Blog Stats
- 2,886,216 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- ANSWER THE QUESTIONS - Essay Classes on Feminism for Beginners
- What does Lee Smolin mean when he says that the most fundamental theory can have no symmetries? – GrindSkills on Lee Smolin’s Time Reborn: Physics, Evolution, Atheism, and Buddhism
- Anon on Hanger 18: 1950s Military Clerk-Typist, June Crane, Claims That There Were Alien Bodies Stored at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio
- ra on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Mars on Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- lastunicorn5 on In 1935, Were Cary Grant and Randolf Scott Sex Partners? No, But These Images Look Rather Camp
- Rhianna on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Nevaeh on Matthew 27:51-53: The Bible’s “Night of the Living Dead” Passage
- Dogwhistle politics explained on A List Of Republican Dog Whistles That No Longer Seem To Work
- Why Do Christian Fundamentalists Burn Books – theologyarchaeology on Does the Bible Advocate Book Burning?
- Philosophy homework help - Nursing Essays Center on Feminism for Beginners
- Philosophy homework help - Coursework Heros on Feminism for Beginners
- Pat on Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help | Writings Gate on Feminism for Beginners
- mike on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- "The Vision of Christ That Thou Dost See": William Blake on the Many Faces of Jesus
- Fight or Flight? Two Ways to Read Matthew Arnold's Poem, "Requiescat" (1849)
- Two Interesting UFO Documents: The "Smith Memo" (1950) and Physicist Robert Sarbacher's 1983 Letter
- A List Of Republican Dog Whistles That No Longer Seem To Work
- Shakespeare, James Joyce, and the Dirty Encoding in Britney Spears's "If U Seek Amy"
- How to Really Make a World of Humanists: Helen Vendler Urges Training in Close Reading
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- @abrahampiper Yahweh as a frustrated deity, much to be pitied! Abraham Piper's insight here, if thought about as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 year ago
- 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… 1 year 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… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 1 year ago
Tag Archives: reductionism
A God Delusion: Josh Timonen v. Richard Dawkins
One sad aspect of the lawsuit recently filed against Josh Timonen by Richard Dawkins is the way that it has inadvertently played out the atheist script generally: reduce an ontological mystery (a mystery of being) to a mere problem or function for rational … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, delusion, God, josh timonen, love, materialism, psychology, qualia, reductionism, Richard Dawkins
9 Comments
Stuart Kauffman on Poetry vs. Science and the Possibilities for Atheist Spirituality
Atheist spirituality? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Below is biologist and complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman speaking to the Centre for Inquiry in Ontario. In the talk, Kauffman is laying out some of the arguments that he makes in his book Reinventing the Sacred … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, biology, emergence, God, philosophy, physics, poetry, reductionism, Richard Dawkins, science, spirituality, stuart kauffman
1 Comment
Freud’s Oceanic Feeling Associated with Brain Damage!
During meditation or prayer, have you ever had what Freud called (picking up the term from Romain Rolland) an “oceanic feeling“? In other words, have you felt your “little self” (the shrew of your ego) submerging harmoniously into the “Big Self”—the Atman—or the universe? Well, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bhagavad Gita, elton john, Freud, harmony, meditation, mind, ocean, reductionism, science, spirtuality, yoga, Zen
13 Comments
Santi Tafarella’s Poem, “The Appearance of the Real”
. . . . . . . . Beneath a dormant tree in brown eggshell crisp leaves a child found a white branch with a red blossom. . The branch bent at its middle and the child, to hold … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged autumn, Blake, childhood, crows, innocence to experience, John Keats, life, poems, poetry, reductionism, Santi Tafarella
Leave a comment
Reductionism Not? Mathematical Biologist Stuart Kauffman on “breaking the Galilean spell”
My favorite line in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas goes like this: If matter emerged from mind, it is a wonder. But if mind emerged from matter, it is a greater wonder. In the recent dead tree edition of Free Inquiry (Dec. 2009/Jan. 2010) is a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, biology, determinism, free will, God, mind, philosophy, reductionism, religion, science, stuart kauffman
10 Comments
Slipping Off the Atheist Dude Ranch?: Strict Naturalism and Atheist Philosopher Thomas Nagel
Before philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote this in the most current edition of the Times Literary Supplement about Stephen Meyer’s new book (ticking off a lot of atheists), he wrote this, in the New Republic, in late 2006, concerning philosophical naturalism’s reductionist project: I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, apologetics, atheism, atheist, God, jerry coyne, materialism, philosophy, reductionism, religion, strict naturalism, thomas nagel
5 Comments
Ah, Gray Sunflower, Forget Me Not! The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Moscow UFO Mothership/Cloud
When looking at the above video today, I thought of Allen Ginsberg’s “Sunflower Sutra” (in which Ginsberg eulogizes a soot covered dead sunflower). And it made me think: what makes this UFO-like cloud (seen last Wednesday over Moscow) beguiling? And … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aesthetics, aliens, edmund burke, philosophy, reductionism, schopenhauer, science, sublime, the beautiful, the sublime, UFO sightings, UFOs
Leave a comment
Reductionism, the Ontological Mystery, and Joni Mitchell
What do we really know about clouds and rainbows, let alone love and free will? To speak of them, scientifically or otherwise (including poetically), is like using chopsticks to drink the ocean. Our instruments seem inadequate to the scale of our task, and somehow … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnosticism, atheism, atheist, life, literature, meaning, philosophy, poetry, reductionism, religion, science, the ontological mystery
1 Comment
John Searle Wants Us to Reject Both Materialism and Dualism with Regard to the Mind
John Searle splits the difference by saying that consciousness is, in relation to matter, “ontologically irreducible but causally reducible.” Here’s parts 1 and 2 of a longer talk. If you don’t want to hear the biographical introduction to Searle, you … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, atheist, consciousness, dualism, free will, john searle, materialism, mind, philosophy, reductionism, science, self
1 Comment
Just Asking
If you are an atheist, and you think that free will, ultimately, does not exist, but you nevertheless act in your day-to-day life as if free will does in fact exist, aren’t you like someone who doesn’t believe in God, but under … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged a question, agnosticism, atheism, determinism, free will, philosophy, prayer, psychology, reductionism, The God Delusion, theism
4 Comments
I Am Not Determinate Matter, and I Too Sing the Universe!
This is the confident theist position, which as an agnostic I am not committed to, but I nevertheless think it might well be right. Here’s why: Science is a tool for the study of matter, and it must study matter in … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, apologetics, atheist, matter, mind, philosophy, psychology, reductionism, religion
4 Comments
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
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Albert Camus, Camus, Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, philosophy, poetry, Politics, reductionism, religion, science, the ontological mystery
4 Comments
Richard Dawkins v. John Keats: Does Science “Conquer all mysteries by rule and line” and “Unweave a rainbow”?
In John Keats’s “Lamia” are these lines (231-238), cautioning against a too-eager reductionism, and recalls Wordsworth’s assertion that “we murder to dissect”: There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, apologetics, atheist, philosophy, poetry, reductionism, religion, Richard Dawkins, science
1 Comment