Richard Chappell argues we can keep using the word “tribalism,” even if some people think it’s racist. Further comment: using the word “tribalism” as a bad word isn’t racist, it’s misanthropic. It’s saying that one of the oldest human social institutions, except maybe and maybe not even the family, is fundamentally evil. Personally, I’m okay [...]
Monthly Archives: January 2009
Religion news, good and bad
Posted by Chris Hallquist on January 27, 2009
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The good: most Americans don’t think atheists are going to hell. No matter what the Bible says. The bad: Geert Wilders is being prosecuted for hate speech. To quote Yglesias: “nothing makes me feel patriotic quite like a good European hate speech prosecution.” Also, historian Philip Jenkins argues that the rise of third-world Christianity could [...]
Richard Lewontin on Carl Sagan
Posted by Chris Hallquist on January 27, 2009
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One thing I’ve noticed reading the work of creationists and other religious apologists is that they’re quite fond of Richard Lewontin’s review of Carl Sagan’s _The Demon Haunted World_. Sagan’s book, for those who haven’t read it, is a poetic introduction to critical thinking and the value of science in combating superstition. Lewontin gets quoted [...]
The epilogue paradox
Posted by Chris Hallquist on January 26, 2009
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There’s a famous philosophical paradox called the “preface paradox”: many books contain remarks in their prefaces that imply not everything in the book is true. For example, after thanking professors X, Y, and Z for commenting on previous drafts of the book, but will then say “I remain responsible for any mistakes in the final [...]
Evolutionary Psychology and the politics of the SEP
Posted by Chris Hallquist on January 23, 2009
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About a year ago, Richard Chappell highlighted the SEP article on evolutionary psychology, which claims “There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise…” I posted some criticisms at the time, and more recently, I’ve been checking some of the author’s (Stephen Downes’) sources, and it looks [...]