Holy Flibbertishibbit! Robert Wright in diavlog with Christopher Hitchens twice in the same month! Me like.
Archive for the ‘ethics’ Category
Wright v. Hitch, Part Deux
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
Chris Matthews cuts loose on Bishop Thomas Tobin
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009Ooh snap! MSNBC’s Chris Matthews really lays into Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin over his banning of Rep. Patrick Kennedy from Communion due to Kennedy’s support for abortion rights. Matthews trowels it on pretty thick but I think he’s on the right side of this one. I enjoyed this one. It’s not every day one of the clergy has his feet held to the fire like this.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Gran Torino, MD
Thursday, September 24th, 2009
I think I’ve figured out how they could pull off a sequel to the recent film Gran Torino: as the new movie opens, Clint Eastwood’s über-curmudgeon Walt Kowalski lies in intensive care, riddled with bullet holes but not dead. Grimacing, he opens his eyes. Standing at his bedside is a horde of his Hmong neighbors, looks of concern on their faces. With them is a Hmong shaman, a large rooster tucked under one arm and a shit-eating grin on his face.
Twitter, Sharia Law and You
Sunday, September 20th, 2009by John C. Snider © 2009
Is Muammar Gaddafi monitoring your tweets? Here’s the bizarre link between the social networking explosion and the inscrutable Islamic nation of Libya.
A short tutorial on URL shortening
If you use the internet much, chances are you’re familiar with “URL shortening.” In case you’re not, URL shortening is a free service that takes a really long URL (like the unwieldy strings generated by, say, the New York Times, or even by blogging sites like this one) and turns it into something more compact. For years the most common such tool was TinyURL. For example, this recent American Freethought post…
http://www.americanfreethought.com/wordpress/2009/08/11/ben-stein-loses-nyt-gig-grip-on-reality/
…when transformed by TinyURL, becomes this:
http://tinyurl.com/qvbsbz
Sure, it’s a nonsensical string of characters, but the link won’t get broken if it’s inserted in an email that wraps text–plus it’s fantastic for, say, the 140-character limitation imposed by the hugely popular social media tool Twitter.
Ben Stein loses NYT gig, grip on reality
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009Ben “Bueller…Bueller…” Stein has been let go from his biweekly gig writing a financial column for the New York Times, ostensibly because of his commercial work for a website called FreeScore.com and the associated (perceived?) conflict of interest. Now, normally I wouldn’t cover something so non-freethoughtish here, but now Stein has written a lengthy self-defense for The American Spectator, in which he blames everyone but the Illuminati for his ouster.
Peter Singer on healthcare rationing
Sunday, August 9th, 2009I admit I’m not as read-up as I should be on the current healthcare controversy, but I’m always amused at people who cite the spectre of “rationing” in their opposition to any proposed public healthcare system. It’s undeniable that any healthcare system (government-run or private-run) is going to have a ceiling on expenditures, which means somebody somewhere is going to be denied some kind of treatment at some point (otherwise healthcare would become a bottomless pit of spending as doctors and hospitals try to spend whatever it takes to keep every single patient alive for as long as possible). It’s also undeniable that some bureaucrat (be she a civil servant or private sector pencil-pusher) is going to have a say in the “rationing” decision. It’s already a reality, and adding the government as a player at the medical table won’t change the nature of that beast.
If God can’t keep you out of trouble…
Sunday, July 19th, 2009…maybe invoking His Name four times in your apology can bail you out of trouble. South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, in a lot of hot water over his intercontinental affair with an Argentinian-woman-who’s-not-his-wife, is playing the God card in a ballsy gambit to stay in office and salvage his reputation.
Sanford issued a formal apology to his constituents today, published by newspapers across South Carolina. Apparently if you abuse the trust of the voters, go AWOL for four days, and fly to South America to “hike the old Appalachian Trail” with your lover instead of spending time with your sons ON FATHER’S DAY, there’s no price to pay as long as you say “sorry” and pepper the apology with the name of the Lord.
Podcast #58 – Robert Wright
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
We interview Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God and one of the founders of the pundit-driven website bloggingheads.tv. In The Evolution of God, Wright lays out a convincing case that the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are “illusions” shaped by completely natural forces like commerce, warfare and social instability. At the same time, Wright controversially claims that Western religion’s progressive march (from shamanistic superstition to primitive polytheism to a monotheism which recognizes the value of individual human beings) reveals an inevitable, even divine “higher purpose.” For more information visit evolutionofgod.net.
The Evolution of God
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
Review by John C. Snider
Did God make man in His image, or was it the other way around? Despite millennia of religious tradition, most scholars are convinced it was the latter–but exactly how and why man’s conception of God has developed is a matter of hot debate.
The most simplistic model for competition amongst the gods is that whichever god’s followers are the most numerous and/or the most violent wins. In The Evolution of God, Robert Wright (The Moral Animal, Nonzero) argues for a subtler, more complex model–one that offers a much more hopeful outlook for humanity’s future than, say, the kind of “religion spoils everything” absolutism of Christopher Hitchens.
Hitchens rewrites the 10C
Friday, March 5th, 2010Tags: christopher hitchens, ten commandments
Posted in atheism, commentary, ethics, history, religion | 1 Comment »