During a fun (and long) question-and-answer session after a lecture at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania — some of us were still going strong after three hours — I was asked my view on the origins of the Enlightenment. The first questioner noted that Jordan Peterson had spoken at Lafayette the year before and had argued […]
A difference with Jordan Peterson on Enlightenment foundations Read More »
As political winds blow, those whose principles are merely tactics change tack. But it’s especially galling when it’s professional legal and religious experts who reveal themselves so.
On unprincipled political hacks, then and now Read More »
Łyszczyński was a Polish nobleman and philosopher who had been working on an atheist treatise. A bishop who witnessed his torture and killing described them this way …
Religious toleration: 1689 England and Poland Read More »
At Britain’s Church and State site, my article “Religion and the Verdict of History” has been republished. One theme about sub-species of religious belief: “It’s the difference — to take one very particular example — between those who believe, as Benjamin Franklin did, that ‘Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to
“Religion and the Verdict of History” [CHURCH and STATE] Read More »
In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard defends faith by going on the offensive against reason: “Faith requires the crucifixion of reason.” For more on the context of Kierkegaard’s irrationalism and its implications for postmodernism, see p. 98 of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism from Rousseau to Foucault. Information about other editions and translations is available at this
Søren Kierkegaard in *Explaining Postmodernism* Read More »
Among German intellectuals of the generation before and after 1900, there was widespread interest in Eastern religions. Jacob Burckhardt expresses one point of attraction: “Not without cause do the Indians worship Shiva, the God of destruction. Filled with the joy of destruction, wars clear the air like thunderstorms, they steel the nerves and restore the
Burckhardt on Shiva, the god of destruction Read More »
The first issue of The Truth Seeker was published in 1873 and “counted among its illustrious subscribers and progressive writers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Clarence Darrow, and Robert Ingersoll.” The latest issue includes my article “No Reformation for Islam, Please.” To download the issue, go to this page at The TruthSeeker and
The Truth Seeker — free thought magazine Read More »
My “Are Reason and Faith Compatible?” is now republished at Britain’s Church and State site: “Suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, that evidence and logic make it 80 percent likely that a monotheistic god exists. … but there is nonetheless a gap between what the arguments show and the full belief-commitment that most
“Are Reason and Faith Compatible?” republished at Church and State Read More »