Whenever I have mentioned “Gurdjieff’s Partition,” which is the concept that disprovable hypotheses are the province of science, nondisprovable ones the province of faith, some have responded that this concept was proposed by Karl Popper. Perhaps so. But the two men had entirely different agendas for why they were making the proposal. Read more
I’m sure that got your attention. I mean only a certain kind of atheism: if thinking that the First Amendment requires hostility to all religion and leads one to fight against implementation of support systems that could protect students from being overcome by social and psychological problems, then, in that sense, atheism can definitely kill teenagers. Read more
My previous blog elicited more negative than positive comments. Allowing for the fact that one commenter is a troll and will simply be ignored, most of the rest advanced serious objections that merit reply. Please be aware that my thoughts here are within a larger trajectory of wondering why almost all the modern world suffers from the scourge of Aphrodiphobia and what long-term strategy might work toward eradicating it. First of all, I was accused of not doing my homework,... Read more
They don’t really have anything to do with sex.” Thus Mikel Schwartzkopf asked me and my best friend, Alan Rein, one day in the fall of 1956, our senior year at Tamalpais High in Mill Valley. Alan and I were both in love with her, but she was getting over a previous crush of her own and refused to choose between us. Unrequited love is SO painful when one is sixteen. He and I scratched our heads, discussed the issue,... Read more
Religion does not need to be social, shared, a church; a person’s religion can be individual, singular, unique. Belief in the value of truth, dedication to the pursuit of truth, is itself a religious value, the one that underlies science. This is one way we might consider Atheism to be a religion. Read more
I have not been posting much on this blog lately. My attention has been concentrated on getting out the first volume of the History of the Craft in America that has been growing for decades (and taking care of my family). My old friend Robert Matheisen, Professor Emeritus at Brown University, has been going over the penultimate draft with a fine-toothed comb and cries of glee, which I greatly appreciate, and I, not to lose momentum, have been getting the... Read more
I switched to Aljazeera, and found a panel discussion about the lasting importance of Pete Seeger’s 80-odd years of activism. And it struck me that Aljazeera is the only news source that tells the truth, because it is not controlled by US corporations. Read more
I believe a primary agenda of the Divine is to protect our free will, our agency, by always leaving it ambiguous whether an intervention was a coincidence. But perhaps an even more primary agenda is to save our lives. Read more
If you are a parent, I hope you know that suicide is the leading cause of death among teenagers. I just adore my 14-year-old, Chloe. At that age, kids feel SO grown up—when they are actually the most fragile and vulnerable. So it is time to be worried about her. Read more
If enough people make the decision to turn their lives over to their Higher Power instead of to the 1 percent, the predatory lenders to whom billions of dollars in student loans are owed might get blown out of the water if their cash flow stops. Read more
Aidan Kelly: Including Paganism
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