not … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, Buddhism, clarity, critical thinking, George Orwell, psychology, reason, science, self help, thinking
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Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris: Is This What a Rising Christian Political Star Looks Like?
Mayor R. Rex Parris, 58, a born-again Baptist who last year declared his city, the city of Lancaster, Ca., a “Christian community,” was profiled a while back in the Los Angeles Times, and I notice that the Times described R. Rex Paris’s … Continue reading
An Atheist Poem by Charlotte Perkins Gilman?
Something that people might not know about Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the 19th century author of the frequently assigned (in college) feminist short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), is that she was also a poet. In her lifetime she published well over … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, charlotte perkins gilman, epistemology, George Orwell, Hamlet, philosophy, poems, poetry, psychology, religion
1 Comment
Orwellism Watch: Biologist Jerry Coyne Takes Down Robert Wright a Peg
Atheist biologist Jerry Coyne, in his recent review for the New Republic of Robert Wright’s new book, The Evolution of God, catches Wright out on an Orwellian euphemism that Wright deploys to describe Islamic historical setbacks on the road to greater tolerance: … Continue reading
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Tagged 1984, atheism, atheist, biology, evolution, George Orwell, jerry coyne, orwellisms, religion, robert wright, skepticism
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Jeff Bezos’s Orwellian Treatment of George Orwell’s 1984
The potentially Orwellian implications of the Kindle here.
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Tagged 1984, Amazon, George Orwell, jeff bezos, kindle, Orwell, totalitarianism
2 Comments
Sarah Palin’s Orwellian Mind: She Can’t Call Things What They Are, and Words Can Shift Their Meaning Whenever They Are Useful to Her
Gail Collins caught these two Sarah Palin resignation speech Orwellisms this week: “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow.’ Nah, only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’ No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to … Continue reading
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Tagged 1984, freedom is slavery, George Orwell, James Dobson, orwellisms, rush limbaugh, Sarah Palin, war is peace
11 Comments
Michael Jackson Pedophile Reality Check: Is It Mean to Suspect that Michael Jackson Might Have Been a Pedophile?
. The short answer is no, it’s not mean or irrational. Under normal circumstances nobody gets to do what Michael Jackson did (bring unrelated children into his bedroom overnight). No adult man gets to do that without suspicion cast upon … Continue reading
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Tagged 1984, America, children, George Orwell, Michael Jackson, neverland, newspeak, parenting, pedophile, pedophiles, peter pan, walt disney
147 Comments
Was George Orwell a Clear-Headed Critic of Literature, or Was He Hopelessly Confused About It?
Perhaps something in between. At the New Statesman website, New Yorker staff writer, Keith Gessen, discusses the tensions and contradictions in George Orwell’s writings on literature and the arts. One of the examples that he offers is Orwell’s evaluation of … Continue reading
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Tagged criticism, essays, George Orwell, literary criticism, literature, poems, poetry, Politics, T.S. Eliot, writing
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Mexican Flu, Swine Flu, or H1N1? A Pandemic Gets Rebranded
Whether or not the source for H1N1 was a Mexican pig farm (and this is by no means certain), the implication that this virus is somehow a “Mexican flu” and should be called Mexican flu borders on the racist, and carries … Continue reading
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Tagged flu, George Orwell, H1N1, language, Mexican flu, Michael Savage, michelle malkin, orwellisms, pandemic, rush limbaugh, swine flu, virus
6 Comments
Mike Allen’s Orwellian Description of Bush Era Torture: “Aggressive interrogation practices critics decried as torture.”
Glenn Greenwald lets loose: Politico’s Mike Allen — in the same article where he granted anonymity to a cowardly “top Bush official” to do nothing other than smear Obama as a friend of Al Qaeda (and marvel at Allen’s pathetic … Continue reading
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Tagged Abu Ghraib, ACLU, bush era torture, civil rights, George Orwell, Glenn Greenwald, Mike Allen, newspeak, Politics, torture
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BIG JESUS is Watching You? Is Christianity a Form of Authoritarianism/Totalitarianism?
Christopher Hitchens thinks that Christianity, in the way it surrounds and encloses the psyche of the believer, and threatens the unbeliever with torture, is a form of totalitarianism: It is an odd thing, isn’t it, to tell somebody, IF YOU … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, authoritarianism, Christianity, Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, Jesus, religion, scapegoat, scapegoating, the Bible, totalitarianism
28 Comments
