Reading Time: 7 minutes Divine hiddenness is a problem that has for some years in modern theology interested those of a skeptical preference. As ever, definitions are required: What is meant by “Divine Hiddenness”? For this, it would first be useful to do a brief dive into Christian theology. Within the typical Christian worldview, there exists a God that […]
Philosophy
Posted inEducation
Freedom requires education: There’s no choice without knowledge
Reading Time: 4 minutes [Previous: No one has the right to starve a child’s mind] Imagine you find yourself in a room, facing two doors. One door is rough, weathered wood. The other is made of boards polished smooth. There’s carved writing on both, but it’s in a language you don’t read, in characters you’ve never seen. There are […]
Posted inBooks
A different history of end states in human progress
Reading Time: 16 minutes For the last few months, we’ve been exploring the possibilities of a Humanist Book Club through The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The idea wasn’t simply to move through the text, but to think about the stories that carry us forward. To try to empower ourselves […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Asking forgiveness from…God?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Crimes or harm to others can take on many different forms, but some can be particularly heinous. Far be it for me to constrain your imagination in detailing any such horrible harms. Instead, let us more closely consider the ramifications of causing harm to others. Forgiveness is often defined as something like “a conscious, deliberate […]
Posted inBooks
When philosophy is mistaken for field research
Reading Time: 12 minutes Well, folks, we’re diving into The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow. If you missed our book club opener last Friday, you can always double back to see why we’re thinking about this 2021 work of imaginative anthropology, which explores the history of how we created our […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
A philosopher’s bigoted views on atheists
Reading Time: 5 minutes Sometimes I think we have come a long way, that atheism is firmly ensconced in modern Western societies as an accepted belief. At other times, I am rudely awakened from my pipedream. I could bring to bear any number of opinions from politicians to celebrities. But, being a philosopher myself, it galls me to read […]
Posted inPsychology
The Trump lover: How a dangerous political emotion undermines democracy
Reading Time: 5 minutes Why do Republicans stick with Donald Trump? The rational thing would be for Republicans to find another champion of their ideas who is not tainted by overwhelming character flaws and indictments. Perhaps the Party leaders are making a rational calculation about the need to appease the Trumpian base. But that calculus is inextricably linked to […]
Posted inPhilosophy
On final solutions
Reading Time: 3 minutes One of the failings of religion is inflexibility. Religious people may conclude that a god is the source of objective morality. Therefore, they are externalizing and objectivizing a relative, subjective concept. Also, they are obviating the possibility of error correction and progress. Religious people sometimes see arguments inside their movements and assume that they are […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Do we need the opiate of religion?
Reading Time: 4 minutes These are hopeless times. A widely-cited study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 42% of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. Rates of sadness and hopelessness have increased steadily since 2011 when only 28% of high schoolers reported the same. A variety of explanations have been offered […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
A life that’s more than a bucket list
Reading Time: 4 minutes For the past two years, my friend Paul Louis Metzger has devoted untold hours and a huge portion of his energy to something that would never appear on anyone’s bucket list—driving to a care facility several days a week to care for his young-adult son Christopher. Christopher suffered a traumatic brain injury and remains in […]