Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- Links and Comments: Formal and Intuitive Religion
- Link and Comment: Adam Frank on the Earth’s Biosphere
- Lines from Angels in America: The World Only Spins Forward
- Ray Bradbury: THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
- Link: Wills on Carter on Ideology v. Religion
- Links and Comments: Storytelling; Religious Fundamentalism and Fake News; the Attraction of Conspiracy Theories
- E.O. Wilson: What Is Man?
- Michael Benson’s SPACE ODYSSEY
- C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, The Third Culture, Big History, and 2001
- Richard Feynman’s Meaning, and Being Savvy
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politics and economics:- Paul Krugman; @NYT
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science, philosophy, religion:- Jerry Coyne
- Sean Carroll
- Sam Harris
- A.C. Grayling
- E.O. Wilson
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Phil Plait
- Hemant Mehta (Friendly Atheist)
- Paul Fidalgo (CFI Morning Heresy)
- Adam Lee (Daylight Atheism)
- Connor Wood (Science on Religion)
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Meta
Category Archives: Culture
Links and Comments: Formal and Intuitive Religion
Two items. First, the latest survey showing the rise of the “nones,” the younger generation for whom formal religion is losing its attraction. In Nearly Every Country, Young People Are Way Less Religious Than Adults. The pattern holds throughout most … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Religion
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C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures, The Third Culture, Big History, and 2001
C.P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” is the famous 1959 lecture and then essay about the divide between the scientific community and the literary ‘intellectual’ community, an essay much referenced in books about the acceptance of science in modern culture (with, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science, science fiction
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Links from NYT recently, with Comments
Op-ed by Amy Sullivan in the New York Times, April 1 (posted March 31): Trump’s Christian Soldiers The recurring, amazing fact that the self-righteous evangelicals support someone like Trump. You could open a publishing press devoted to the theological and … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Evolution, Politics, Psychology
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Links and Comments: Sports and Trump; Pinker and Gates; Tribal Allegiance and Actual Progress
NYT, 3Feb18: Trump’s Blood Sport Politics. The writer recalls “”The Sporting Spirit,” an essay written by George Orwell in 1945 that sought to reckon with the rise of our modern athletic-industrial complex.” For Orwell, the rise of sports was bound … Continue reading
Links and Comments: Optimists; Bible; Children
Time Magazine’s current issue is called “The Optimists,” and is edited by Bill Gates. Steven Pinker has a piece: Why We Refuse to See the Bright Side, Even Though We Should According to the latest data, people are living longer … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Culture, Human Progress, Religion
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Link and Comments: Fractured Reality
The cultural theme of this second decade of the 21st century seems to be the fracturing of consensus cultural norms, even of consensus reality, especially in the US. I’ve observed this in tandem with reading about advances in psychology, over … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Psychology, Religion
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Links and Comments: Conservative Susceptibility to Lies; Contempt for Science; Existential Threats
» Slate: Why Are Conservatives More Susceptible to Believing Lies?. Subtitle: “An interplay between how all humans think and how conservatives tend to act might actually explain a lot about our current moment.” Longish article about how conservatives are more … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Species Reset
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Links and Comments: An Abortion Thought-Experiment, and Conservative Thinking
Salon: The Twitter thought experiment that exposes “pro-life” hypocrisy. Subtitle: “Comedian and sci-fi writer Patrick Tomlinson on the dangerous question that abortion foes refuse to answer” Last Monday, a tweetstorm eviscerating abortion foes went viral. Science fiction writer and comedian … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture
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Links and Comments: Tribalism, Zero-Sum Politics, Trump, Gut Reactions, Weather Forecasting
First, Andrew Sullivan has an essay in New York magazine, America Wasn’t Built for Humans, subtitled, “Tribalism was an urge our Founding Fathers assumed we could overcome. And so it has become our greatest vulnerability.” He wonders how American has … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Lunacy, Provisional Conclusions
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Links and Comments: Reactions to Art; the Eclipse; Christianity and PKD
Saved from Facebook… A post by Adam-Troy Castro: Noted in a thread: Somebody (I forget who) told the story of leaving A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE as one of two teenage couples, being absolutely gobsmacked by it, and listening to his … Continue reading
