Here’s something Andrew Sullivan posted earlier this month. I thought I was going to write something of substance about it, but the more I can think about it, the more I can only go “huh?” Sullivan seems to assume that religious belief should never be treated as as real as beliefs about other parts of [...]
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Rick Warren, and why the gay rights movement shouldn’t be nice about Evangelical Christianity
Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 22, 2008
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Okay, so Obama picked Rick Warren to give the something-or-other at the inaugeration. Comments on that specific event in a moment. Reading about it, though, and reflecting on Greta Christina’s comments on being an atheist in the queer community, something clicked for me about the tactics the gay rights movement should be using. One angle [...]
David Aikman’s _The Delusion of Disbelief_
Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 16, 2008
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David Aikman’s The Delusion of Disbelief is a somewhat rambling rebuttal to recent critiques of religion by Dawkins, Harris, et al. The jacket announces that Aikman is a former Time correspondent and bestselling author, with a Ph.D. in Russian and Chinese history. The quality is a bit lower than I’d expect from someone with those [...]
Being James Bond
Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 15, 2008
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Saul Kripke notoriously argued that since the meanings of words are tied to the actual facts about what they refer to, we cannot ever say what it would be for unicorns to exist, because there are no unicorns. This seems to be a paradoxical position. But I recently discovered an example that makes it sound [...]
Review: Female Chauvanist Pigs
Posted by Chris Hallquist on December 12, 2008
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There are at least two things to like about Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture: 1) It’s an impressive example of a book sustaining itself most of the way through without a definite thesis. 2) It contains some insightful observations quoted from a 17 year old boy. No, I [...]