The rhetoric of Americans being the good guys and of all the bad guys being out there made me suspicious. I grew suspicious, not only by the irony of Christian calls to war, but by studying. Studying sociology, I learned of the startling Zimbardo prison experiment at Stanford, wherin a dozen students, prescreened for mental…
Category
Thoughts
Jesus, the Anti-Hero
This was originally published on Matthew Barlow’s blog on December 27, 2012. … Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary I’ve had a few back and forth duels on facebook about gun control, mostly sparked over a few things that I posted. I didn’t necessarily mean for these posts to be inflammatory or controversial, it…
Who Took The Purpose Out of Science? (Nagel, Cobb, Whitehead & Teleology)
“The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is…
Election 2012 Demographics: No Division Here!
Regarding all this talk of the U.S. being divided, I heard on NPR this morning that Obama got the Latino vote, the African-American vote, the Asian vote, the female vote, the young people vote, the Catholic vote and the urban vote. The categories he was lacking? Older White Men of “certain incomes” and certain southern geographic areas….
CONFESSION: Mormonism Creeps Me Out a Little
I watched the above video recently, and I have to be honest, It creeps me out a little bit. OK, a lot. The religious rituals, the secrecy, the knocking, the passwords, the spacey outfits, totally bizarre to me. And this is coming from someone who is not unfamiliar to Amish and Mennonite culture! A couple…
Unemployment & Welfare: “Why can’t they just go out and find a job?”
“But you must just answer a last question. Two equally old trees are growing in a large garden. One of the trees grows in a sunny spot and has plenty of good soil and water. The other tree grows in poor soil in a dark spot. Which of the trees do you think is bigger?…
To Sell Art for Profit is to Deny It’s Worth: Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones & Pirates
“Others, like the label Records on Ribs, have developed a model of supporting artists and raising their profile (because, isn’t that sort of what a record label should be passionate about?) that allows anyone to download new music for free, and then offers them the chance to donate what they think is appropriate for it….
The Bible and Homosexuality
Recently I was involved in a long written correspondence with a friend about the Bible and homosexuality, initiated by the poster above which I posted on facebook. My friend, who is passionate about God’s written word, was upset that I was using the Bible to back up my personal opinion on homosexuality. We ended up…
How the Chick-fil-A boycot is messing with American Capitalism
…this represents the great truth that democracy may not be be complicit with unethical forms of capitalism (if not capitalism itself). That is, if people are given the facts, and begin to care about how people are actually treated, and begin to care about equality of our citizens, business as usual cannot go on. There…
Things I’ll Tell My Child Someday: You Don’t Possess Your Identity
………………………. There are so many things that pop in my head–nuggets of wisdom if you will–which I would love to share with my son. The problem is that he is only 10 months old and right now he’s focused on learning how to feed himself. So, I will be posting my fatherly wisdom here for…