Mark R. Kelly
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Recent Posts
- John Allen Paulos, A MATHEMATICIAN READS THE NEWSPAPER (1995)
- Links and Comments: Socialism, Conspiracy Theories, Religion, Rationality, Liberalism, William Barr, Republicans
- John Allen Paulos, IRRELIGION (2008)
- My Religious Upbringing, Such As It Was
- Sam Harris, THE END OF FAITH (2004)
- Daniel Gilbert, STUMBLING ON HAPPINESS (2006)
- Hans Rosling: FACTFULNESS (2018)
- Yuval Noah Harari, HOMO DEUS: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017; 2015 in Israel)
- A note about book notes
- Yuval Noah Harari, SAPIENS: A Brief History of Humankind (2015)
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Meta
Category Archives: Humanism
Links and Comments: Socialism, Conspiracy Theories, Religion, Rationality, Liberalism, William Barr, Republicans
First, a David Brooks column from back in December: I Was Once a Socialist. Then I Saw How It Worked. I was a socialist in college. I read magazines like The Nation and old issues of The New Masses. I … Continue reading
Posted in Conservative Resistance, Culture, Humanism, Psychology, Religion
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Passages from Pinker
As a palette cleanser from my last post, here are some thoughts from my ongoing reading of Steven Pinker’s THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, a history of the world with focus on violence, that summarizes that history through phases: … Continue reading
Posted in Humanism, Social Progress, Steven Pinker
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Pinker: Better Angels: Passages and Outline from the Preface
This is Steven Pinker’s big 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, that takes a long-range view of human history to show that the human condition, over millennia and especially in recent centuries and decades, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Humanism, Steven Pinker
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Links and Comments: Star Trek and Humanism; John Cleese
A couple more links noticed in recent days, before I lose or forget them; my daily routine, as we settle and unpack in our new home in Oakland, will be a while getting back to have time for more considered … Continue reading
Posted in Humanism, Personal history, Philosophy, Religion
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10 Provisional Conclusions about Life, the Universe, and Everything, subject, of course, to revision based on evidence
Inspired by my post last night about A Secular Ten Non-Commandments, and the book’s invitation to generate one’s own set of beliefs, I sat down today to write out my own response… not of *commandments* (who am I, or anyone, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Evolution, Humanism, Morality, Philosophy, Religion, Science, Ten Commandments
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Phil Zuckerman, Living the Secular Life
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
Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Culture, Humanism, Quote at Length, Religion
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Links and Comments: Gay Marriage; Evangelical Doomsday; Natural Selection is not a guide to life; Jibbers Crabst; the power of faith, and science, and physics
Slate’s William Saletan: A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage, subtitled, “How to talk to your antigay religious relatives about same-sex unions”. Key points: homosexuality is not a sin, because it’s not a choice; it’s not harmful, but is in fact … Continue reading
Nature’s God
Book review sections, especially the weekly ones in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, are useful for reading glosses on books of interest that I know I’ll never find the time to read in their entirely. Nonfiction books, … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Humanism, Religion
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Notes on A.C. Grayling: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism
A.C. Grayling is a British philosopher whose 2013 book The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, is a clear and concise summary of why religion is best abandoned and why humanism (as he describes it) is a … Continue reading
Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Humanism, Philosophy
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