If you haven’t been following 3:AM’s interview series, you should. The Brian Leiter interview was one of the most cogent assessments of philosophy I’ve read in years, and the recent Eric Schwitzgebel interview is on par. Both reward close reading and deserve extended comment, but I want to touch briefly on Schwitzgebel’s assessment of the [...]
Tags:Brian Leiter·commonsense·crazyism·Emerson·Eric Schwitzgebel·evolved mind·metaphysics·Nietzsche
Terry Eagleton has taken aim at Alain de Botton’s oxymoronic new book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion. Eagleton is bulls-eye on the book, which basically argues that although religions are false they are still useful and we can learn from them. Eagleton correctly points out that this sort of [...]
Tags:Alain de Botton·American evangelicals·atheism·Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks·ethics·fundamentalists·funeral industry·Israel·Juliane von Mittelstaedt·Karen Armstrong golden rule·Max Rivlin-Nadler·morals·orthodox Jews·Philip Kitcher·secularization·Terry Eagleton·Thomas Jefferson bible
When I hear atheists proclaiming their good news that gods are well and truly dead, I get the uneasy feeling they haven’t seriously considered or fully comprehended the implications of this apparent fact. In his justly famous “Parable of the Madman” Nietzsche cautions against underestimating the seriousness of killing gods:
The madman jumped into their midst [...]
Tags:American Nietzsche·Brian Leiter·Friedrich Nietzsche·gnu atheism·God is Dead·Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen·new atheists·Ralph Waldo Emerson·Ross Posnock·The Madman
It is nice to see Lucretius finally getting his due. In The Swerve: How The World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt pays homage to the Roman poet (and his Greek predecessor Epicurus). A few years ago, I was thinking about the history of religious critiques and sketched these notes:
While it would be tempting to date the [...]
Tags:atheism·critiques of religion·David Hume·Epicurus·Greek gods·Lucretius·materialism·naturalism·On the Nature of Things·skepticism·Stephen Greenblatt·teleology·The Swerve
Over at Spiegel, Markus Becker and Frank Patalong have posted an interview with Richard Dawkins, whose latest book — The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution — has just been published in German and given an awful title: “The Creation Lie: Why Darwin is Right.” Two things come immediately to mind.
First, it is [...]
Tags:biological evolution·cultural evolution·Darwin·Dean Hamer·Frank Patalong·group level selection·Markus Becker·meme·memetics·Neolithic Revolution·Richard Dawkins·Ronald Numbers·The Ancestor's Tale·The Creation Lie·The Creationists·The God Gene·The Greatest Show on Earth·The Selfish Gene·theory of mind
In my first post on Robert Rowthorn’s paper “Fertility, Religion and Genes,” I focused on its faulty premises and unrealistic assumptions; I also substituted the word “love” for “religion” in Rowthorn’s argument to show that nearly any beneficial and complex human behavioral trait could be explained using the same single gene model. In my second [...]
Tags:alleles·atheism·complex traits·confounding variable·culture·diabetes·fertility·genes·learning·religion·religion gene·religiosity·Richard Dawkins·Robert Rowthorn·Sam Harris·single-nucleotide polymorphisms·SNP·socialization
Our correspondent at The Economist reviews what looks to a provocative new book by Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment.
Blom sets his book around the happenings of an exceptional Parisian salon — that of Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach — who hosted the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Denis [...]
Tags:A Wicked Company·atheism·Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach·commonsense dualism·counter-Enlightenment·David Hume·Denis Diderot·enlightenment·godless·magical thinking·materialism·mechanistic·Parisian salon·Phillipp Blom·Rousseau·soul beliefs·Voltaire
Anyone studying religion will sooner or later read Sigmund Freud’s classic, The Future of an Illusion (1927). I was engaged in my fifth reading today and came across this passage:
Thus I must contradict you when you go on to argue that men are completely unable to do without the consolation of the religious illusion, that [...]
Tags:atheism·fear·helplessness·lack of telos·loss of parents·loss of protection·meaninglessness·neurosis·religious delusion·religious illusion·replacement with god·secular·secularization·separation anxiety·Sigmund Freud·The Future of an Illusion
Among the non-academic public, there is a general perception that university professors are irreligious. As someone who has long been in and around academics, I have shared this perception and commented on it just the other day. The actual numbers, it turns out, tell a different and surprising story.
In a recent article, Amarnath Amarasingam discusses [...]
Tags:academics·agnosticism·Amarnath Amarasingam·atheism·biologists·college professors·evolutionary atheism·evolutionary theism·intellectuals·intelligentsia·John Haught·Neil Gross·professoriate·pyschologists·religiosity·religious·skepticism·Solon Simmons·university professors
This tale begins with Dr. Michael Blume, an evolutionary biologist who writes Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion. His early studies focused on “neurotheology,” or the myriad ways in which naturally evolved aspects of brain-mind give rise to supernatural beliefs. His current studies focus on the second pillar of evolutionary success — reproductive [...]
Tags:Bristol University·Craig James·Damascus Road Conversion·Daniel Dennett·Explaining Religion Conference·fertility·Homo religiosus·memes·memetics·Michael Blume·mind virus·neurotheology·Pauline moment·Ralph Tanner·reproduction·reproductive fitness·Richard Dawkins·Sue Blackmore·The Biology of Religion·The Meme Machine·The Religion Virus·The Social Ecology of Religion·Vernon Reynolds·virus of the mind
