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From Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (edited by Charles Moore): The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any [...]
Think about what life in a space colony would be like: a hermetically sealed, climate-controlled little nothing of a place. Refrigerated air, synthetic materials, and no exit. It would be like living in an airport. An airport in Antarctica. Forever. When I hear someone talking about space colonies, I think, that’s a person who has [...]
In his Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Pierce defined a novel as “a short story padded.” This is an all too apt description. The inability to prune a story to its essential story is an unfortunate quality shared by many modern writers and the primary reason that bookshelves are filled with bloated novels. William Faulkner once wondered if [...]
If I told you that I had a neurological disease which meant that for eight or more hours a day I lost control of my faculties, bade farewell to the outside world, and was subject to complex hallucinations and delusions – such as being chased by a grizzly bear at Stockport Railway Station – you [...]
“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all,” said writer Anaïs Nin, expressing an absurd but frequently touted idea, “there is only the meaning we each give to our life.” Philosopher Bill Vallicella explains why such claims are nonsense: Note that if I must first give my life meaning, if it is to have [...]
Black American sign language and American sign language are different languages: Some differences result from a familiar history of privation in black education. Schools for black deaf children — the first of them opened some 50 years after the Hartford school was founded, and most resisted integration until well after the Brown v. Board of Education decision [...]
Naval analyst Chris Weuve explains how naval warfare is portrayed in the literature and television of outer-space: Foreign Policy: Let’s reverse the question. Has sci-fi affected the way that our navies conduct warfare? Chris Weuve: This is a question that I occasionally think about. Many people point to the development of the shipboard Combat Information [...]
Depressing statistic of the week: More Americans now commit suicide than die in car crashes, making suicide the leading cause of injury deaths, according to a new study. What’s even more distressing is that, as bioethicist Wesley Smith notes, “some states some suicides aren’t even included in the suicide statistics–such mendacity thanks to the assisted [...]
Philosopher Ed Feser considers some of theological exchanges in the recent superhero movie, The Avengers: We cannot assume Captain America to have had time between battles to study classical philosophy and theology, but his words could be read as containing implicitly the answer to pop atheism’s “one god further” objection (which I have discussed here, here, and here). [...]
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