Category Archives: Religion

Links and Comments from Recent Weeks, 18 Sep14

Posted on Thursday 18 September 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Or at least, a few of them. More to follow. Slate: It’s All Connected: What links creativity, conspiracy theories, and delusions? A phenomenon called apophenia. About why credulous folks see Jesus in a tortilla, or Mary in a tree stump, … Continue reading →

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Recent Links and Comments: Do You Believe in Blue?

Posted on Friday 15 August 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on three weeks of content, having been preoccupied by personal projects and various life changes. Divided into groups. Science Fascinating speculation by Steve Pinker on the evolutionary significance of music Pinker argues that in fact that music is not an … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Book Notes, Culture, Evolution, MInd, Psychology, Religion, Science, The Gays, Thinking | Comments Off

Recent Links and Comments: Ken Ham, Timothy Egan, Valerie Tarico, Adam Frank, Nathaniel Frank

Posted on Thursday 24 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m some two weeks behind on posting comments and links here, though I’ve been compiling such links for eventual posting. Website issues have preoccupied me. Here’s a first bunch of them. More tomorrow. 23 July: Salon: The Christian right’s 5 … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Lunacy, Religion, science fiction | Comments Off

Sam Harris on Morality and the Christian God

Posted on Wednesday 9 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I came across couple audio tracks from Sam Harris on how Christian morality not only makes no sense, but can be regarded as positively despicable. I realize that a large majority of the American population subscribes to this morality (and … Continue reading →

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Another Apologetic

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate has an article today, Know Nothing: The true history of atheism, that is an attack on the “new atheists” and a defense, i.e. an “apologetic”, for traditional Christian faith. My fascination about such pieces is that they *invariably* assume … Continue reading →

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Grayling on Ehrenreich

Posted on Sunday 6 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Yet another review of a review. There has been discussion on various sites in recent weeks, including Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish, of a recent book by staunch unbeliever Barbara Ehrenreich, Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the … Continue reading →

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Prothero on The Unpersuadables

Posted on Sunday 6 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Another review of a review: Donald Prothero (a geology professor at Occidental College in LA, and a lecturer at Caltech), has a review of a new book by Will Storr, The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, that develops … Continue reading →

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Nature’s God

Posted on Wednesday 2 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

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 →

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Lies and False Witness

Posted on Wednesday 2 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There’s a theme here, in three posts from last week. Salon: Rise of a right-wing quack: Faux-historian David Barton’s shocking new influence This is the quality of constitutional scholarship that pervades the conservative movement these days: simple, outright lies that … Continue reading →

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Primitive Values, Mature Ethics, and the Failure of Religious Texts

Posted on Friday 27 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

A point that bears repeating: there is nothing in the Bible that couldn’t have been written by ordinary people On the point of the previous post: it has been frequently observed that the Bible contains nothing that could not have … Continue reading →