Category Archives: Religion

Christianity and the Sunk Cost fallacy

Posted on Wednesday 4 January 2017 by Mark R. Kelly

In the Christmas Day issue of the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof has a chat with the evangelist Christian pastor and author Timothy Keller, asking Am I a Christian, Pastor Timothy Keller?. Kristof admires the teachings of Jesus but … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Academia, Creationists, Christians and Trump, Plait on the GOP, Evil, Victims

Posted on Tuesday 5 July 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

From Slate, more on the theme of Why Are There So Few Conservatives in Academia? There are three big reasons that conservatives are hard to find in university faculties: intellectual consistency, anti-science trends by conservatives, and social pressure. On the … Continue reading →

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The Orlando Shooter and the Evil of Religious Fundamentalism

Posted on Wednesday 15 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

To put this as concisely as possibly, my take on the Orlando mass-shooting is that it is rooted ultimately in the animus to sexual minorities — a portion of humanity that for whatever reason has *always existed* [see footnote] — … Continue reading →

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Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths

Posted on Tuesday 7 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a book I had forgotten I had, relatively speaking; I obviously bought it back in 2006 or so, but I didn’t read it right away and so it sat on my shelves among many other books (by Sagan and … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Cosmology, Culture, Evolution, Human Progress, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Carl Sagan, THE VARIETIES OF SCIENTIFIC EXPERIENCE (2006): History is a battle of inadequate myths

Sean Carroll, THE BIG PICTURE

Posted on Friday 3 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Sean Carroll’s THE BIG PICTURE: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself, just published May 10th, is an ambitious, wide-ranging book not so much about cosmology (Carroll’s specialty at CalTech), as about the perspective we gain through … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Heinlein, Human Progress, Meaning, Morality, Philosophy, Physics, Provisional Conclusions, Religion, Ten Commandments | Comments Off on Sean Carroll, THE BIG PICTURE

Reading In and Around the Bible: Genesis, part 1

Posted on Thursday 2 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

I finished up the New Testament a couple weeks ago, and have notes and comments on those latter epistles, and Revelation. I then circled back to the beginning, to read Genesis itself, rather than merely comments about it, and since … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: The Literary Canon and the Bible; Americans Compared to the Rest of the World; Rush

Posted on Wednesday 1 June 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate, last week: The Canon Is Sexist, Racist, Colonialist, and Totally Gross. Yes, You Have to Read It Anyway, by Katy Waldman. Specifically discussing the curriculum at Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut. This addresses the efforts for some decades now … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Luck; Facebook and social bubbles; being openly secular

Posted on Thursday 26 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

One author with a new book currently making the circuit of talk shows and newspaper op-ed pages is Robert H. Frank, whose book is Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, and who turned up on KQED’s … Continue reading →

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James A. Lindsay on the Obsolescence of Theism

Posted on Tuesday 17 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Two posts today, both about slender trade paperbacks of the genre that includes, earlier reviewed, John Loftus’s THE OUTSIDER TEST FOR FAITH (review) and titles by Greta Christina, Adam Lee, and Peter Boghossian (links to those reviews in that review): … Continue reading →

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Ehrman, JESUS BEFORE THE GOSPELS: Memories, Stories, and the Gospels

Posted on Wednesday 11 May 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve read eight or ten books in recent weeks that I haven’t yet blogged about here (including three SF novels), but I plan to catch up. First, mentioned earlier as remarkably coincidental considering my recent Bible reading, is a new … Continue reading →

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