Blog Stats
- 2,799,624 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Anonymous on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help - Prime Paper Help on Feminism for Beginners
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help - assignmentsbay on Feminism for Beginners
- Larry on Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- 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
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- John Wayne Cast as Hamlet: A Great Joke About the Plays and Language of Shakespeare
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- "The Vision of Christ That Thou Dost See": William Blake on the Many Faces of Jesus
- Bearing Witness to the Holocaust: A German Jewish Girl Who Was Part of the Kindertransport (1939)
- The Difference Between Having An Ideology And Having An Agenda
- Adam Smith and Capitalism for Beginners
- "Courtly Love, Or, Woman As Thing": How To Do Lacanian Analysis Like Slavoj Zizek (Or, At Least Understand What He's Getting At When He Does)
- Was Emily Dickinson an Atheist?
-
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… 2 months 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… 4 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 5 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 5 months ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Trump cares more about dead traitors than live patriots. RT this @votevets ad & tell your followers https://t.co/OD5Z… 5 months ago
Tag Archives: skeptic
Is the Privately Financed Mars Mission for 2022 a Colonizing Mission or a Suicide Mission?
Not to be impolite, but this video strikes me as flim-flam. Perhaps it is being used at fund-raisers to coax seed money from gullible wealthy donors. Watch the video and see if you agree with me. __________ Why do I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astronauts, critical thinking, Mars, reason, science, skeptic, space
Leave a comment
Near Death Experience (NDE) Watch: Waiting for Dr. Sam Parnia
Late last year, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting piece on near death experiences (NDEs), and it included an aspect on the phenomenon that I’d never heard of before: near death awareness: In his book, “Visions, Trips and Crowds,” David … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, body, cancer, death, God, life, mind, NDEs, near-death experiences, psychology, skeptic
21 Comments
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) on Hell Belief and Critical Thinking
In John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography is a brilliant reflection on hell belief: he argues that belief in hell is made paradoxically both strong and weak by an across the board system failure in critical thinking. Here are the two critical thinking errors that Mill … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, critical thinking, God, hell, Jesus, john stuart mill, liberty, Michael Shermer, reason, skeptic, skepticism, the Bible
Leave a comment
David Aaronovich on the Growing Skeptics’ Movement
In a Salon interview, David Aaronovich, the author of a new book that historically contextualizes and debunks conspiracy theories, praises the post-9-11 growing skeptics’ movement in the United States and Britain: Maybe I’m a false optimist, but I think we have a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, conspiracy theories, critical thinking, david aaronovich, history, reason, Richard Dawkins, skeptic, skepticism
Leave a comment
Should Liberals Have a Scientistic or Poetic Vision for Society?
This is a question that Stanford philosopher Richard Rorty used to ask, and he put it another way as well: is it the scientist or the poet who is (or should be) the liberal’s hero? Or to put it yet another way: Is a human … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, atheist, God, literature, Michael Shermer, philosophy, poetry, Richard Dawkins, richard rorty, science, skeptic, the Bible
Leave a comment
A River Not Out of Eden: Christopher Columbus and Critical Thinking
On page 2 of A New Literary History of America (Harvard 2009) is an interesting account of what Christopher Columbus thought he had found when he explored the Venezuelan coast on his third voyage to what would come to be known … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, apologetics, atheist, critical thinking, Eden, Genesis, God, Michael Shermer, philosophy, reason, religion, skeptic
1 Comment
Here’s the Groovy UFO Historian Dude I Went to Lunch with on Saturday
At a Burbank UFO conference I attended on Saturday, I had lunch with Richard Dolan (I tell that story here). In the clip below, Dolan is being interviewed at a UFO conference in Nevada: And here’s Dolan’s website and the Amazon link to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aliens, atheist, conspiracy theories, NASA, project camelot, richard dolan, SETI, skeptic, UFOs
Leave a comment
I Went to a UFO Conference! And I Took Pictures!
This past weekend, a UFO conference came to Burbank, California. It wasn’t far from where I live, so I went. The event was sponsored by Project Camelot, and was held at the Burbank Marriot (by the airport). Here was the event’s poster … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aliens, ant people, atheist, Nefertiti, pictures, project camelot, reason, richard dolan, science, skeptic, ufo conference, UFOs
4 Comments
What I Think about Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
For the past couple of weeks now, I’ve been reading and thinking about NDEs as a phenomenon, and if I were forced to bet, I think that the near death experience is real. In other words, it’s probably more than … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged death, life, NDEs, near-death experiences, neurology, philosophy, psychology, science, skeptic, the brain
3 Comments
The Rational, the Irrational, and the Nonrational: Are These the Right Categories for Meaningful Distinctions?
