In a comment to a previous post Jared A suggested that I would benefit, especially in my posts on religion and atheism, from using words more precisely in order to make my points clearer. In particular, he said that the word ‘myths’ usually refer to sacred narratives, while ‘scriptures’ refer to sacred writings. The beliefs in the scriptures, if codified, are referred to as ‘doctrine’ and [Read more…]
Stephen Walt has an excellent article pointing out that a Martian visiting Earth would be completely baffled by the current debate in the west about Iran.
In fact, given the various threats now facing Tehran, our Martian friend might have trouble explaining why [Read more…]
Some time ago I listed some phrases that had become such clichés that whenever I heard them, the annoyance they produced was sufficient to distract me from what the speaker was saying. Readers then added their own peeves.
Here is the current list of the phrases I hate and [Read more…]
One can make the case that the US is a far too litigious a society.
But going to court does have one big advantage when it comes to highly charged issues. Its structure of rules requiring facts and evidence and arguments in support of a claim, and the requirement that people have to tell the truth and directly address questions that are posed to them by opponents, can be remarkably effective in brushing away a lot of the obfuscation that accompanies debates in other less formal venues.
This happened in the case of so-called intelligent design. As I discuss [Read more…]
The one-percenters and their lackeys often indignantly make the claim that since they are the ones who pay most of the taxes, they should be praised rather than vilified, since it is largely their tax dollars that enable the state to function. They point to the roughly 47% of the population who do not pay any federal income taxes as being essentially moochers, as if being so poor that you do not even qualify to pay income tax is somehow an ingenious dodge to live off the wealthy.
But this situation arises not because the current tax rates are [Read more…]
The fuss over the rule that religious institutions that employ and serve the general public do not qualify for an exemption to providing free birth control services to their employees seems likely to go away, now that the Obama administration seems to have outmaneuvered opponents on this issue by saying that while the religious institutions do not have to pay for the cost of birth control, the health insurers must absorb the cost. While this can arguably be said to be a mere accounting trick, it does undermine the religious freedom argument considerably.
If they are smart, the Catholic Church and [Read more…]
When the above film based on Moore’s 1988 graphic novel series came out in 2006, it immediately struck a chord with me. (See my review here and later reflections in the light of the Arab spring here.) I felt that it would become a cultural icon and so it has proved, with the Guy Fawkes mask becoming a ubiquitous symbol of popular uprising against an entrenched oligarchy.
Moore reflects on how the ideas for his book and [Read more…]