Reading Time: 5 minutes The age-old problem of deciphering the meaning of life never gets old as a philosophical project. The word “decipher” here is the wrong word to use from a humanist’s point of view, of course. It is not that meaning is hidden in the fabric of the universe, laid there carefully by some deity for us […]
purpose
Posted inCulture
It’s times like these when hope is hardest to find—and when it’s needed most
Reading Time: 6 minutes To be progressive and politically engaged this summer is to absorb one blow after another, with more in the offing. The demise of Roe v. Wade. Severe limits slapped onto the EPA’s ability to combat climate change through regulation of power-plant carbon emissions. The specter of Republican-dominated state legislatures being turned loose to administer federal […]
Posted inFilm/TV
What makes a home for ‘All Those Who Wander’?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The first season of Strange New Worlds started with Captain Pike grappling with foreknowledge of a terrible fate that awaits him in Star Trek canon. Meanwhile, Spock this season has struggled with a relationship that The Original Series tells us is doomed. In both cases, SNW made the road to these futures feel uncertain in […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
The work we do, with the time we have
Reading Time: 6 minutes When I was a wee sprog, I dreamed big. I was going to be a physics professor, working on tricky cosmology problems related to heat and expansion. (I was the precocious twit reading Feynman and Hawking at twelve and, like any twelve-year-old, feeling confident that I understood everything because I’d read a few pop-sci texts.) […]
Posted inThe Secular
Why OnlySky? Reasons to delight in a secular space
Reading Time: 5 minutes What this secular space might do to improve the state of sociopolitical discourse for us all.
Posted inUncategorized
The Wacky World of Christian Callings
Reading Time: 7 minutes Hi and welcome back! Something about yesterday’s topic got me thinking about the Christianese concept of callings. In Christianese, a calling is something Christians think Jesus told them, specifically, to do with their lives. Today, let me show you how strange callings can get — and what happens when Christians must adjust theirs. (Fundagelicals are evangelicals […]
Posted inReligion
Tim Keller and the Lies He Tells About Death
Reading Time: 10 minutes Christians promise up and down that their product can give people peace of mind about death. It does not. And Tim Keller found that out the hard way, though I doubt a single one of his followers will understand his recent confession.
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Meaning of life: Humans and other animals
Reading Time: 2 minutes I was looking out of the window today and watching two Cabbage White butterflies fluttering about in the jolting aerial dance that they go through in their almost random-looking ritual of sex selection. Of course, it is not random, but tried and tested over generations, embedded by the machinations of evolution. I had a sudden […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Meaning of Life: Telic vs Atelic Activities
Reading Time: 4 minutes I wrote a piece yesterday looking at happiness, the meaning of life, and the inherent desire in humans to do more meaningful activities in order to find drive and momentum in life. The idea as that atheism presents a challenge to humans in the fact that there is no ultimate purpose because there is no […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Nihilism, Meaning, God &…World of Tanks…?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Bear with me. I think this makes sense. I occasionally, in this lockdown world, play a game called World of Tanks. For those of you who don’t know this game (and probably don’t care), it is usually a fifteen on fifteen team game where you have to destroy the other team’s tanks to gain XP […]