Category Archives: Religion

Links and Comments: Haidt, Krugman, Cruz and Swanson, Evolution v Creationism and Iowa Home-Schoolers

Posted on Friday 20 November 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I am 3/4 of the way through that Jonathan Haidt book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which is almost revelatory in the sense that it provides a vocabulary and a theoretical framework for … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Raising Kids with or without faith; Benford hosts evolution debate; the Lake Wobegon Effect

Posted on Tuesday 10 November 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate: “Why Hold a Child Hostage to My Doubts?” The confusing, complicated desire of parents with no religion to raise their kids with faith. Why would parents with no religion think their kids need to be raised into a faith … Continue reading →

Posted in Children, Evolution, MInd, Provisional Conclusions, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Raising Kids with or without faith; Benford hosts evolution debate; the Lake Wobegon Effect

Rereading Early Heinlein, part 3: If This Goes On

Posted on Monday 9 November 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Heinlein’s earliest serial — that is, a long story requiring a split into parts across two or more issues of a magazine — was “If This Goes On–“, published in the February and March 1940 issues of Astounding magazine. He … Continue reading →

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Jeffrey Tayler on Ben Carson; Frank Bruni on lies about gays and transgenders and Houston; Lee McIntyre on science denialism; how Einstein, proved right again and again over the past century, was resisted on political grounds

Posted on Sunday 8 November 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Salon: You know Ben Carson is crazy, right? Let’s discuss the craziest things he actually believes Jeffrey Tayler summarizes Carson’s Seventh Adventist faith — a faith built upon a failed prediction of the end of the world, back in 1843, … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunacy, Physics, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off on Jeffrey Tayler on Ben Carson; Frank Bruni on lies about gays and transgenders and Houston; Lee McIntyre on science denialism; how Einstein, proved right again and again over the past century, was resisted on political grounds

Links and Comments: Zuckerman on religion and violence; Islamic intolerance

Posted on Sunday 1 November 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

From today’s Los Angeles Times, an op-ed by Phil Zuckerman, Think religion makes society less violent? Think again. This echoes his book of last year, Living the Secular Life, which I blogged about here. The point in this essay is … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments from Today’s New York Times: 25 Oct 2015

Posted on Sunday 25 October 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

You can’t escape human nature: Norway Has a New Passion: Ghost Hunting. As traditional religion has faded in many northern European nations, it’s being replaced in Norway by an increased tendency to perceive ghosts at every corner. Ghosts, or at … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, Narrative, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments from Today’s New York Times: 25 Oct 2015

Sundry Links and Comments

Posted on Thursday 22 October 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

» A Publishers Weekly review of a book about expanding human perception: We Have the Technology: How Biohackers, Foodies, Physicians, and Scientists Are Transforming Human Perception, One Sense at a Time, Kara Platoni, Author This is a superb account of … Continue reading →

Posted in MInd, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Sundry Links and Comments

Links and Comments from Sunday’s New York Times

Posted on Monday 19 October 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Front page article: Indian Writers Return Awards to Protest Government Silence on Violence File this under Conservative [religious] Resistance: …growing activism from conservative Hindu nationalists who seek to suppress forms of expression they view as offensive to their religion. They … Continue reading →

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The Atlantic on trigger warnings; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the war on reason

Posted on Tuesday 29 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I mentioned a while back the cover story on The Atlantic magazine’s September issue, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. (Haidt is the author of the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are … Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Morality, Provisional Conclusions, Psychology, Religion | Comments Off on The Atlantic on trigger warnings; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the war on reason

Politics: Religion vs. Rationality

Posted on Monday 28 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Jeffrey Tayler’s latest weekly essay at Salon, this past Sunday, can be keyed to my earlier posts about Ben Carson. Make them shut up about God: The right-wing’s religious delusions are killing us — and them. It focuses on the … Continue reading →

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