by Carl Howard | Apr 20, 2010 | Blog Topics, Interesting Stuff, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
I’ve come across some very interesting brain disorders as part of my uni reading (as well from blogs etc). Just as examples of poor design form the best evidence for evolution, so too do the brain’s imperfections tell us more than a “normal” brain. Here’s a list of...
by Carl Howard | Apr 19, 2010 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging the Bible
My last post about the obligation to execute genocide on Amalek reminded me of my school days when a friend would make fun of the original passage. Here is the text (from Deuteronomy 25): You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of...
by Carl Howard | Apr 13, 2010 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging the Bible
When we left Saul last, he was campaigning against the Philistines. Now he has a much easier task, direct from YHWH as reported by Samuel: that of attacking the nation of Amalek and killing all the men, women, children and livestock. Easy, right? Amalek is the most...
by Carl Howard | Apr 7, 2010 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Blogging the Bible
After a brief hiatus thanks to holidays and conferences about nothing, regular blogging should be back. I’ve yet to catch up on the blogging-the-Bible posts but I was spurred to write about the Bible and terrorism thanks to this recent post by Keren Tuch The Jewish...
by Carl Howard | Mar 4, 2010 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Blogging Jewish Law
Chapters 13 and 14 form a bizarre series of incidents about the continuation of Saul’s military campaign against the Philistines. War profiteering The first is the description of war profiteering by the Philistines (13:19-21). As mentioned before, the book quite...
by Carl Howard | Mar 2, 2010 | Blog Topics, Ethics, Philosophy
In the last 2 posts about morality, I looked at moral statements being: based on empathy not provable from non-moral statements being non-arbitrary because of their evolutionary history Today I’ll look at what this means for actual morality talk. The first point is...