Philosophy

At a post-screening discussion where I questioned the director of Eye in the Sky about the disconnect between his drone-kill movie and reality, he launched into a bunch of thought-experiment stuff of the sort I’ve tried to avoid since finishing my master’s in philosophy. Mostly I’ve avoided hanging out with torture supporters.

If this were a philosophy paper I would now tell you that I am going to show that consequentialism is the most useful ethical framework. Then I would show read more

The film, The Unbelievers, now playing in theaters, documents a world tour of speaking events by a pair of scientists opposed to theism: biologist Richard Dawkins and physicist Lawrence Krauss.  They take the refreshing approach that tolerating nonsensical beliefs establishes damaging habits of thought, and that therefore nonsense like religion should not be continued.  They’re also quite optimistic that it won’t be. 

And when you watch these guys speaking to large crowds read more

Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists is a curious and ultimately very valuable book. 

It’s curious because it doesn’t make much of a case — or at least not the sort of case I would have liked — for why we should create atheists. 

It’s valuable because, if you believe we’d be better off with more atheists, this is a remarkable tool for accomplishing that goal. 

I don’t view sloppy thinking as a great evil in itself.  read more

Review of “Honor For Us: A Philosophical Analysis, Interpretation, and Defense” By William Lad Sessions, Continuum.

William Lad Sessions is a philosophy professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. I was once a philosophy student at the University of Virginia. Both schools have honor codes for their students. I experienced UVA’s honor code as one of the most thrilling discoveries of my life. W&L’s has inspired Sessions to write a book.

I realize that nowadays read more

By David Swanson

Chris Hedges is one of the best, one of the most morally useful, writers we have. He’s free of loyalty to political party or dogma. He knows war first hand and describes it without flinching. He’s an almost ideal gadfly to our corporatocracy. But he has a hangup on religion that holds him back.

Hedges will tell you that he has no use for fantasies about life after death. He’ll profess no interest in gods or prayer or a divine plan or anything of the sort. read more