jakelafort

I failed again in my prediction that MAGA would become aware enough of the pain that even they will inevitably feel, e.g. wrt losing health care (and now food support) for low income families. It is happening, but their core love and trust in their father figure/cult leader is largely still there.

As is the hate of libs and any of vestiges of…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
At that point, our only hope will be the military.

Trump keeps acting stupid and unaccountable, intentionally claiming ignorance of some of the people and policies affected by decisions made by his kabal that are borderline criminal or mafia-like.

To what you’re saying about how the military might be our only hope, the…[Read more]

The Enlightenment was about freeing thought from authority, be that authority religious, royal, or dogmatic. Now the new authorities are hashtags and outrage algorithms. The problem is not just ideological, it’s epistemic. Both the ‘Lunatic Left and Rancid Right’ have abandoned Enlightenment principles like reason, evidence, and open debate in fa…[Read more]

The idea of America; self-determination, free inquiry, equality before the law, is extraordinary. The execution of it has always been messy, compromised, and full of contradictions. Please don’t see my criticism as anti-American. I hope it is seen as pro-Enlightenment. I have no tribal attachment, and I can separate the myth from the machinery. T…[Read more]

@Jakelafort – I agree with the sentiment, but I am more optimistic (or naïve!) about the future. The pace of scientific and technological progress has far outstripped the average person’s ability or willingness to keep up intellectually with these advances. It is not so much that there is a growth in ignorance and stupidity but rather that it now…[Read more]

@Enco – It could be that Tucker Carlson made a balls of his testosterone booster with too much testicle tanning?

Good Website here.

Simon – I moved your update here so it does not disappear down the list.

I have been studying morality for about 16 years, and now I feel I have it all figured out. I can give a full and comprehensive answer for what justifies our moral beliefs: the question that is on every moral philosopher’s lips, and is the reason for the mistaken belief in m…[Read more]

@Simon –

Simon, the problem with JD Vance isn’t that he “respects” his wife’s atheism — it’s that he doesn’t respect her Hinduism. He’s implying she’s an atheist simply because she isn’t a Christian, which is a rather offensive way to erase a faith practiced by hundreds of millions in India. It’s disingenuous. What he’s really doing is getting…[Read more]

Have a great week!

“ Faith is a present-tense confidence and belief in something unseen, while hope is the future-oriented expectation and desire for something to happen
. Faith is often described as the foundation, or the “substance of things hoped for,” while hope is the confident anticipation that stems from that faith. Both are intertwined: faith provides the t…[Read more]

I’m afraid the situation is worse than most of you realize. Here’s a “what if” for you: Forget rigging the election by all the ways people are discussing. What if he declares a national emergency and simply refuses to leave office? He already ignores the law and is on the verge of defying court orders, and all the means of enforcement come under…[Read more]

Simon, you are still redefining “faith” to make it appear intellectually respectable. You are using the religious version, which explicitly praises belief without evidence, and you are stretching it to also mean rational expectations grounded in observation. That doesn’t create unity between religion and science. In a debate it confuses the point…[Read more]

Can/will Trump/DOJ “manage” blue polling places? Is it a dress rehearsal for 2028 elections?

Thank you for your kind words Jake. I happen to be thinking in this line of thought all week…..from the piece I wrote for the previous week’s Sunday School post. We atheists should spend more of our time enjoying the fruits of freethinking.  Just Think Atheist and be in the Zone. 🙂

Simon, I think you are trying to rescue the word “faith” by redefining it. You are taking a specifically religious term that means believing in something without sufficient evidence and trying to stretch it until it becomes a synonym for “hope” or “general trust in life.” It sounds warm but it is sleight of hand. People can have high life satisf…[Read more]

Have a great week!

If the “Pro-Palestine” demonstrations and outrage were really about humanitarian concerns, they would still be out on the streets for Sudan, Congo, Yemen, and a dozen other places where civilians are dying by the thousands but without the cameras rolling.

The “colonizer” label collapses under even basic historical scrutin…[Read more]