Writing Worth Reading
Last updated 11 pm GMT
Writing Worth Reading
Atheist Richard Dawkins debates secularism with agnostic Will Hutton. "Secularism isn't something we need only when threatened with theocracy, any more than democracy is something we need only when threatened with dictatorship"
Useful backgrounder if you have a general reader's interest in philosophy. What philosophers mean when they talk about "analytic" versus "continental" philosophy. It's difference of sensibility. The ideas and people overlap
A man becomes so convinced he is Samson, he tries to pull down the Western Wall. A woman persuades herself she is the Virgin Mary, even heads to Bethlehem to find her child, Jesus. Why can Jerusalem cause such strange behaviour?
Short review of de Botton book. Atheists have no reason to be hostile to religion. "It is only the illiteracy of the current generation of atheists that leads them to think religious practitioners must be stupid or thoughtless"
Almost worth it for the ambiguous headline alone. But on to the substantive question. Why do we expect a reasonable person to save the life of a child drowning nearby, but not the life of a child starving in another country?
"To study the lives of the Apostles is a bit like what we've been doing with the Hubble telescope—getting as close as we can to seeing these earliest galaxies. This was the big bang moment for Christianity"
On the exploitation of religiosity in American politics, and the special pleading of the Catholic church on contraception. Rick Santorum "is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic"
"Somewhere between its invention and today, ethics has become warped. We allowed the original function of ethics to be forgotten." This fine review of Philip Kitcher's The Ethical Project explains what's gone wrong
“Confucianism is arguably the most comprehensive and integrated humanism in world history. It is also one of the most important, rational ways of learning to be human." Perhaps, but to many it's chauvanistic, hierarchical, outdated
Fine consideration of Nietzsche. Trained as philologist, graduated to philosophy, railed against Christianity. "He was not a writer, nor even a prophet, but a ‘battlefield’ on which was being fought the struggle for Europe's soul"
Eleven philosophers get an offer through the mail to read and review a manuscript. Fee: $12,000. They accept. It's not a work of genius, but nor is it nonsense. Who is the elusive author, and what does (s)he get out of it?
Interview with philosopher of science Alex Rosenberg, discussing his controversial and challenging new book. "Insofar as we pursue human sciences, nihilism is inevitable, but the label has too many disturbing connotations to stick"
Sam Harris proposes that our concept of free will is just an illusion generated by our brains
