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+31 +5
“If there is a God, then anything is permitted”: On Dostoevsky, freedom, and religious violence
Most people today are spontaneously moral, and the idea of torturing or killing another human being is repulsive to them — in order to make them do it, some “sacred” Cause is needed which makes their concerns about violence seem trivial.
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+10 +3
What Germans Can Teach The Rest Of The World About Living Well
The people of Germany, with their reputation for having an industrial-strength work ethic, may not spring to mind as the happiest or healthiest people around. Yes, Germans are better known for their beer and brats than their wellness rituals. But at the same time, with their unique ways to relax, unplug, enjoy nature, and tap into the wisdom of their rich traditions, Germans have lot to teach the rest of the world about living the good life.
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+9 +1
Why we should actually build the Death Star
In January of this year, the White House responded to a not-entirely-serious petition to build a Death Star, a huge moon-sized battle station armed with planet-destroying laser cannons depicted in the original Star Wars trilogy.
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+14 +3
Maher: U.S. Christians have traded Christ’s values for philosophy of ‘F*ck off and die’
Friday night on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher asked when Christians in this country swapped Christ’s message of love and tolerance for a philosophy of “F*ck off and die” toward people who aren’t like them. Showing an image of Congressional Republicans captioned “Cheap of faith,” Maher said, “New rule: It’s okay if you don’t want to feed the hungry or heal the sick or house the homeless. Just don’t say you’re doing it for their own good.”
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+6 +3
You Are Boring
Everything was going great until you showed up. You see me across the crowded room, make your way over, and start talking at me. And you don’t stop...
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+17 +1
Kill Your Childhood Idols: Why Nostalgia Sucks
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” If William Faulkner was writing that line today, he might add, “And it’s taking up far too much of your life.” We’re living in the most technologically advanced moment in history, but for those of us in our 30s, we’re spending more and more of our time looking back, not forward. And the entertainment industry is cashing in, happily catering to our love of stuff that was important to us when we were younger.
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+12 +1
Are We Alone in the Universe?
THE recent announcement by a team of astronomers that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy has further fueled the speculation, popular even among many distinguished scientists, that the universe is teeming with life.
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+16 +2
Why Life Does Not Really Exist
I had an epiphany that has forced me to rethink why I love living things so much and reexamine what life is, really. For as long as people have studied life they have struggled to define it. Even today, scientists have no satisfactory or universally accepted definition of life.
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+8 +1
The French Connection
How the Revolution, and two thinkers, bequeathed us ‘right’ and ‘left.’
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+10 +2
Exploring Christian Perspectives on Animal Rights
“There was a time when Rebecca, our eldest, was desperate to have a pet,” David Clough told me, when we met at the American Academy of Religion conference, held in Baltimore before Thanksgiving. “And she was in the unhappy position of having a father who had reflected ethically on the question at some length” — a father with misgivings about the human use of animals, even for companionship.
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+14 +3
You Are Your Brain
Patricia Churchland, a neurophilosopher at the University of California at San Diego, says our hopes, loves and very existence are just elaborate functions of a complicated mass of grey tissue. Accepting that can be hard, but what we know should inspire us, not scare us. Her most recent book is Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain.
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+13 +1
The evolution of morality
Our morality may be a product of natural selection, but that doesn’t mean it's set in stone
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+25 +1
Heidegger in France: Nazism and philosophy
One of the distinctive features of French intellectual life in the post-war period has been the influence of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976). Heidegger’s standing among French philosophers, especially those working in the phenomenological tradition, contrasts dramatically with his reputation in the country of his birth, where his legacy is tainted irredeemably by his political compromises with National Socialism in the 1930s.
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+24 +5
Is Consciousness Universal?
Panpsychism, the ancient doctrine that consciousness is universal, offers some lessons in how to think about subjective experience today
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+22 +5
Is Revenge Ever Justified?
Sean once told me a revenge story from back when he worked in his father’s flower shop. This story even makes me angry, hearing it third-party and years later.
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+15 +4
Can Silence Be Music?
John Cage’s 4’33″ is commonly described as “four and a half minutes of silence,” but in fact it’s the opposite — Cage hoped to lead the audience to hear the ambient sounds of the concert hall as music, to accept as art sounds that they wouldn’t normally consider in that way.
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+13 +4
You're It by Alan Watts
An inspiring and profound speech from the late Alan Watts.
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+18 +2
The Spiritual Journey As The Self
When spiritually oriented people are exposed to the information that has been provided, they show a measurable elevation of consciousness. Before and after each lecture, the consciousness level of the audience is calibrated, and it generally shows an increase, on the average, of between ten and forty points for the audience as a whole. This may vary individually from a low of four points to as high as hundreds of points...
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+1 +1
Think and Understand
Think and Understand
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+13 +5
The Happiness Index
Can a tiny country’s effort to put people before profit serve as a model for the rest of the world?
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