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31 Days – You Are a Siamese Twin
The title is an understatement. You are more like a Siamese triplet — or more. Before I get to that, have you ever wondered how Siamese twins manage? I recently saw a video of a pair of twins who...
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31 Days – Godel’s Theorem
So many times we have said something cannot be done and we have been proven wrong. We can arrive at points east by traveling west. We can fly in a heavier-than-air craft. Altruism can arise from...
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Deepities
Oh, wow! If you enjoyed Daniel Dennett’s Canons of Good Spin last time, you’ll really enjoy a term he unveiled shortly afterward in the same speech: deepity. A deepity is a proposition that seems to be...
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My Philosophy of Life
Tonight I will attend a party where each person will get the mic for 5 minutes to answer the question, What is your philosophy of life? This is my answer; what’s yours? * * * * * What can we aim for if...
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What If Everyone Will Go to Heaven?
At the philosophy gathering I attended on Friday, one person told of a Quaker pastor she knows who preaches that everyone will go to heaven. We had an interesting discussion around the question, If...
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Choosing a Purpose
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. – Richard Dawkins My...
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Love the Sinner; Hate the Sin
Have you heard the maxim, “Love the sinner; hate the sin”? I’ve heard it dozens of times. It always seemed like a good principle, and I do think it is well-meant. This week, I read a wise follow-on:...
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Knowing We’re Animals Makes Us More Humane
Soft-Coated Wheaten Terriers and Human Friend Friends of the family texted one of my daughters this weekend to say, “Are you sure you don’t want to take our dog? We’re thinking of giving him to a...
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Moral Imagination
I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get...
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Shutters
In response to Daylight at Live to Perceive: Shutters covered a window, Fastened as instructed, Shedding rain down and out, Storm after storm. Inside, a young woman Hoped there was more to the world...
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Shaphat
The Hebrew Letter Shin So many things don’t bother me anymore — things that I used to consider grave sins — that someone recently asked me, “Don’t you care about anything?” I considered my response for...
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Does Pi Contain the Universe?
I just ran across a very poetic meme about the number pi . Pi is an infinite, non-repeating decimal — meaning that every possible number combination exists somewhere in pi. Converted into ASCII text...
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Scratching Your Way Out of a Room
Benjamin Verdery is not only a fantastic classical guitarist, but a fabulous teacher. I once heard him use this memorable analogy to encourage a student to work on technique. When you try to play the...
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Zubeidat Tsarnaev and the Black Hole of Reality
Like many of you, I’ve been spellbound as the drama of the Boston Marathon bombings has unfolded. Since it took place just a few miles from my home, I have felt that I should blog something about it,...
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Of Morality and Horology
Kylan Arianna Wenzel, Transgender Miss California Competitor One of my daughter’s good friends recently came out as … well, I’m not sure what the word is. S/he was born male but feels like a lesbian....
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Geocentrism and Free Will
The first topic I wrote about in this blog was artificial consciousness. The last post, with its pictures of watches, has me thinking once more about the mechanisms of thought. Everyone agrees that we...
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In Defense of Intuition
In the last post‘s video, Pat Condell disses “intuitive knowledge” (2:30), poking fun at those who promote it as better and even morally superior to “boring old empirical knowledge”. While I agree with...
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Spiritual Discernment
[Sorry, but this post had to be a Beagle's Bark.] Continuing the theme of the last couple of posts, about intuition verus empiricism, I have wanted for some time to write about this passage in the...
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Bean Farming, Atheism and Altruism
I spent last Friday evening in friendly competition with other freethinkers, playing Bohnanza. In this game, you try to farm more beans than anyone else by playing the right bean card at the right...
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Is It Dogmatic to Be Anti-Dogma?
I once overheard a man advising his daughter on romantic relationships: The only rule is that there are no rules. A friend of mine likes to say, The only absolute is that there are no absolutes. At a...
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