Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2765
July 11, 2010
Signing Off
David Frum - M...
The Sanity Of Marilynne Robinson
I've gushed over her before and quoted from her new book, "Absence of Mind." There's an interview with her in the Atlantic here from 2004 by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz. So it as great to see her on Stewart, even if she probably soared a few thousand feet above the heads of many of the viewers:
Jon Stewart - Daily Show - Political Humor - font - ...
On Evil
Alan Wolfe reviews Terry Eagleton's new book:
"We cannot pass reliable moral judgment on the human species," heargues, "because we have never been able to observe it other than indesperately deformed conditions." Lift the burdens imposed by scarcityand poverty, and then we will find that human beings need not killothers to make up for their moral and psychological failings. Thisseems to me, if I may be so crude as to repair to the language ofsocial science, a non-falsifiable proposition...
Contra Manzi: Predicting Without Predicting An Inhospitable Planet
A reader writes:
While I
someone on the right who is willing to engage honestly
intellectually with the issue of climate change, I think
continues to make some basic category confusions about climate
particularly as it concerns this line of
What I mean in this case is that Manzi is confusing
predictions about the future with observation of long-term trends.While I agree with him that predicting a specific scenario based onclimate change is...
Mental Health Break
Our time is brief from Ian Berenger on Vimeo.
I sometimes get so caught up in the drama of everyday life that I
forget to sit back and enjoy the simple things. Losing a dear friend
this year really taught me how precious our time on this earth really
is. You're here one second and gone the next, so if you have something
to say to someone don't hesitate to do it before its too late.
Vimeo - Mental health - Multimedia - Development Frameworks - Flash
Why People Fall For Horoscopes, Ctd
A reader writes:
There are a couple of positive aspects to horoscopes, biorhythms, etc.
1) Asking the question serves a purpose in itself. There's a lot of the same benefits here as we find in prayer. Part of the benefit is just the actual act of forming the question, people deciding that yes, I really have to wonder if I'm in the right job/relationship/apartment, etc. Once you ask that question, you acknowledge that it's something you are questioning, that you see room for improvement in.
2...
The Evolutionary Case Against Monogamy, Ctd
A reader writes:
How do you decide you have an open marriage? It is much better to do it before you get married. One of the things I most love about my husband is his honesty and clarity of thought. We have been married for 20 years. Before we got married we went through the Catholic Church pre-cana program. It was very good and helped us define what we thought marriage should be. There was a very good discussion group about sex. Since the "mentors" in the group were a good bit older...
The Evolutionary Case Against Monogamy, Ctd
A reader writes:
I find this series of posts fascinating, partly because new science about the natural world is inherently interesting, but mostly because it raises profound questions about the relationship between the natural and the moral. Too often the evolutionary psychology crowd leaps straight from one to the other (which even the title of the posts does), whereas I see morality, in many of its dimensions, as the attempt to constrain what is natural. This is because I am a Christian...
An Atheist Walks Into A Bar ...
Julian Sanchez defends atheism in a hard to excerpt post on metaphysics. He's arguing against Ron Rosenbaum's plea for a "New Agnosticism." Here's Ron's central dilemma:
Faced with the fundamental question: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that science will tell us eventually.Most seem never to consider that it may well be a philosophic, logicalimpossibility for something to create itself from nothing. But thequestion presents a fundamental mystery that has...
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