Monthly Archives: July 2010

Richard Dawkins’ Sunday Sermon,originally uploaded by jurvetson. Consider these two popular books about atheism, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. These books take an absolute stand against religion, bemoaning the link between fundamentalism and blind faith on the one hand,…
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See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil, originally uploaded by w00kie. When Abraham learned of the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorra he beseeched the Lord to be merciful, and to spare the city, since surely not every single resident was a sinner. He asked God if He would be willing to spare…
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Atom and hands machine drawing,originally uploaded by Bascom Hogue. When engaged in our scientific way of knowing, a human being stands in requisite isolation outside of the creation, as an inquiring, analytic, ‘onlooker’ — and from this standpoint it is reasonable that we can make nature subservient to our intellect and our will. From this…
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Moises y los 10 Mandamientos,Moses and the ten Commandments,originally uploaded by oseillo. Most scholars agree that the “Five Books of Moses” were actually compiled from various texts after the Babylonian Exile. I have no quarrel with this hypothesis, and I am certainly not of the opinion that God literally picked up a pencil and wrote…
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I just had the opportunity to interview Daniel Klein and Emille Faillaux, the writers and director of Mengelberg and Mahler, their new play that just opened at Shakespeare & Co. and runs through the summer. The play explores issues of moral ambiguity, personal responsibility, and the psychologically huge question: “What would I do if put…
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Sex and Cartoon Violence!, originally uploaded by emilydickinsonridesabmx. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that television and internet programming and advertising assume an audience of morons who each have an attention span that can be measured in milliseconds. We evidently cannot control or reverse this, so we simply deny it. We throw money at…
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Alexander Hamilton, originally uploaded by cliff1066™. In The Never Realized Republic, Peter O’Lalor describes the great heritage of freedom and liberty that informed America’s Revolutionary generation, the fundamental intentions of the Founders when they gathered in Philadelphia to write the Constitution, and the way these intentions were in many ways thwarted by the single-minded efforts…
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