Category Archives: Religion

Links and Comments: Trump; Magic; Scalia and science; Cruz; God of the gaps

Posted on Sunday 13 March 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Partly because I’ve had a cold, or a couple different colds, for much of the past month, I’m behind on links and comments. So relatively briefly, here’s what I’ve collected. In reverse order, from most recent date. \\ Slate: “How … Continue reading →

Posted in Cosmology, Politics, Religion, science fiction | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Trump; Magic; Scalia and science; Cruz; God of the gaps

Links and Comments: Susan Jacoby; Erasure; Boars and the Sixth Extinction; Jerry Brown and Jean-Pierre Dupuy

Posted on Tuesday 9 February 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

From last Sunday’s papers, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. » NYT: Susan Jacoby: Sick and Tired of ‘God Bless America’ Well, of course; this is someone daring to point out the obvious, mostly unmentioned privilege that … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Evolution, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Susan Jacoby; Erasure; Boars and the Sixth Extinction; Jerry Brown and Jean-Pierre Dupuy

Links and Comments: Living in the Real World

Posted on Friday 5 February 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Salon: College students were asked simple questions about politics and history and their answers are a dramatic wake up call about the state of our education system. (The same video has been posted elsewhere.) Street interviews with college students asked … Continue reading →

Posted in Lunacy, Psychology, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Living in the Real World

Item’s from Sunday’s New York Times: Pace of Change; Criticism; Religion in Politics; Creative Children

Posted on Thursday 4 February 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Most interesting, a review, by Paul Krugman, of a book by Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, whose thesis is that the extraordinary growth and change brought about by technology over the past century has pretty … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Culture, Human Progress, Religion | Comments Off on Item’s from Sunday’s New York Times: Pace of Change; Criticism; Religion in Politics; Creative Children

Links and Comments: Fear, Terrorism, Fear, and Religion

Posted on Tuesday 12 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

The New Yorker, January 2, 2016: Thinking Rationally About Terror, by Lawrence M. Krauss How people overestimate the risk of low-probability (but highly-publicized) dangers, like terrorism, and seldom worry about more mundane dangers, like gun violence and auto crashes. As … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Fear, Terrorism, Fear, and Religion

Review: The Outsider Test for Faith

Posted on Tuesday 12 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

John W. Loftus’s THE OUTSIDER TEST FOR FAITH: How to Know Which Religion Is True (2013) is a trade paperback book, one of a number of similar volumes I’ve perused over the past couple years, generally from Prometheus Books or … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Religion | Comments Off on Review: The Outsider Test for Faith

Link and Comment: Terrorism and Republican Fear-Mongering

Posted on Wednesday 6 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Jerry Coyne points to an essay by Lawrence Krauss, in The New Yorker: Thinking Rationally About Terror. Krauss’ essay addresses the fairly obvious fact that incidents of ‘terrorism’, despite the publicity they get and panic they trigger, are very rare … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Religion | Comments Off on Link and Comment: Terrorism and Republican Fear-Mongering

Link and Comment: The Year in Religion, and Adults

Posted on Wednesday 6 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

Salon, Jeffrey Tayler: Religious delusions are destroying us: “Nothing more than man-made contrivances of domination and submission”. Subtitle: “We managed a year of Charlie Hebdo, Franklin Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Duggar and more creationism. To sanity in 2016” An unfortunately … Continue reading →

Posted in Religion | Comments Off on Link and Comment: The Year in Religion, and Adults

Review of David Silverman

Posted on Wednesday 6 January 2016 by Mark R. Kelly

The book is FIGHTING GOD: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World, just published in December 2015, and I’m not linking it with a cover image as I often do with books I review, since I can’t especially approve of … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Culture, Politics, Religion, Social Progress | Comments Off on Review of David Silverman

Links and Comments: Politics and Religion

Posted on Monday 21 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Three items by Jeffrey Tayler at Salon recently. First, in what I might call the pot-kettle-black category, Religion is the real problem: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and GOP demonize Muslims, but too afraid to take on the real truth, where … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Religion | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Politics and Religion