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
Several years ago I read Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006). It wasn’t easy. This is not because Dennett’s ideas and arguments are difficult (they aren’t). It is because I don’t care for Dennett’s style. While I can overlook stylistic deficiencies if the substance is solid, in this case I [...]
Tags:analogy·Armin Geertz·atheism·biological evolution·Breaking the Spell·cultural evolution·Daniel Dennett·Daniel Hart·Darwinian monism·David Sloan Wilson·E.O. Wilson·Leon Wieseltier·memes·meta-theory·metaphor·skepticism·Snark·The God Genome·theory of everything
As I noted in Supernaturalism and the Paranormal, it is possible that experiences typically categorized as “paranormal,” if they can be measured and verified, have some relationship to religion. People who have such experiences might be inclined to attribute them to the realm of the supernatural. How a person categorizes supernatural experience — as either [...]
Tags:Bach·Benedict Carey·Charles Judd·Cornell University·Daryl Bem·dogma·Douglas Hofstadter·Escher·ESP·extrasensory perception·Godel·paradigm shift·paranormal·peer review·precognition·Ray Hyman·replication·science·skepticism·statistics·Thomas Kuhn
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
Over at HuffPo Religion, Princeton’s dean of religious affairs explains how entering freshmen can “find their religion” during their four years at college by asking (and attempting to answer) three questions:
1. What do you believe?
2. What does your neighbor believe?
3. How do those beliefs affect the choices you and your neighbor are making about how [...]
Tags:college freshmen·entering class·finding religion·interrogating religion·losing religion·Paul Raushenbush·Princeton dean·skepticism
While doing some background research on the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), I discovered that he had been much influenced by Lucretius, who lived in the first century BCE (around the time of Julius Caesar) and published a six-volume treatise titled On the Nature of Things. As if writing philosophy in narrative form were [...]
Tags:ancestor worship·atomic theory·Charles Darwin·Christianity·classics·cultural evolution·David Hume·David Sedley·Epicurean·Epicurus·evolution·Greco-Roman·Herbert Spencer·Julius Caesar·Lucretius·materialism·naturalism·Nietzsche·On the Nature of Things·Plato·Platonic philosophy·prehistory·Scottish Enlightenment·skepticism·survival of the fittest·Thomas Hobbes
Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has penned a manifesto for the “new agnosticism,” which he sees as an alternative to credulous theism on the the one hand and strident atheism on the other. Rosenbaum’s position deserves considerable merit and has some appeal, but I am not sure I can agree with him on this definition:
Agnosticism [...]
Tags:agnostic·agnosticism·atheism·certainty·Christopher Hitchens·data·evidence·logic·methodology·nihilism·positivism·reason·Richard Dawkins·Ron Rosenbaum·Sam Harris·skepticism·supernatural agents·supernatural forces·theism·Thomas Henry Huxley·truth
Over at the New Statesman, Sholto Byrnes has posted a short piece on “The Importance of Myth.” Byrnes was prompted to write after watching Howard Jacobsen’s program on “Creation,” which is part of a BBC series titled “The Bible: A History.” Jacobsen, though not a believer, is moved by some aspects of religion and unhappy [...]
Tags:belief·Bertrand Russell·Blaise Pascal·doubt·faith·Friedrich Nietzsche·Howard Jacobsen·mystery·myth·Rene Descartes·science·Sholto Byrnes·skepticism·unbelief
One of the great ironies — and paradoxes — of history is that religionists claim on the one hand that spiritual belief is ineffable, non-material, and not subject to empirical verification, yet on the other hand they are always seeking — sometimes desperately — for material confirmation of their beliefs. This contradictory thinking supposes that [...]
Tags:materialism·Nina Burleigh·relics·skepticism·William Bouwsma
