In preparing to teach a class for the first time, I’ve been reading past posts on the blog In Socrates’ Wake (which is a great resource!). I came across a posted titled “Learning as a process of grieving”, which quotes a part of the Wikipedia entry on the Kubler-Ross Model: I don’t know that all truth … Learning and Grief

This seems like a truly worthwhile exercise.

(This is content is a bit tangential to secularism issue, but it is not entirely unrelated, so I hope I’ll be forgiven for posting it here.) Prof. Jerry Cohen’s chapter from my book Israel, Palestine, and Terror is available on-line here. I think it’s one of the strongest pieces in the book. My own contribution … Israel, Palestine, and Terror

My daughter is a freshman philosophy student who is currently writing her second-ever essay in philosophy.  The topic is Descartes Meditations.  We have been discussing the deceptive god and evil genius skeptical arguments for the past week.  So, my disagreement with Stephen Law about the relevance (or irrelevance) of the Kalam cosmological argument to the … A Red-winged Blackbird

http://news.msn.com/politics/darwin-gets-4000-write-in-votes-in-ga Unfortunately, Darwin lost the election.

Catholics see Jesus on burnt toast. Muslims don’t do images, so they see “Allah” in Arabic script on various objects. Inside vegetables that have been cut open is a perennial favorite. Here is one of these miracles from Turkey: a cow, intended for sacrifice in the present Eid, which appears to vaguely perhaps have “Allah” … God on a cow

Well, monotheistic weirdness is but a subset of the weirdness we humans are capable of. And damn, are we capable of an awful lot of brain-melting, asinine notions that tie into spiritual beliefs. For example: (Sounds of me banging my head against a wall…)

When you live in a parallel universe where dinosaurs were on the Ark with Noah, and talking snakes crawl into your garden, and vaccinating girls for HPV makes them promiscuous, and the Rapture could happen tomorrow, and the whole universe is 6000 years old, and trick-or-treating is a Satanic plot to make you gay, I … Halloween: Satan’s Plot To Turn You Gay

I just read Jacques Berlinerblau’s How to be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom. It’s a good book and well worth reading, precisely because it will rub a lot of atheists the wrong way. I see little to object to in Berlinerblau’s description of the poor state of secularism in the United States. … How to be Secular