ON CULTURAL CHRISTIANITY

What was interesting and remarkable about Jesus was not the obvious fact that he believed in the god of his Jewish religion but that he rebelled against Yahweh’s vengeful nas- tiness. At least in the teachings that are attributed to him, he publicly advocated niceness and was one of the first to do so. To […]

ON VACCINATION

If vaccine hesitancy keeps us below the threshold for herd immunity – and most estimates put this at between 60% to 70% of the population – the chance that a new coronavirus variant for which current vaccines are ineffective will always be there. That dreadful outcome, should it come to pass, will effectively put us […]

ON THE CULT OF THE 5G TRUTHER

In times of pestilence strange cults roam the land, and there is no stranger cult right now than the cult of the 5G Truther. Conspiracies alleging the 5G cellular data network is detrimental to our health have been around for a while now, largely confined to an online subculture and to professional conspiracy mongers like […]

IN PRAISE OF MAN MADE SOLUTIONS

This Telegraph article discusses a major scientific report that thoroughly debunks some of the more popular online conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic. The most common of these involves the intuition that the virus was “man made” in a laboratory somewhere and then accidentally or deliberately released into the world. By closely studying the genome […]

BRIEF JOURNAL ENTRY IN A TIME OF PLAGUE

It feels like this is only going to get more hellish before it gets better. London on lockdown? I’d never imagined such a thing outside of post apocalyptic popular culture. Then what? The rest of the country? We all sit indoors and wait for a vaccine? What state will the economy be in by then? […]

Some Thoughts About Horse Burgers, Psychology and Class

Much of what is today called “social criticism” consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians. Steven Pinker What should we make of the horse meat scandal that has seen beef burgers and lasagnes stripped from […]

I Collect Therefore I Am: The Male Brain as Collecting Organ

A man must have a shed to keep him sane. XTC, Fruit Nut Shortly before winter had definitively set in, my brother and I were summoned to my parents’ house under the direct instructions that we were to clean out the shed. The shed (actually one of two sheds) had gone from temporary to indefinite […]

Only a Theory? Dispatches from the Evolution Wars

People want to agree with Jesus, and this often means they see him as agreeing with themselves. E. P. Sanders While on the campaign trail recently Texas governor, GOP hopeful, and potential 2012 presidential candidate Rick Perry responded to a question from a small boy about the age of the earth by telling him that […]

REVIEW: “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution” by Richard Dawkins

In the appendix to Richard Dawkins’ latest book – The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution – the author reproduces the results of Gallup’s 2008 poll sampling American popular opinion about evolution. An astonishing 44% of those polled identified the statement “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one […]