In a Chris Hedges talk that I recently listened to (on my iPod), Hedges made, in passing, a critique of the New Atheists that they frequently fail to make distinctions between: the rational the irrational the nonrational In atheist terms, according … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, atheist, Chris Hedges, philosophy, psychology, rationality, reason, rhetoric, skeptic, skepticism, UFOs
5 Comments
Dean Radin, Speaking at Google, on Psychic Phenomena
Oops. I see that this talk does not embed. See on YouTube here.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged dean radin, materialism, mind, philosophy, psi, psi phenomena, psychic phenomena, reason, science, skeptic
Leave a comment
The Morristown UFO Sightings (2009)
Something creepy in the sky akin to what people saw in the 1997 Phoenix Lights incident: The UFOs did not appear on local radar and a pilot who witnessed them insisted that they were not aircraft: But, alas, it was … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, aliens, atheist, hoaxes, reason, science, skeptic, skeptic magazine, ufo hoax, UFO sightings, UFOs, weird things
1 Comment
UFOs, Witchcraft, and Young Goodman Brown
I mean no disrespect of abductees or eyewitnesses who have had vivid and life-disrupting UFO encounters, and know things that a UFO nonexperiencer (like myself) does not, but as I’ve thought about UFOs in a serious fashion these past few weeks, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aliens, atheist, history, psychology, science, skeptic, social psychology, UFOs, witchcraft, witches, Young Goodman Brown
2 Comments
The Famous Tether UFOs Explained
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aliens, Michael Shermer, reason, science, skeptic, tether ufos, UFOs
Leave a comment
Thinking about UFO Abductees with Harvard Psychologist John Mack
This is a segment from a documentary on Harvard pychologist John Mack and some of the UFO abductees that he has interviewed and worked with. I thought that this segment was especially interesting and informative: Hat tip: Atrueoriginall
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged abduction, aliens, demons, grays, psychology, skeptic, space, ufo abductees, ufo abduction, UFO sightings, UFOs
Leave a comment
The UFO Hypothesis: Strong v. Weak Versions, and the Skeptic’s Retort
In researching UFOs over the past several weeks, and trying to decide what I think about the claims surrounding them, I’ve noticed that there are strong and weak versions of the UFO hypothesis. In general, people who believe in the strong … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, aliens, apologetics, atheist, hypotheses, hypothesis testing, psychology, religion, skeptic, social psychology, UFOs
1 Comment
The Number One Photographic Case in UFO History?
The segment below comes from a History Channel documentary titled Where are All the UFOs? (2005). The documentary itself is excellent—really a “must see” for anyone interested in critically examining UFOs as a phenomenon. The thesis of the documentary is that UFOs are … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, atheist, extraterrestrials, photography, psychology, religion, saturn, science, skeptic, ufo, UFO sightings
2 Comments
Two Roswell Witnesses: Major Jesse Marcel in a 1984 Interview and Lt. Jack Trowbridge in a More Recent Interview
Both Jesse Marcel and Jack Trowbridge sound credible to me. They don’t seem mentally disturbed, and they come across as truthful elderly men recounting their memories of an “out of the ordinary” occurrence from their military service days. They don’t seem to … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aliens, jesse marcel, Michael Shermer, reason, skeptic, skepticism, ufology, UFOs, witnesses
Leave a comment
Blogging UFOs: A Sad, Sad UFO Story
Below is a bit of testimony concerning the experience of Miriam Titus, an executive secretary at the military base hospital to which the injured, as well as dead, aliens at the Roswell UFO crash site were allegedly brought immediately after … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged agnostic, aliens, atheist, court, eye witness testimony, judgment, Michael Shermer, reason, skeptic, skepticism, UFOs
Leave a comment
Apollo Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Says There’s a Monolith on Phobos!
I count at least three American astronauts who take UFOs seriously: Edgar Mitchell, Gordon Cooper, and Buzz Aldrin. On C-SPAN, for example, Buzz Aldrin recently made the bizarre claim that Mars’s satellite, Phobos, has a monolith on it. A monolith?! I … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aliens, Apollo, buzz aldrin, Dionysus, evidence, extraterrestrials, Mars, phobos, reason, skeptic, UFOs
Leave a comment