Academia can be a rich source of weirdness. Personally, I’m fascinated by paranormalist physics-abuse as it percolates through popular culture, and, let’s face it, quite a few places outside of physics. Here’s a lovely example: somebody presented a paper at a conference called “The Semiotics of Time.” From the announcement on H-Net: Some scientists believe … High weirdness by H-Net

Chris Hedges’s column today, “After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck With Nietzsche” claims that mainstream Christian and Jewish religion is in decline, and that the kind of secular options that might replace religion are nothing to be enthusiastic about. I think he underestimates the resilience of religion—particularly the right wing, magical-thinking, enthusiastic forms of religion he … If religion were to fizzle out

In every possible world, modal logic is a useless waste of time.

The Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot podcast has seen it fit to air my rant about intelligent design, physics, God, and so forth. It’s 45 minutes, if you want to listen.

A Polish entertainer has apparently been charged with blasphemy—”insulting religious feelings.” It’s nice to see that it’s not only Muslims; Catholics are also doing their best to demonstrate how delicate their sensibilities are. I also just finished David Nash’s Blasphemy in the Christian World. He has a lot of recent history in it as well, … Blasphemy revival

A benediction speech during graduation at Midwestern State University. It’s the best argument for encouraging religious performances in public events that I’ve come across in a while. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqLvV21tsdw I figure that if you have a zealous religious performance along these lines, anyone with some sanity remaining will be embarrassed or repulsed by such a display. … Why we should have ceremonies with religious speeches

It’s an old (2009) photo, but I ran into it again today: It prompted me to ask if some of the more militant Islamic groups are aware of the disastrous public image presented by posters with “freedom can go to hell” and so forth on them. But then, many of them seem media-savvy to a … Who is the audience?

I ran into a news item suggesting that at least in paranormal matters, public distrust of science is quite strong. Indeed, in a study done on belief in ESP, people informed that the scientific community was skeptical about ESP ended up more likely to think that ESP was real. People like me, who are deeply … Distrust of Science

Dianelos Georgoudis has put forward a theistic view of ethics and moral reasoning in his comments on “A Question of authority”, a recent post by Taner Edis. Given the intriguing combination of ethics and philosophy of religion involved here, I was unable to resist engaging Dianelos in a discussion of his views. Although I am … Perceiving Moral Truths?

When I was a kid, about thirty five or forty years ago, I remember that the political talk of my parents and their friends had a very Enlightenment flavor. Religious conservatism was reactionary, something that was a nuisance but would be swept away with progress. When they ran into, for example, a woman in full … Defeat