Category: Religion and Ethics

  • The Cosmic Back Massage

    Most people are too comfortable with their worldview. They are unaware of the implications and presuppositions for their beliefs. Everybody from the Christian to the atheist, the rationalist to the empiricist, the physicalist to the idealist – they are quick to point out absurd conclusions in other people’s worldviews, but they overlook the absurdities in their own.

    (more…)

  • What Is Religiosity?

    Disparaging religion has become a rite of passage for modern intellectuals. To become enlightened, it’s now necessary to equate “religious people” with “crazies”. Indeed, if you want to join the elite club of modern thinkers, you must reject the irrational superstition and magical thinking of religious folks and stick to the hard sciences.

    I confess: I’ve never gained membership into this club. I’m just too fascinated by religious people to dismiss their ideas out of hand. I want to listen to their claims. Their ideas sound wild; but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are wrong.

    (more…)

  • An Objective Standard for Sanity

    I’ve always been fascinated by so-called “crazy” people. That guy who’s convinced he’s Napoleon reincarnate because his dog told him so; the serial killer who is literally obsessed with killing people; the guy who shouts on the sidewalk every Sunday about how Jesus is actually the devil – I just can’t help but listen and observe.

    (more…)

  • Infinite Things Do Not Exist

    For the last several years, I’ve been on the hunt.

    I’ve been searching for an explanation for the popularity of irrational beliefs. People casually accept contradictions into their worldview; they are convinced that paradoxes exist. I’ve been trying to understand why.

    Their arguments frequently end up appealing to mistaken interpretations of quantum physics or the liar’s paradox. But there’s a deeper, more foundational error that I’ve become convinced is the root of so much confusion, and it comes from the most unexpected place: mathematics.

    (more…)

  • Karma or Coincidence?

    Theory is inescapable. Two people can view the same event and have radically different interpretations of it.

    (more…)

  • Does Free Will Even Make Sense?

    Few things are as intuitively obvious, yet philosophically challenging, as the existence of free will. Do we have it? Our intuition screams “Of course!”. But our rational analysis screams, “Of course not!”.

    (more…)