I was pleasantly surprised to see an op/ed by a professional philosopher in Sunday’s (1/29) Houston Chronicle. Karen Stohr’s essay “Our new age of contempt is on full display,” was first published in the New York Times. Stohr is an associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown and a senior research scholar at Georgetown’s Kennedy Center … A Qualified Defense of Contempt

It seems like a good time to re-post and update this. If Jesus had been a Republican… He would have said: “Render unto Caesar. And if thou catchest an illegal immigrant, render him also, yea, limb from limb.” “Blessed are the rich, who are the ones who REALLY inherit the earth.” “Love thy neighbor, unless … If Jesus had been a Republican…

I recently spoke at Christ the King Lutheran Church near the Rice University Campus. The topic was “Science and Religion.” This, of course, is a very big topic. How to deal with it in a single short presentation? I think the first thing to do is to some models for simplifying the multifarious complexities here. … Science and Religion: Four Models

In an editorial titled “Women at Risk,” today’s Houston Chronicle presented some very alarming facts: Put simply, the State of Texas is waging a war against women. This is not partisan rhetoric, but a sober statement of the unavoidable conclusion implied by these facts. Texas has conducted a furious vendetta against Planned Parenthood, the Affordable … The True Cost of Fundamentalism: Women’s Health

Here are the opening paragraphs about Isaac Newton in Wikipedia (his birthdate in Wikipedia is based on the Jullian calendar which was still in use in England when Newton was born; January 4th is his birthdate according to the Gregorian calendar) : ================================ Sir Isaac Newton PRS (/ˈnjuːtən/;[6] 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27[1]) … Happy Birthday Mr. Newton

Mr. Loftus is on a crusade against “faith”, but it is not at all clear what dragon it is that he intends to slay. A part of his point, I believe, is to boldly assert that religion and religious belief is irrational.  I’m reluctant to disagree with this point. There is a good deal of … Unapologetic Review – Part 8: Religion & Irrationality

Will science matter in the Trump Administration? All signs are that it will not. Indeed, not only will science not matter, it will be actively opposed. The title of Lawrence Krauss’s article “Donald Trump’s War on Science,” published in the December 13 New Yorker, sounds alarmist. After all, haven’t we heard hype from the right … Science Matters

Is the empirical confirmation of miracles possible, in principle? Hume has often been interpreted as denying the possibility. However, Hume does say that it is conceivable that there could be testimony for a miraculous event that is so unlikely to be false that it would be a “greater miracle” for the testimony to be false … The Empirical Confirmation of Miracle Claims