Monthly Archives: March 2021

Link and Comments: Some Extremely Obvious Statements About Religion

Posted on 16 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

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 →

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Links and Comments: New Religions

Posted on 15 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

QAnon as white supremacy plus evangelicals; how fading religious identities transfer allegiances to politics.

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Link and Comments: Covid skeptics and critical thinking

Posted on 15 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate, 11 March, Rebecca Onion: COVID Skeptics Don’t Just Need More Critical Thinking, subtitled, Without a shared approach to scientific expertise, “trusting the data” won’t lead us to the same conclusions. This entails the question, What is science? Not everyone … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: APOD: The Enormous Deep Sky

Posted on 11 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s another amazing photo from APOD, Astronomy Picture of the Day, that illustrates how enormous some of the famous nebulae in the sky are, compared to constellations.

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Links and Comments: Things Change, 1

Posted on 11 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Will MAGA panic subside with an old white man back in the presidency? How American political parties have disintegrated in the past, and the Republican party may now be doing. How Britain has become the dumbest society in the world, … Continue reading →

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Nonfiction Notes: Carl Sagan’s BILLIONS & BILLIONS

Posted on 10 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

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 →

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Links and Comments: Alternate Realities

Posted on 9 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Marjorie Taylor Greene, evangelical minds, selective science, denying the truth.

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Link and Quotes: Harari on the Pandemic

Posted on 8 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Financial Times: Yuval Noah Harari on Lessons from a year of Covid, Feb 25th. How can we summarise the Covid year from a broad historical perspective? Many people believe that the terrible toll coronavirus has taken demonstrates humanity’s helplessness in … Continue reading →

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A Hierarchy of Human Needs

Posted on 6 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Like the hierarchy of morality (discussed here), this one is not mine. It’s an idea first proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943. Wikipedia has this entry about it. It runs like this, from the most basic:

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Link and Comments: How to Change the Minds of People Who Are Wrong

Posted on 5 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT, 3 March, Nicholas Kistoff: How to Reach People Who Are Wrong, subtitled, In the post-Trump era, research suggests the best ways to win people over. A fine essay, that keys off Adam Grant’s new book THINK AGAIN, which I … Continue reading →

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