Monthly Archives: March 2010
Superhumanist!
Awesome. The question of whether a humanist philosophy is compatible with a world in which superheroes exist might be a fun one to explore. Can people save themselves, or do they need superheroes/authorities/gods to save them? This seems to be … Continue reading
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Can science answer moral questions? cont’d.
Sam Harris addresses the critics of his TED talk: Moral relativism is clearly an attempt to pay intellectual reparations for the crimes of western colonialism, ethnocentrism, and racism. This is, I think, the only charitable thing to be said about … Continue reading
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The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: video
Video of the 10th Annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate (“Moon, Mars and Beyond: Where Next for the Manned Space Program?”) is available here, courtesy of Landmark Pictures. My thoughts on the event here. And, just because:
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Poetic atheism: other voices
Once we’re attuned to this kind of rapturous embrace of the real, it seems to pop up everywhere. Here’s Neil deGrasse Tyson, practically religious in his description of our oneness with the universe:
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Moral animals
A few nights ago, our daughter burst into tears in the middle of reading Love That Dog by Sharon Creech. “I didn’t know,” she sobbed, “that shelters kill the dogs that don’t get adopted!” That wasn’t true of all shelters, … Continue reading
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Can science answer moral questions?
Sam Harris thinks it can: “There are truths to be known about how human communities flourish whether or not we understand these truths. And morality relates to these truths. So in talking about values, we are talking about facts.” Some … Continue reading
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The Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: Where next for NASA?
“Exploration is in our nature,” said Carl Sagan. “We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.” His words were very much on my mind when I attended the 10th Annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of … Continue reading
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The Ten Commandments 2.0, cont’d: Walt Whitman
Following up on my post about humanist alternatives to the Ten Commandments, here is Walt Whitman (from his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass): This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, … Continue reading
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Becoming human, cont’d.
The New York Times has a review of the new David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, which includes the fascinating hominid reconstructions I wrote about earlier. This part was particularly interesting:
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