This last three months I’ve spent blogging, I’ve learned my away around the atheist internet and been delighted by how many wonderful resources there are, between websites, blogs, videos, discussion forums, etc. And not only the videos but some of the video channels run by extraordinarily creative or at least patiently argumentative creators of original [...]
I was really irritated last night by Derren Brown’s choice to use his lottery trick on national TV in Britain to propagate fundamentally bogus mathematical thinking and to convince a group of people that their belief in their abilities to reach into the subconscious was able to generate knowledge of winning lottery ticket numbers. It’s [...]
Not for me yet but apparently on average it’s a first step to more lucrative careers than more than half of the rest of the majors on this interesting ranking. Your Thoughts?
Rather mind-boggling numbers: Harvard’s endowment tumbled 27.3 percent in its latest fiscal year, largely because of problems with its private equity and hedge fund portfolios, lopping off $10 billion and shrinking its portfolio to $26 billion. Meanwhile, Yale University suffered about a 30 percent loss in its portfolio, to $16 billion, the university’s president disclosed in [...]
The Peaceful Atheist, a Wheaton graduate who lost her faith early in her time at the Evangelical college describes being alienated by Wheaton professors using anecdotes of their former students who’d left the faith as “cautionary tales”: While I was at Wheaton I only came out to 2 professors, and it took both an extremely [...]
They Might Be Giants have a new DVD, Here Comes Science, which promotes science to kids. PZ Myers got the chance to preview it and is tickled. Here is their cute kiddie video, I Am A Paleontologist: Your Thoughts?
In a previous post, I discussed how theist Rod Dreher was led to some introspection and cultural criticism based on reading he was doing about the pervasiveness of distortive rationalizations in our thinking. In that context, he tried to compare religious and atheistic rationalizations as similar in kind, as both kinds of faiths. In that [...]
When I started grad school in 2000, my stipend was almost half that average. But it’s hard to complain when you’re being paid to learn what you love, cultivate your mind, and prepare for (hopeful) entrance into an elite profession with eventual bullet proof job security and the possibility of working well into your later [...]
Earlier today Deane Gilbraith discussed Kurt Noll’s distinctions between theology and philosophers of religion from The Chronicle of Higher Education (which we linked to three weeks ago without much comment.) Gilbraith’s commentator Roland objected to Noll in the following way: On another line – ‘theologians practice and defend religion’. In short, theology is apologetics, a [...]
For those unfamiliar with the growing “experimental philosophy” movement, there are some philosophers in tandem with psychologists doing interesting work that has tried to study questions posed by contemporary moral philosophers by employing experimental means. They are trying to uncover what our moral intuitions really are like and how they actually function. Of course moral [...]
Carlos Ruiz is working on an internet source that organizes references to Nietzsche on various topics to make his work more searchable. I take it is something of an e-concordance he wants to design. He’s calling it a “Nietzsche Grid” and is taking input on the project here. And, far more importantly, there is the [...]
Alright, maybe these aren’t all that hilarious. One or two made me actually laugh outloud but it was the painful truth of several that make it worth posting. More comics can be found at PhD Comics (and thanks to The Scientist for linking to the video so that we could find it):
Simon Fraser University is instituting the grade of FD, a grade worse than F, for “egregious cases of academic dishonesty.” It can only be given by authorities higher up than professors and it would have possibly long lasting implications: The FD would remain on a student’s transcripts during their time at SFU and for two [...]
Steve Salerno paints a dark picture: Loath to force ill-prepared students to stretch by mandating a core sequence in math and science, most colleges permit them to concentrate in their major subjects and fluffy electives.A 2004 study of 50 major colleges and universities found that half failed to require students to take a suite of [...]
In response to a long running urban legend/chain intellectually insulting e-mail (which Snopes has a really good write up of here) comes this terrific comic stripization: The version of this story that deserves a separate cartoon of its own is a really disgusting one in which the professor’s closing challenge to God is to strike [...]
This is a neat video about new approaches to PE classes, including ones that incorporate ropes course games, climbing towers, and teamwork challenges. Having facilitated kids in these sorts of adventure learning exercises numerous times back in my camp counselor days, I am a huge believer in their educational value. Some other really interesting ideas [...]
Via Uncertain Principles, a recent article tries to draw inferences about effects of different college majors on students’ attitudes towards religion and religious practices. The authors of the study purport to show that study in humanities has a more adverse effect on religious belief than scientific studies: The Michigan scholars who wrote the study — [...]
A terrific article from The Chronicle from K.L. Noll, (via a not-surprisingly miffed An und für sich) that addresses the issues that I covered here. Noll brings considerably more depth and distinctions than I did and on some points may disagree with me, but has the same basic perspective at many essential points. Check it [...]
I appreciate Professor Harman’s willingness to exchange a couple rounds of debate with me across blogs against his stated desire to avoid such exchanges and so I will remain grateful to him even if we do not hear further reply from him. Here are his reasons for rejecting my notion of having a centralized message [...]
Graham Harman has an excellent (and lightning quickly delivered) reply up in response to my remarks earlier on the profession of philosophy looking into blogging as a preferred medium for more efficient and multi-vocal exchange. I’m quite grateful and want to address a few of his key observations and expand on some of my own [...]
Fascinating speculations from Graham Harman: Until very recently, the mere act of getting a book published was difficult enough that it carried a certain automatic prestige, provided that you weren’t publishing with some obvious fly-by-night sort of firm or a known vanity press. But of course there was and is still a certain hierarchy among [...]
Jen, an atheist blogger, makes an interesting case why not to and what should be done instead: Steve and I were both raised in secular families. Our parents didn’t go to church, didn’t talk about religion, didn’t explicitly teach us anything about God or Christianity, didn’t force some sort of belief system on us. So [...]
End Hereditary Religion profiles an intriguing book: “The War for Children’s Minds” is a brilliantly clear and convincingly argued defense of liberalism in moral education. Stephen Law examines and demolishes all the arguments in favor of authoritarian ways of teaching, and shows that in spite of the insistence of popular commentators from the religious right, [...]
From the ACLU’s blog of rights: In a victory for free speech and academic discourse, last week the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower-court decision upholding the government’s exclusion of Swiss scholar Tariq Ramadan from the United States. Professor Ramadan, a leading scholar of the Muslim world, was offered a tenured professorship at [...]
A few weeks ago now, I wrote a post, Commitment To Value Without God, in which I discussed how even when I was a Christian, I realized that I did not need to make reference to God in order to either psychologically recognize the value of sumptuous food or good friendship or any of various [...]