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POPSAtheists aren't skeptical enough and... ...the best skeptics are actually theists. The agnostics ski down the mountain into the woods, searching for hard evidence on the basis of which to decide whether God exists—which is very odd, given that a moment ago they were standing here with us, ready to climb as declared skeptics. Agnostics, plainly, are wafflers in their skepticism: As the team gets going, they U-turn back to the foothills, where every true skeptic says there is nothing to find. They do not care about the truth. But even more astonishing than that, the atheists have just gone home. They are not down in the valley looking for evidence; they are not looking at all. They have packed in the science without lifting a boot, as if the summit were already taken, the question answered.
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POPSEthical Philosophy Quiz When I was filling out the answers, I hated it and was convinced that due to stupid semantic BS and limited options, my results would be terrible and end up matching me with someone I hate, or something. So basically, my same beef as with ALL multiple choice quizzes. I was pleasantly surprised, though- I matched highest with my two favorites (Epicurious and John Stuart Mill), and Sartre came in 4th. This is more than enough to satisfy me :)
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POPSJoy For complete article: http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/joy.htm
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POPSIntelligence vs. Fundamentalism Isn't this the way it has always been? Blind faith, fundamentally incompatible with, and diametrically opposed to intelligence? But we shouldn't confuse faith with indoctrination. We should draw a distinction between the blind faith of fundamentalism and the true faith of personal realization. After all, doesn't faith come from experience? Although it is personal and subjective, it is ultimately a judgment of the things we have seen in the world and the conflicts we have felt in our hearts? Doesn't faith spring from exploration? Isn't it confirmed by its challenges? Farris and others in the home-school movement think of enforced ignorance as protective, but isn't it actually a weakness? They think rigid ideological conformity can help Christianity "capture America" (wow, a nation that is already over 80% Christian, that should be tough!) But are they helping it or hurting it? Who do they resemble the closest? Thomas Aquinas or the Spanish Inquisition?
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POPSThe Myth of Secular Moral Chaos - Sam Harris As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn’t also happen to have the Qur’an. It is important to point out that we decide what is good in the Good Book. We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses; we read that a woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death, and we (if we are civilized) decide that this is the most vile lunacy imaginable. Our own ethical intuitions are, therefore, primary. So the choice before us is simple: we can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about ethics—availing ourselves of all the arguments and scientific insights that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse—or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.
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POPSTowards the true knowledge Clipmarks is for some reason screwing up the URL for this. It should be http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2004/02/empires-and-modern-prince-delegates.html
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POPSFive fundamental errors in economics Modern economics is nothing more than “Social Darwinism” (the politics — NOT the science) as first revealed by God to the Dominican Friar St. Thomas Aquinas 750 years ago, and then perfected by the Physiocrats 230 years ago. Unfortunately, God didn’t bother to reveal the Laws of Thermodynamics to St. Thomas at the same time as he was doing “free markets”. But then it’s not too surprising considering the fact that God also neglected to mention that the Earth orbited the Sun.
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POPSHelping Make More Ted Haggards And if the Ohio Bishop doesn't quite get the point across, how about a Methodist minister who was once married to a gay man for 15 years before the marriage fell apart, and whose able to look at her own situation and see the role religion played in creating a situation that caused her, her husband, her children, their friends and family to suffer. How is this better than creating a reality in which same-sex orientation is accepted, and same-sex couples are encouraged towards commitment and fidelity? How many fewer broken families, and hearts, would there be? Or is it easier to just keep creating people like Ted Haggard and then condemn them when they inevitably fail at denying who they are?
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POPSFantasy Avatars A nice size free collection of mostly hand drawn avatars. There are really some awemome renderings here.
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