The puzzle goes like this: young student actor Wiley Wiggins, star of the trippy, philosophical film Waking Life, walks into a bar. There he finds University of Texas Professor of Philosophy Louis Mackey, who muses on two kinds of human suffering: those that suffer from an “overabundance of life”, like…
Today, the Boston Globe reported that NASA is "canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment." The paper further reports that The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology…
The discussion this week about cognitive dissonance has gotten me thinking about creationism, a religious "theory" that virtually screams with cognitive dissonance. Let's look at how creationists game the gaps in the fossil record. Let's imagine we start with two fossils -- we'll call them A and Z to illustrate…
The Onion does it again. All of you old-fashioned scientists should take a look and learn a thing or two.
A few years ago I had an extended conversation about gay people with an evangelical man in his mid-50s. I thought that this conversation might be illuminating, in that this fellow is a decent fellow in many ways. He would make a nice neighbor, for instance. He works hard, pays his taxes, makes contributions to poor people, loves his children and abhors bigotry, at least when it involves blatant discrimination of African-Americans. On the other hand, he is deeply troubled with the “problem” of gays. For purposes of this post, I will refer to him as “Donald.”
Here’s how the conversation went:
Do gays choose to be gay? Donald is really perturbed that some people choose to engage in homosexual sex as a matter of sexual variety or perverted fun. On the other hand, he does acknowledge that there are numerous gay people who have not chosen to be gay. They were born or raised in such a way that they turned out “differently.” Donald admits that they had no choice. They have innocently found themselves attracted to members of the same sex. I asked Donald whether his God created them this way, and he shrugged.
Donald admits that many heterosexuals engage in sex that he considers degenerate or immoral. This would include oral sex, anal sex or S&M for example. Donald reluctantly admits that these people should nonetheless be allowed to marry. People who do not want to have children or who physically can’t have children should also be …