As some of you may recall, I started working in San Francisco in May this year. I’d been to S.F. often growing up in Marin and Sonoma counties, but this was the first time I’d ever spent any significant amount of time in the city, especially near downtown (I work near Market St. in the [...]
I’ve been reading a really different, refreshingly, brutally honest book on the pitfalls and potentials of being a solid leader and a decent person of integrity and compassion. It’s called Deadly Viper: Character Assassins, and I’ll be reviewing it on the blog soon, but in the meantime, check out deadlyviper.org. It’s pretty cool.
Today I discovered that everything I knew about atheism is wrong. Apparently, all honest, enlightened, and throughly reasonable people can’t help but be atheists. Religious people are, of course, deluded, unscientific, and completely unable to substantiate any of their beliefs or spiritual claims. How do I know this? Sam Harris: Mythbuster. Read this essay by [...]
Quick thought experiment: do you do something kind for your wife/husband/mother/father/sibling/friend/etc. solely in anticipation that they will somehow reward you? Do you refrain from doing something unkind in the hope that they’ll refrain from punishing you? I guess you could answer yes to either question, but that’s a rather bleak view of how relationships are [...]
I appreciate the comments many folks have made the past few days here extolling the virtues of atheism — unfortunately I have neither the time nor the wherewithal to continue in point by point refutation of various truth claims. It’s not that I’m not able to, it’s simply that I don’t see a good reason [...]
Update: I have written a response to criticism of this article here, so please do not read this post without also reading my updated response which clarifies many of my more emphatic statements. I have many thoughts about the recent exchange I’ve been having lately on this blog and elsewhere. Mostly, I’m appalled by the [...]
Shalini over at Scientia Natura responded to my previous post and subsequent inline comment attempting to refute both my off-the-cuff as well as carefully considered remarks on the whole idea of atheists opposing faith in the supernatural realm and in God on essentially moral grounds. I will now respond not to all of her individual [...]
You know the Chinese proverb: give a man a fish, and he won’t go hungry for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he won’t go hungry again. I agree with that statement, and that’s why I support efforts to help the poor that result in the valuation of honesty, work, and solid education. [...]
Wow, I just read this impassioned post (more like a combination of hard-hitting essay and a cry of desperation) by Adrian Warnock over in the U.K., and it struck to the heart of everything that’s been rumbling through my head the past few months. I too want it all. I hate all the individual extremes [...]
There’s a looming brouhaha in the theological world over the nature of Christ’s atonement for our sins by His death on the cross. Perhaps this has been going on for a long, long time, but it seems I’m hearing a lot about it on the blogosphere all of a sudden. From what I’ve read, the [...]
