Category Archives: Atheism

Sean Carroll, THE BIG PICTURE

Posted on Friday 3 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Sean Carroll’s THE BIG PICTURE: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, just published May 10th, is an ambitious, wide-ranging book not so much about cosmology (Carroll’s specialty at CalTech), as about the perspective we gain through … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Heinlein, Human Progress, Meaning, Morality, Philosophy, Physics, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Ten Commandments | Comments Off on Sean Carroll, THE BIG PICTURE

Dan Barker on Meaning without Divine Dictates, and the Slave Mentality

Posted on Thursday 19 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Dan Barker’s Life Driven Purpose (Pitchstone, April 2015), is much more cheerful than Lindsay’s book just reviewed. It’s an explicit response to religious superstar Rick Warren, and his ‘purpose-driven life’, in which everything about your life is in service to … Continue reading →

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James A. Lindsay on the Obsolescence of Theism

Posted on Tuesday 17 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Two posts today, both about slender trade paperbacks of the genre that includes, earlier reviewed, John Loftus’s THE OUTSIDER TEST FOR FAITH (review) and titles by Greta Christina, Adam Lee, and Peter Boghossian (links to those reviews in that review): … Continue reading →

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Oliver Sacks, GRATITUDE

Posted on Wednesday 6 April 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

An even shorter book than Rovelli’s, this is a collection of four short essays written by the neurologist and author after learning he had only a few months left to live, all of which originally appeared in the New York … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Susan Jacoby; Erasure; Boars and the Sixth Extinction; Jerry Brown and Jean-Pierre Dupuy

Posted on Tuesday 9 February 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

From last Sunday’s papers, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. » NYT: Susan Jacoby: Sick and Tired of ‘God Bless America’ Well, of course; this is someone daring to point out the obvious, mostly unmentioned privilege that … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Susan Jacoby; Erasure; Boars and the Sixth Extinction; Jerry Brown and Jean-Pierre Dupuy

Review: The Outsider Test for Faith

Posted on Tuesday 12 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

John W. Loftus’s THE OUTSIDER TEST FOR FAITH: How to Know Which Religion Is True (2013) is a trade paperback book, one of a number of similar volumes I’ve perused over the past couple years, generally from Prometheus Books or … Continue reading →

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Review of David Silverman

Posted on Wednesday 6 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

The book is FIGHTING GOD: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, just published in December 2015, and I’m not linking it with a cover image as I often do with books I review, since I can’t especially approve of … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Lawrence M. Krauss, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, confirmation bias

Posted on Wednesday 9 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

A fine essay by Lawrence M. Krauss, at The New Yorker: All Scientists Should Be Militant Atheists. He’s reacting both to the current embarrassing kerfuffle about Kim Davis, the Kentucky court clerk who thinks her sincerely held religious convictions trump … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Reason; Morality; Wesleyan; Timeline; The Onion; Jeffrey Tayler

Posted on Friday 21 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Today, a collection of posts I’ve not read in detail, or do not have time to comment upon in detail, but wish to save for future reference. Science on Religon: Connor Wood: Reason™ is not going to save the world … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Morality, Science, science fiction | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Reason; Morality; Wesleyan; Timeline; The Onion; Jeffrey Tayler

The Methodical, Cheerful, Bluntness of Isaac Asimov

Posted on Wednesday 19 August 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I switched gears a couple weeks ago, after reading several recent (2014 and 2015) novels, to spend some time revisiting one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed science fiction authors, Isaac Asimov. It’s hard to tell, at this point about … Continue reading →

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