Category Archives: Religion

New Ten Commandments

Posted on Friday 20 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Came across this recently, The New Ten Commandments which strikes me as eminently sensible and admirable. This is from a blogger named Adam Lee, who posts at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism and who’s published a book by the same name. He makes a … Continue reading →

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Hitchens and the Speculative End of Religion

Posted on Wednesday 18 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

There have been several online articles in recent days about Christopher Hitchens, author of god is not great [lower cases intentional], who died just two years ago. Jerry Coyne checks in on rival takes on Christopher Hitchens, both on Salon, … Continue reading →

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Awe

Posted on Wednesday 18 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a story that’s gotten some attention this past week — reports that when people look at awesome scenery, like the Grand Canyon, they are more inclined to attribute them to God (whatever that means). www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-hutson/awe-increases-religious-belief_b_4423247.html The emotion of awe … Continue reading →

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Aggressive Atheist Steps Down

Posted on Wednesday 18 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Interesting article by Martin S. Pribble, whose blog I’ve noticed from time to time, which post has been repurposed by Slate.come http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/12/why_i_m_quitting_the_online_atheism_community.html Faith overrides knowledge and truth in any situation, so arguing with a theist is akin to banging your … Continue reading →

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Ineffability, God thereof

Posted on Monday 25 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Another Andrew Sullivan post on The Dish– a few days ago, this, via Aidan Kimel and Herbert McCabe: God must be incomprehensible to us precisely because he is creator of all that is and, as Aquinas puts it, outside the … Continue reading →

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David McRaney 2, Gravity, Haiyan, GRR Martin

Posted on Tuesday 19 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve been meaning to close out my thoughts on David McRaney’s brilliant second book, YOU ARE NOW LESS DUMB, which I first posted about a month ago. First, let me follow up on his ‘narrative bias’ described in the first … Continue reading →

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Why Science Is Not About Faith

Posted on Tuesday 19 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Great post at Slate by Jerry Coyne — the original headline on the homepage has disappeared, so I’m reproducing from memory in this link: Why Scientists Have No Faith in Science The point is science isn’t about faith, not even … Continue reading →

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To put matters at their simplest

Posted on Tuesday 29 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Reading A.C. Grayling’s The God Argument, a simplistic title that might be better replaced by its subtitle: “The Case Against Religion and for Humanism”. Grayling is a British philosopher who has written on many topics; i.e. he’s not just a … Continue reading →

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Man in the Sky

Posted on Monday 21 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Via The Dish, Embracing the Void. Making the sky into a humanlike God is a shortcut to making it legible. If you believe that there is a man in the sky, you can interpret its unpredictable cinema, its colour shifts … Continue reading →

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Connor Wood on Atheists

Posted on Friday 18 October 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

The perspicacious Connor Wood, at Science on Religion, asks Why Are There Atheists?. That is, since the vast majority of humanity subscribes to one variety of faith or another, how is it that atheists exist at all? Are they some … Continue reading →

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