Mark R. Kelly
» Founder in 1997 and site-runner for 20 years of Locus Online (Hugo Award winner in 2002). Founder in 2012 and still site-runner of sfadb.com (Science Fiction Awards Database). Retired in 2012 after 30 years as a software engineer for a certain rocket engine factory.
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» Previous Views from Medina Road (2003-2013)
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- This Much is Reality… and This Much is Fantasy
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- Continuing Our Studies of Human Nature…
- Here’s a New One: Terrain Theory
- A Little Knowledge… Is a Dangerous Thing
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Meta
Category Archives: Religion
Link and Comments: Some Extremely Obvious Statements About Religion
Daylight Atheism, March 15, James A. Haught: The Long, Slow Death of Religion This piece echoes my comments a few weeks ago when discussing Michael Shermer’s HOW WE BELIEVE (here). Shermer made the point that polls showed (when he published … Continue reading
Posted in Religion
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Links and Comments: New Religions
QAnon as white supremacy plus evangelicals; how fading religious identities transfer allegiances to politics.
Nonfiction Notes: Carl Sagan’s BILLIONS & BILLIONS
Carl Sagan: BILLIONS & BILLIONS: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (1996, Random House) This was Carl Sagan’s final book, it says, published in 1997 not long after his premature death in 1996 at age … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Religion, Science
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Notes and Quotes: Richard Dawkins’ UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW
Here is a middle-period book by the Oxford scientist whose writing mostly focuses on evolution; this one is an exception. Its topic is the beauty of science, how science addresses the “appetite for wonder,” and how people who don’t understand … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Lunacy, Religion, Science
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Link and Comments: A Better Way to Think About Conspiracies
Ross Douthat suggests a tool kit for discriminating among conspiracy theories, which have always been among us.
Posted in Psychology, Religion
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Nonfiction Notes: Michael Shermer’s HOW WE BELIEVE
Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science. Freeman, 2000 When I was writing up a post here about Shermer’s first book, Why People Believe Weird Things (post here), I realized Shermer in that … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Religion, Science
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Links and Comments: Republicans and Doing the Right Thing, Not; Religion as LARP
Adam Kinzinger; Pat Toomey; role playing games.
Links and Comments: Conspiracy Theorists, Psychology, and Beliefs
What does “belief” even mean? How can people claim to believe things that, to others, are transparent nonsense? Clearly belief has nothing to do with what, based on evidence and reason, is actually real. Belief can simply mean conviction to … Continue reading
Posted in Politics, Psychology, Religion
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Links and Comments: Reality; Economics; Religion and Politics
Scientific American: Now Is the Time to Reestablish Reality, subtitled “We need to agree on the evidence—so we can disagree on what to do in light of it” On the occasion of the passing of the Trump administration, of course. … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Insurrectionists, the G.O.P., Evangelicals, Fantasies, and Lies
It’s always dangerous to characterize any entire group with some common trait; that’s the first step toward prejudice and bigotry. Yet there are more and more article and essays that find common traits among Republicans, as a group, or at … Continue reading
Posted in Lunacy, Politics, Psychology, Religion
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