http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-3/ Philip K. Dick’s admittedly peculiar but passionately held worldview and the gnosticism it embodies does more than explain what some call the dystopian turn in science fiction from the 1960s onward, it also gives us what has arguably become the dominant mode of understanding of fiction in our time, whether literary, artistic or cinematic. This is the idea that reality is a pernicious illusion, a repressive and authoritarian matrix generated in a dream factory we need to tear down in order to see things aright and have access to the truth. And let’s be honest: it is simply immensely pleasurable… ]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:42 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-3/ http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/a-challenge-to-elliott-sober-about-god-guided-mutations/ The renowned philosopher of science Elliott Sober has, in recent weeks, given a talk and written a paper that both make the same points: Evolution is totally silent on the idea and actions of God and, further, that evolutionists have neglected the logical possibility that God could have been involved in creating some of the mutations involved in evolution. (These mutations are presumably adaptive—God wouldn’t make all those nasty mutations that cause muscular dystrophy and cancer!) I see this exercise—of demonstrating the logical compatibility of a rarely-acting God with evolution, and, by extension, with all of science—as a trivial exercise… ]]> Thu, 17 May 2012 03:35:18 -0700 http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/a-challenge-to-elliott-sober-about-god-guided-mutations/ http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dogma/buying-the-body-of-christ//buying-the-body-of-christ-lt-killing-the-buddha Branding the communion wafer : “We’re proud to put our name on what will become the body of Jesus.” http://t.co/RBrsOghu #transubstantiation ]]> Sun, 08 Apr 2012 01:06:18 -0700 http://killingthebuddha.com/mag/dogma/buying-the-body-of-christ//buying-the-body-of-christ-lt-killing-the-buddha http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/does-it-matter-whether-god-exists//does-it-matter-whether-god-exists-nytimescom John Gray is probably wrong about religion, but does it matter? http://t.co/mdv8yZih ]]> Fri, 23 Mar 2012 01:51:43 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/does-it-matter-whether-god-exists//does-it-matter-whether-god-exists-nytimescom http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2012/02/neo-atheism-atheists-dawkins Atheism is just one-third of this exotic ideological cocktail. Secularism, the political wing of the movement, is another third. Neo-atheists often assume that the two are the same thing; in fact, atheism is a metaphysical position and secularism is a view of how society should be organised. So a Christian can easily be a secularist - indeed, even Christ was being one when he said, "Render unto Caesar" - and an atheist can be anti-secularist if he happens to believe that religious views should be taken into account. But, in some muddled way, the two ideas have been combined by… ]]> Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:42:54 -0700 http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2012/02/neo-atheism-atheists-dawkins http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/18187221884/the-exegete When Philip K. Dick died in 1982 of a series of strokes brought on by years of overwork and amphetamine abuse, he was seen within the science fiction genre as a cult author of idiosyncratic works treating themes of synthetic selfhood and near-future dystopia, an intriguing if essentially second-rank talent. At the time, he was more popular in France and Japan, which have always had a taste for America’s pop culture detritus, than he was in his native country. Thirty years later, Dick — known to his most avid fans simply by his initials “PKD” — has developed a reputation… ]]> Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:22:56 -0700 http://lareviewofbooks.org/post/18187221884/the-exegete http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/no-secularism-please-were-british-6917549.html/no-secularism-please-were-british-home-news-uk-the-independent No secularism please, we're British http://t.co/M2A2PHQt ]]> Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:20:20 -0700 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/no-secularism-please-were-british-6917549.html/no-secularism-please-were-british-home-news-uk-the-independent http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-conversation-with-adam-curtis-part-i/ Since the early 1990s Adam Curtis has made a number of serial documentaries and films for the BBC using a playful mix of journalistic reportage and a wide range of avant-garde filmmaking techniques. The films are linked through their interest in using and reassembling the fragments of the past—recorded on film and video―to try and make sense of the chaotic events of the present. I first met Adam Curtis at the Manchester International Festival thanks to Alex Poots, and while Curtis himself is not an artist, many artists over the last decade have become increasingly interested in how his films… ]]> Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:36:52 -0700 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-conversation-with-adam-curtis-part-i/ http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article869724.ece Monsters demonstrate, monsters alert us: whether or not the etymologies relating the word to both “monstro” (I show) and “moneo” (I warn), are correct, monsters act as a moral compass. The physical prodigy becomes a test of ethics and, in the move between literal and figurative, displays the crucial role fictions play in the establishment of value and the common sense. Or, one might say in the era when the Humanities are under such stress, thinking with monsters shows how an understanding of Nature, and of medicine, law and custom is impossible without cultural expression. ]]> Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:33:07 -0700 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article869724.ece http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b2004496-41c1-11e1-a1bf-00144feab49a.html#axzz1keb5eZxX/the-god-gap-ftcom The God Gap: http://t.co/gkEY64dU ]]> Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:35:55 -0700 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b2004496-41c1-11e1-a1bf-00144feab49a.html#axzz1keb5eZxX/the-god-gap-ftcom