1. "Holocaust Remembrance Day" Yesterday was Holocaust Remembrance Day. If you've ever seriously studied it, and talked to survivors, it's difficult to forget.
Representative Sample: The Holocaust shook the very foundations of modern civilization, calling into question our understanding of humanity itself.
2. "Where religious fundamentalism and religious liberalism meet" An interesting argument that finds similiar errors in thinking among the two groups.
Representative Sample: Some thinking by liberal or moderate believers can be as insensible as those of fundamentalists. While the social toxicity of their beliefs may be nearly nil, their beliefs can still be impervious to reason.
3. "Obama’s Sweet Middle Eastern Nothings" One of the better analyses of Obama's al-Arabiya interview.
4. "Stupid Philosopher Tricks" Twenty of the stupidest statements from famous philosphers.
Representative Sample: This world is the best of all possible worlds. (Leibniz)
5. "Hands Tied By The Bible" The Bible and domestic abuse, focusing on an issue raised by a pastor at Rick Warren's church.
Representative Sample: one of its pastors argued that domestic abuse is grounds for separation and counseling, but not for divorce.
Holocaust Remembrance Day must've been moved in the last few years. In Israel, we observed it in April or May, on the day of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
ReplyDeleteThanks for repost. The philosopher quotes just kill me.
ReplyDeletePeter, now that I read your post, I must say a lot of the quotes are either out of context or less stupid than you think. For example, my understanding of the Churchlands is that they think that high-level phenomena like pain, feeling, and belief don't really exist on the level of the brain.
ReplyDelete