Robert Adamson was a Scottish philosopher.He was born in Edinburgh. His father was a solicitor, and his mother was the daughter of Matthew Buist, factor to Lord Haddington. In 1855 Mrs. Adamson was left a widow with small means, and devoted herself entirely to the education of her six children. Read on…
There is a tiny area at the back of my head where I run mental jobs that are the human equivalent of background tasks. I can poke them back there to run on their own, and they pop out with a “DING!” when they have something to say. Some of them have been there for years; they keep dinging but still need more work, so I put them back. Read on…
Scientists feel that they have located the Higgs boson, or something very much like it, finally culminating a forty-year search for the elusive particle. It has great importance because it is one of the postulated underpinnings of particle physics. With the Higgs boson in sight, much else about particle physics become clearer. Read on…
In my recent debate (“Is faith necessary for ethics?”) the Christian representative argued that, if religion is guilty of some crimes, atheist regimes like Hitler’s and Stalin’s have been even worse. Yes, playing the good old Hitler card. First, the Nazi regime was not atheist. Hitler frequently invoked God, he was a declared Catholic all his life, and never left the church. And the Vatican never excommunicated him, nor ever even uttered a word of criticism. As to the other … Read on…
In AD 71, six thousand men were crucified along the Appian way from Rome. Each died a long and gruesome death, for the crime of fighting for freedom from a brutal and repressive regime which had them enslaved and fighting one another for sport. Read on…
A child of twelve in a wonderful Black Baptist church can be captured by the activity, no matter the boy’s personal color. The preacher perched up high, talking about heaven or hell, saying we’ll all be saved by jeee-sus. All those people shouting and singing, happy and good people. Box lunches full of homemade fried chicken. It was a dream come true for an adolescent boy. Read on…
It has been observed that if you want to be an emperor, it is better by far to be one at the beginning of the empire than at the end, when the whole enterprise is collapsing. If so, this is as good a season as any to start thinking about how to get there. Empires have been out of fashion for several generations, but history moves in cycles, and the day of the empire is returning. Read on…
My wife challenged me to answer an essay by Alvin Plantinga, a professor of philosophy, attempting to justify religious belief through logic. My response: LOL.
For millennia, religious apologists have advanced innumerable supposed logical arguments. It’s a fool’s errand. Read on…
I recently attended a talk by Austin Dacey, of New York’s Center For Inquiry. He has a Doctorate in Applied Ethics and Social Philosophy. His book, The Secular Conscience – Why Belief Belongs in Public Life, was published in 2008 and has received wide attention. Dacey began with a Bible reading: the story of God commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham prepared to obey. Isaac was saved in the nick of time by an angel who said, “Never … Read on…
On Christmas day the west opened their presents under pine trees and celebrated over large family meals an occasion which has been celebrated for thousands of years, far back into the first societies in Europe. However, for the Christians of Nigeria it was a time of fear and violence. Thirty died as a bomb went off near the Nigerian capital of Abuja in just one of many attacks across the country on the Christian holy day. The attacks come only … Read on…