Category Archives: Religion

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

Reading In and Around the Bible: Genesis, part 1

Posted on Thursday 2 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

I finished up the New Testament a couple weeks ago, and have notes and comments on those latter epistles, and Revelation. I then circled back to the beginning, to read Genesis itself, rather than merely comments about it, and since … Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Culture, Religion | Comments Off

Links and Comments: The Literary Canon and the Bible; Americans Compared to the Rest of the World; Rush

Posted on Wednesday 1 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate, last week: The Canon Is Sexist, Racist, Colonialist, and Totally Gross. Yes, You Have to Read It Anyway, by Katy Waldman. Specifically discussing the curriculum at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut. This addresses the efforts for some decades now … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Religion | Comments Off

Links and Comments: Luck; Facebook and social bubbles; being openly secular

Posted on Thursday 26 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

One author with a new book currently making the circuit of talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages is Robert H. Frank, whose book is Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, and who turned up on KQED’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Religion | Comments Off

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 →

Posted in Atheism, Religion | Comments Off

Ehrman, JESUS BEFORE THE GOSPELS: Memories, Stories, and the Gospels

Posted on Wednesday 11 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve read eight or ten books in recent weeks that I haven’t yet blogged about here (including three SF novels), but I plan to catch up. First, mentioned earlier as remarkably coincidental considering my recent Bible reading, is a new … Continue reading →

Posted in Bible, Religion | Comments Off

Religious Liberty and Christian Theology

Posted on Sunday 8 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Salon: Republicans have turned God upside down with their so-called “religious liberty”. The “liberty” part in “religious liberty” is not intended to empower the believers of a dominant religion, such as, say, Christianity, to give them the “liberty” to impose … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Religion | Comments Off

Links and Comments: Truth and Slavery

Posted on Saturday 30 April 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

This article in The New Yorker, After the Fact by Jill Lepore, considers the current US presidential race in light of a new book by Michael Patrick Lynch, The Internet of Us, subtitled “Knowing More and Understanding Less in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Religion, Thinking | Comments Off

Links and Comments: Irrational Voters; Republicans and Gays; Religious Liberty v Progress

Posted on Saturday 9 April 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Robert Sapolsky in last week’s Los Angeles Times: We’re rarely rational when we vote because we’re rarely rational, period. How various discoveries about mental biases and motivated thinking play out in elections. Probably the most striking thing about any of … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Human Progress, MInd, Religion | Comments Off

Trump, Abortion, Conservatives, and Guns

Posted on Friday 8 April 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

(From two posts on Facebook over the past week, somewhat edited.) 31 March: I confess a bit of bewilderment at the outrage over Donald Trump’s comments about abortion, not just from the pro-choice left, but also the anti-abortion (‘pro-life’) right. … Continue reading →