Category Archives: Culture

Links and Comments: Mostly about the Evils of Religion, Not to Put Too Fine a Point on It

Posted on Wednesday 7 January 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Tonight, many links and comments about religion, especially on this day when thin-skinned Muslim terrorists murdered French journalists who had dared to insult their omniscient, omnipotent god by drawing mocking cartoons about Muhammad. Some of the reaction has been to … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Good News about the state of the world; cultural concepts; science; religion and fantasy

Posted on Monday 5 January 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on links and comments from the past three weeks or so, given the holiday lapse. * First some Good News: Slate: Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack: The World Is Not Falling Apart In the world is getting more … Continue reading →

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It’s a Wonderful Life

Posted on Sunday 4 January 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

We watched the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” this past week, as a holiday event, for the umpteenth time, as everyone does, and what I was most struck by this time is one of the most obvious points: how long … Continue reading →

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Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life

Posted on Monday 22 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: New Answers to Old Questions. This is a book that addresses the growing trend of non-religious people especially in the US, and how they live their lives without the assumptions that the faithful think are necessary for living a … Continue reading →

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Christopher Hitchens’ Ten Commandments

Posted on Tuesday 16 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Christopher Hitchens’ Ten Commandments, via Hemant Mehta’s Friendly Atheist blog. I’m fascinated by the obvious irrelevancy of the traditional, Biblical, commandments, and have collected here on my blog various alternate versions (I need to create and retroactively tag those earlier … Continue reading →

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Stephen Prothero on ‘why liberals win’ America’s culture wars

Posted on Tuesday 16 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Stephen Prothero is a religious scholar at Boston University, who gave a talk on October 23rd called Why Liberals Win: America’s Culture Wars from the Election of 1800 to Same-Sex Marriage. It’s a preview of Prothero’s upcoming book of nearly … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Memory, Math, Church and State, Faith, Facts, Stories

Posted on Friday 5 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

New York Times: Why Our Memory Fails Us A fascinating NYT op-ed about the fallibility of memory, led by a notorious example from Neil DeGrasse Tyson. \/\/\/\/ Math Anxiety: Why Hollywood Makes Robots of Alan Turing and Other Geniuses How … Continue reading →

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EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, Part 5 and last

Posted on Wednesday 3 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Fifth and final of several posts about Edward O. Wilson’s book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which as I described earlier both here on my blog and on Facebook, is a concise summary of this important scientist’s views on the … Continue reading →

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EO Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence, Part 4

Posted on Tuesday 2 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Fourth of several posts about Edward O. Wilson’s book THE MEANING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE, which as I described earlier both here on my blog and on Facebook, is a concise summary of this important scientist’s views on the big issues … Continue reading →

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Interstellar

Posted on Monday 1 December 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

To begin with, I haven’t seen anyone note the coincidence that recent two films, Interstellar and The Theory of Everything (the Stephen Hawking biopic), both key off a major unsolved problem of physics, the unification of gravity and quantum theory. … Continue reading →

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