Category Archives: Religion

Links and Comments: Zuckerman on religion and violence; Islamic intolerance

Posted on Sunday 1 November 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

From today’s Los Angeles Times, an op-ed by Phil Zuckerman, Think religion makes society less violent? Think again. This echoes his book of last year, Living the Secular Life, which I blogged about here. The point in this essay is … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments from Today’s New York Times: 25 Oct 2015

Posted on Sunday 25 October 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

You can’t escape human nature: Norway Has a New Passion: Ghost Hunting. As traditional religion has faded in many northern European nations, it’s being replaced in Norway by an increased tendency to perceive ghosts at every corner. Ghosts, or at … Continue reading →

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Sundry Links and Comments

Posted on Thursday 22 October 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

» A Publishers Weekly review of a book about expanding human perception: We Have the Technology: How Biohackers, Foodies, Physicians, and Scientists Are Transforming Human Perception, One Sense at a Time, Kara Platoni, Author This is a superb account of … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments from Sunday’s New York Times

Posted on Monday 19 October 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Front page article: Indian Writers Return Awards to Protest Government Silence on Violence File this under Conservative [religious] Resistance: …growing activism from conservative Hindu nationalists who seek to suppress forms of expression they view as offensive to their religion. They … Continue reading →

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The Atlantic on trigger warnings; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the war on reason

Posted on Tuesday 29 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I mentioned a while back the cover story on The Atlantic magazine’s September issue, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. (Haidt is the author of the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are … Continue reading →

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Politics: Religion vs. Rationality

Posted on Monday 28 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Jeffrey Tayler’s latest weekly essay at Salon, this past Sunday, can be keyed to my earlier posts about Ben Carson. Make them shut up about God: The right-wing’s religious delusions are killing us — and them. It focuses on the … Continue reading →

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Salman Rushdie, Two Quotes

Posted on Monday 28 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday’s (print) New York Times Book Review, the Inside the List commentary, discussing Salman Rushdie’s new novel. (Paul Di Filippo’s review, posted last Friday, was seen by Rushdie himself, who tweeted it to his 1M+ followers — you can see … Continue reading →

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Ben Carson follow-up

Posted on Monday 28 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I wrapped up my previous post about Ben Carson a bit too hastily, because I do have a fairly solid provisional conclusion about why some people don’t “believe” in science and ascribe instead to faith or various subjectively attractive supernatural … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Religion and Science

Posted on Tuesday 8 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

The latest essay by Jeffrey Tayler at Salon, Bill O’Reilly’s nonsense “nihilism”: Now the Fox News host is even lying about God, addresses common misperceptions not just about the abstruse philosophical concept of nihilism, but about the general perception that … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Religion and Education; Religions around the world; deGrasse Tyson on the history of the universe

Posted on Tuesday 1 September 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

ABC News: latest example of how religious groups reject education, because, of course: NYC to Probe Secular Education at Jewish Schools. There was no science, no geography and no math past multiplication at the ultra-Orthodox Jewish school Chaim Weber attended. … Continue reading →

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