Tag Archives: religion

New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed

Thucydides predicted that future generations would underestimate the power of Sparta. It built no great temples, left no magnificent ruins. Absent any tangible signs of the sway it once held, memories of its past importance would sound like ridiculous exaggerations. … Continue reading

The Hour I First Believed

[Content note: creepy basilisk-adjacent metaphysics. Reading this may increase God’s ability to blackmail you. Thanks to Buck S for the some of the conversations that inspired this line of thought.] There’s a Jewish tradition that laypeople should only speculate on … Continue reading

Book Review: Twelve Rules For Life

I. I got Jordan Peterson’s Twelve Rules For Life for the same reason as the other 210,000 people: to make fun of the lobster thing. Or if not the lobster thing, then the neo-Marxism thing, or the transgender thing, or … Continue reading

The Invention Of Moral Narrative

H/T Robin Hanson: Aeon’s The Good Guy / Bad Guy Myth. “Pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil. Traditional folktales never were. What changed?” The article claims almost every modern epic – superhero movies, Star … Continue reading

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Book Review: Mastering The Core Teachings Of The Buddha

I. I always wanted to meditate more, but never really got around to it. And (I thought) I had an unimpeachable excuse. The demands of a medical career are incompatible with such a time-consuming practice. Enter Daniel Ingram MD, an … Continue reading

Djoser Joseph Osiris

My recent move has already paid off in terms of increased access to the Bay Area intellectual milieu, by which I mean wacky outlandish hypotheses about completely random stuff. The other day a few people (including Ben Hoffman of Compass … Continue reading

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Chametz

It was just before midnight when a cloud covered the moon and a bat flew right in front of me. Before I had time to worry about whether I was up to date on my rabies shots, it had transformed … Continue reading

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SSC Journal Club: Analytical Thinking Style And Religion

[Content warning: religious people might feel kind of like this objectifies them and treats them as weird phenomena to be explained away.] A major theme of this blog is: why do people disagree so intractably? And what can we do … Continue reading

A Theory About Religion

Related to Monday’s post but spun off for length reasons: my crazy theory about where religion comes from. The near-universal existence of religion across cultures is surprising. Many people have speculated on what makes tribes around the world so fixated … Continue reading

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The Ideology Is Not The Movement

I. Why is there such a strong Sunni/Shia divide? I know the Comparative Religion 101 answer. The early Muslims were debating who was the rightful caliph. Some of them said Abu Bakr, others said Ali, and the dispute has been … Continue reading