Sunday School

Thanks, Reg!

@Jim – Why do church steeples have lightening rods? At first they argued against installing them as they did in Europe when the Church saw applying for insurance for your ship and its cargo as offensive.  If it was going to happen it was the will of their god so there was no point having any.

When the minister leaves church to drive home does he…[Read more]

Regarding the Florida MegaChurch losing it’s insurance …

Why would a MegaChurch NEED Insurance?
Wouldn’t an All Powerful Gawd protect them?

and they’re going to be looking at you for eternity, in a separated compartment,

No, that is for Catholics in Heaven, because they’re worth it 🙂

Yes, the courts gave similar reasons for keeping monument crosses and even Confederate statues. They stated that they were “traditional” and “historical” instead and that a concrete crucifix was not just “religious”.

I used the following line whenever I get the chance, when debating;

Why do you wear a crucifix around your neck?

To remind me…[Read more]

“we consider the inclusion of similar words to be a ceremonial, longstanding practice as an optional means of completing an oath.”

This excuse continues to prevent America from progressing…

Folks like Patrick and Trump can sacrifice themselves and the nation would be better off for it.  Natural selection at its finest. Something tells me…[Read more]

Have a great week everyone!

Dualism is the problem, not consciousness.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that all philosophical problems are due to nothing but conceptual confusion. As he saw it, the aim of philosophy is solely to “show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle”. I find this a deeply dispiriting view of philosophy in general.

Is it really dispiriting?  I think it’s…[Read more]

@  onyangomakagutu  – yes indeed it does. Hope you are keeping well. Been a while 🙂

Reg your poem above reminds me of this by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved…

[Read more]

Have a great week everyone!

Human beings are members of a whole,
in creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
other members uneasy will remain.
If you have no sympathy for human pain,
the name of human you cannot retain.

13th century poem by Sa’adi, a Persian-Muslim.

The story in Paul Bloom’s talk, about the little girl who is waiting for life-saving surgery, who gets hypothetically bumped up the queue by the subjects who were asked to put themelves in her shoes and feel her pain, is an illustration of the Golden Rule I think.  This shows very clearly that the Golden Rule is a real thing.

So, it is…[Read more]

If empathy is sometimes misplaced or irrational – I can see and agree with a lot of Paul Bloom’s points.  As for rational compassion, I think it has to be based foremost on a notion of human rights and personhood – everyone is a person equally deserving of consideration for their need to thrive – together with a notion of justice or fairness, so…[Read more]

The examined life is worth living.

Students are working harder than ever to pass tests but schools allow no time for true learning in the Socratic tradition.

I think that learning is the most fascinating thing ever.  When I was at school, we were set projects about comets and nebulae in our Religious Education class.  I always used to turn in a…[Read more]

@ Jakelafort  – I will publish the references later. There are various sources for the dates and figures – many from religious institutions – so they must be reliable. Sample.

The worst years were 1348-51 collectively known as the Black Death but it resurfaced for a few decades more under various guises.

I will check 80 AD as that was the year…[Read more]

Have a great social distancing week everyone!

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

–  Hippocrates.

In 80 A.D. an epidemic swept Rome causing 10,000 deaths daily. During the ages until the present century, wave after wave of pestilence swept over Europe. The plague in 1384 A.D. took no less than 60 million…[Read more]

The problem with the way scientists study Reason.

A very interesting article.

Mercier and Sperber say that reason is a tool that evolved to solve particular problems related to communication, like evaluating information provided by others, convincing family or tribe members with arguments, and justifying one’s behavior to protect and improve o…

[Read more]