http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/28/science-move-away-materialism-sheldrake?CMP=twt_fd/its-time-for-science-to-move-on-from-materialism-mark-vernon-comment-is-free-guardiancouk It's time for science to move on from materialism | Mark Vernon http://t.co/p65QfBe0 ]]> Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:35:54 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/28/science-move-away-materialism-sheldrake?CMP=twt_fd/its-time-for-science-to-move-on-from-materialism-mark-vernon-comment-is-free-guardiancouk http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/0083720 The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles. One can add to the list of the fully explained: the hue of the sky, the orbits of planets, the angle of the wake of a boat moving through a lake, the six-sided patterns of snowflakes, the weight of a flying bustard, the temperature of boiling water, the size of raindrops, the circular shape of the sun. All these phenomena and many more, once thought to have been… ]]> Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:24:04 -0700 http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/12/0083720 http://www.nytimes.com//the-new-york-times-breaking-news-world-news-amp-multimedia RT @nytimes: The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick — Edited by Pamela Jackson, Jonathan Lethem and Erik Davis — Book Review http://t.co/yrrheIoS ]]> Sun, 18 Dec 2011 03:20:23 -0700 http://www.nytimes.com//the-new-york-times-breaking-news-world-news-amp-multimedia http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2011/11/the-mystery-of-the-five-wounds-ready-to-go/ Why, though, to begin with, did stigmata materialize in 13th-century Italy? Part of the answer seems to lie in the theological trends of the time. The Catholic Church of St. Francis’s day had begun to place much greater stress on the humanity of Christ, and would soon introduce a new feast day, Corpus Christi, into the calendar to encourage contemplation of his physical sufferings. Religious painters responded by depicting the crucifixion explicitly for the first time, portraying a Jesus who was plainly in agony from wounds that dripped blood. Indeed, the contemporary obsession with the marks of crucifixion may best… ]]> Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:07:55 -0700 http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2011/11/the-mystery-of-the-five-wounds-ready-to-go/ http://whywereason.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/does-pinkers-better-angels-undermine-religious-morality/ It is often argued that religion makes individuals and the world more just and moral, that it builds character and provides a foundation from which we understand right from wrong, good from evil; if it wasn’t for religion, apologists say, then the world would fall into a Hobbesian state of nature where violence prevails and moral codes fail. To reinforce this contention, they point out that Stalin, Hitler and Mao were atheists to force an illogical causal connection between what they did and what they believed. One way to answer the question of if religion makes people and the world… ]]> Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:58:44 -0700 http://whywereason.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/does-pinkers-better-angels-undermine-religious-morality/ http://www.google.com/url?null/redirect-notice Atheists, theists, and gnostics, oh my! - McGill Daily http://t.co/vqFZnHXw ]]> Mon, 24 Oct 2011 16:36:04 -0700 http://www.google.com/url?null/redirect-notice http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/the-roots-of-religion Robert Bellah, one of America's most distinguished sociologists, caps off his luminous academic career with "Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age" , a near 800-page magnum opus that delves deep into the roots of humankind's encounter with mystery and the search for meaning. Underwritten in part by funding from the John Templeton Foundation, Bellah's book, out this month from Harvard University Press, has been described as “the most important systematic and historical treatment of religion since Hegel, Durkheim, and Weber. It is a page-turner of a bildungsroman of the human spirit on a truly global… ]]> Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:17:49 -0700 http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/the-roots-of-religion http://life.salon.com/2011/10/02/how_science_and_faith_coexist/singleton/?mobile.html As a both a scientist and a humanist myself, I have struggled to understand different claims to knowledge, and I have eventually come to a formulation of the kind of religious belief that would, in my view, be compatible with science. The first step in this journey is to state what I will call the Central Doctrine of science: All properties and events in the physical universe are governed by laws, and those laws are true at every time and place in the universe. Although scientists do not talk explicitly about this doctrine, and my doctoral thesis advisor never mentioned… ]]> Sat, 08 Oct 2011 10:01:04 -0700 http://life.salon.com/2011/10/02/how_science_and_faith_coexist/singleton/?mobile.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 In this view belonging to a religion involves accepting a set of beliefs, which are held before the mind and assessed in terms of the evidence that exists for and against them. Religion is then not fundamentally different from science, both seem like attempts to frame true beliefs about the world. That way of thinking tends to see science and religion as rivals, and it then becomes tempting to conclude that there's no longer any need for religion.

This was the view presented by the Victorian anthropologist JG Frazer in his book The Golden Bough, a study… ]]> Tue, 20 Sep 2011 03:12:00 -0700 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14944470 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/26/james-wood-the-new-atheism?CMP=twt_fd Trapped in the childhood literalism of my background, I had not entertained the possibility of Christian belief separated from the great lure and threat of heaven and hell.

The New Atheism is locked into a similar kind of literalism. It parasitically lives off its enemy. Just as evangelical Christianity is characterised by scriptural literalism and an uncomplicated belief in a "personal God", so the New Atheism often seems engaged only in doing battle with scriptural literalism; but the only way to combat such literalism is with rival literalism. The God of the New Atheism and the God… ]]> Tue, 30 Aug 2011 08:21:05 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/26/james-wood-the-new-atheism?CMP=twt_fd