How did the "free market" fail us? How about this? It was a matter of dogma over evidence, a theme that connects the blots--the long string of massive failures caused by conservative Republicans over the past eight years. In an article called "White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire," the NYT…
In this 2006 lecture at TED, philosopher Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell) takes on the "brilliant" contemporary redesign of religion by Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life. After acknowledging that Warren's book is, indeed, "brilliant" (it has sold 30 million copies and motivated comparable numbers of people), Dennett…
What indeed! Well, it may surprise some people, but we don't sit around eating freshly roasted babies in front of a roaring church fire and wiping our mouths with Bible pages while we plot the destruction of Christianity. For one thing, it's summer in Australia, which means it's bushfire season. No,…
No one else here has yet mentioned this foo-fah-rah that emerged in the Washington state capitol in Olympia, and is spreading to others. Several governors have allowed Nativity scenes to be erected in their Capitol rotundas. In Washington state, the regional atheists got permission to put up an adjacent sign…
Happiness is contagious, according to a new study: New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy…