Blog Stats
- 2,790,942 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Anonymous on Trump’s New Cancel Culture: Cancelling Black Voters
- bluecat57 on Trump’s New Cancel Culture: Cancelling Black Voters
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Michael CJ on What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- Shaun on America’s Largest Cult: 64% of Evangelicals Hold to the Young Earth Creationist Belief That “God created humans pretty much in their present form at one time in the last 10,000 years or so.”
- Anonymous on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- prismpromise on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- Santi Tafarella on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- notabilia on A Meditation Explainer for Poets and Environmentalists
- VFYW Contest: Readers On The Trail - Sensemaking Today on Charles Darwin and Politics: Very Gradual Change We Can Believe In?
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Irony in a Good Poem: Christina Rossetti's "Dirge"
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- "The Vision of Christ That Thou Dost See": William Blake on the Many Faces of Jesus
- UFOs, Aliens, and Religious Art
- Sarah Palin and the Exorcist: Before She Ran for Governor, a Kenyan Witch Hunter and Demon Vanquisher Laid Hands on Her and Said, "Lord Make a Way"---and the Lord Apparently Did!
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
- In a word, I hate all the gods?
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- RT @tbonier: More than 80M votes cast and we're not done yet. Thoughts: - It's too late for an "October surprise" to have a significant imp… 3 weeks ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 2 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 3 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 3 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Trump cares more about dead traitors than live patriots. RT this @votevets ad & tell your followers https://t.co/OD5Z… 4 months ago
Tag Archives: language
How Do You Know? Factive Verbs in Relation to Political, Religious, and Scientific Discourse
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
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, God, language, philosophy, Politics, religion, science, verbs
3 Comments
Definition and Origin of the Phrase “The Whole Nine Yards”
Blaise Pascal once wrote someone the following: “I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” Today we might say that Pascal gave his reader, not the short version of his thought, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Charles Darwin, evolution, language, memes, Richard Dawkins, words
Leave a comment
Atheism and Free Will: The End of Praise and Shame?
If you’re an atheist and have concluded that free will doesn’t exist, where does that leave praise and shame? Atheist Jerry Coyne, who does not believe humans have free will, suggests that it leaves praise and shame in the dust: … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, atheist, b.f. skinner, critical thinking, determinism, free will, God, jerry coyne, language, philosophy, rhetoric
3 Comments
In the Beginning Wasn’t the Word?
If you’re inclined to believe that your dog or cat has thoughts, but lacks a sophisticated vocal language for communicating them, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker agrees with you. He argues that language isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary for thought. Interesting. ___
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cats, dogs, language, life, philosophy, psychology, reason, steven pinker, thought
Leave a comment
How to Change The Way You See Things: Conceptualization, Reconceptualization, And Thomas Aquinas
. Thomas Aquinas thought that vegetables and animals have souls. According to him, the soul of the vegetable—its matter and essential form—is to take in nutrients, and the soul of the animal is to enjoy access to the senses and to move. But … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Catholicism, concepts, defamiliarization, God, language, philosophy, poetry, reason, the soul, Thomas Aquinas
Leave a comment
A Great Double Entendre
. A color engraving, from 1814, with this exchange: ‘My sweet honey, I hope you are to be let with the Lodgins!’ ‘No, sir, I am to be let alone.’
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged 19th century, comedy, double entendre, humor, language, life, love, sex
4 Comments
David Hart v. Kevin Drum: Is God Completely Full of It?
A plenitude is something or someone completely full of it (whatever it happens to be). And so the question arises: is God best defined as a plenitude, as when David Hart calls God “an absolute plenitude of actuality”? In other words, is … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, agnosticism, apologetics, atheism, atheist, God, Islam, Jesus, language, psychology, religion, the wizard of oz
3 Comments
Of Cookie Crumbs and Religion’s True Nature
I have two questions. Here’s my first: if a crumb from a cookie falls to the kitchen table and breaks into four pieces, do you now have one cookie crumb divided by four, or four cookie crumbs? Here’s my second … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, God, Islam, Jesus, language, philosophy, psychology, religion, Richard Dawkins, skepticism
4 Comments
Lost in the Cosmos: Language and Irony
Once you acknowledge (as I do) that the universe appears, paradoxically, as either self-created or always existent, and that it consists of atoms and the void and nothing else, then there is nothing in that universe that can tell you, as … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, Buddhism, comedy, diversity, God, language, life, poetry, Richard Dawkins, richard rorty, tragedy
Leave a comment
Daniel Dennett: the Vanquisher of “Deepity” Religion—and Poetry?
The Daniel Dennett deepity slide that Jerry Coyne took a picture of here is one that I wrote into my notebook (I was at the same conference). A deepity, according to Dennett, “is a proposition that seems to be profound … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, Daniel Dennett, language, philosophy, physics, poems, poetry, psychology, the ontological mystery
27 Comments
Two Interesting Links for the Day
How language shapes the way we think. How the Internet is impacting our writing.
An Appeal to What the Book Says: Webster’s Dictionary, Pat Boone, and the Fight over Gay Marriage
Pat Boone has given us yet another compelling reason to oppose gay marriage: Webster’s Dictionary! I noticed this powerful use of logic by Pat Boone today in a World Net Daily editorial that he penned (or, at least, word processed): Not just the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, dictionary, gay rights, homosexual marriage, language, marriage, pat boone, Politics, religion, webster's dictionary, women's rights, words
Leave a comment
Not Out of Mesopotamia: The New York Times Today Reports that Scientists Contradict the Bible, and Locate the “Garden of Eden” in Either West or East Africa
The Bible’s book of Genesis puts the first man and the first woman (Adam and Eve) in a garden called Eden, and claims that this garden was located along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). But the New York Times … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Adam and Eve, apologetics, evolution, Genesis, genetics, human origins, James Dobson, Jesus, John Macarthur, language, science, the Bible
5 Comments
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
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged flu, George Orwell, H1N1, language, Mexican flu, Michael Savage, michelle malkin, orwellisms, pandemic, rush limbaugh, swine flu, virus
6 Comments
