On The Powers Of Personal And Political Bodies Over Their Apparent Mental Leaders

The Peaceful Atheist finds “consciousness-lowering” experiences in which she escapes her aloof and wandering mind to reconnect with her tangible and oft-forgotten body to be greater than her many “consciousness-raising” experiences.  She writes: It’s extremely hard for me to escape the internal labyrinth of my mind and focus completely on something external.  Often after being […]

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Evolution and Epistemology

If our minds take to be true only what evolution has conditioned us to think is true for the sake of fitness for survival, does this mean that our beliefs cannot be genuinely true but only some sort of useful ways of thinking that do not necessarily track how the world actually is?  And if […]

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A Brief Overview Of My Dissertation

Nietzsche’s writings on morality are famously provocative and controversial.  His criticisms of morality in both theory and practice are so extensive and rhetorically scathing that many philosophers assume that he can offer little or nothing constructive to moral philosophy.  Additionally, his glorification of the will to power sounds prima facie like a celebration of excessively […]

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Reading Nietzsche Post-Modernly

This week from Chaos Pet: And find out why Nester is frustrated with time travel here. Your Thoughts?

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Happy Birthday Friedrich Nietzsche!

You would have been 165 today.  It is a shame you didn’t make it past 55 and even a greater shame that your mind didn’t make it past 44.  There was still so much to be clarified, developed, and newly discovered.

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My Thoughts On Blasphemy Day

(I’m moving this post written for “Blasphemy Day” to the front page today as its basic themes relate to “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” which occurs today.) So today is “Blasphemy Day.”  Here’s what it’s about: Blasphemy Day International is an international campaign seeking to establish September 30th as a national day to promote free speech […]

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Camels With Hammers Philosophy

After this introductory paragraph, every sentence in this post will summarize and link a different post expressing my views, primarily on topics related to atheism, philosophy, and ethics—which are the primary preoccupations of this blog. I am organizing all of these links into this one summary statement of “Camels With Hammers’ Philosophy.”  This post will […]

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The Yearning Animal

Greta Christina takes down the argument that the desire for God proves there is a God to fulfill it out there to be discovered: Someone (I can’t remember who now) recently pointed out that the “no atheists in foxholes” argument, even if it were true (which it’s not), isn’t an argument for God’s existence. It’s actually […]

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Also Sprach Zarathustra: School Performance Style

Stirring: Your Thoughts?

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A Little Nietzsche For Kanye

One last Kanye thought for the morning, before I return to my work for the day.  From Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra part II, section 3, comes his prescription in a nutshell for how to be a Beyonce or a Barack rather than a Kanye or a Wilson: if we learn better to experience joy, we […]

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Kanye Disses Taylor Swift (On The Pusillanimity Of Joe Wilson And Kanye West Vs. The Magnanimity Of Beyonce Knowles And Barack Obama)

So last night, Kanye proved once and for all that he has no class through a single action which demonstrated an unbelievable lack of grace.  Taylor Swift looked so demoralized and her speech had been all about feelings of being surprised to be accepted by this particular voting bloc, when he insulted her by implying […]

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Logicomix: The Graphic Novelization Of The Life Of Bertrand Russell

That illustration comes from Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth about Bertrand Russell’s real life philosophical adventures.  The Independent’s writes:  The subject of the newest comic-strip sensation, though, might still raise eyebrows: it’s the story of the quest for the foundation of mathematics, starring and narrated by Bertrand Russell, the British logician, philosopher, mathematician, reformer, pacifist, […]

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Daily Hilarity: God Is Dead (And The Kids In The Hall Are Alive Again)

In honor of the exciting news that the “Kids in the Hall” from Kids In The Hall, one of the gold standard comedies of my youth (and one of the earliest great HBO original shows, along with the wonderful Dream On) will be reuniting for a new 8-part comedy TV series, here is a clip […]

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Nietzsche Source And Nietzsche Grid

Carlos Ruiz is working on an internet source that organizes references to Nietzsche on various topics to make his work more searchable.  I take it is something of an e-concordance he wants to design.  He’s calling it a “Nietzsche Grid” and is taking input on the project here. And, far more importantly, there is the […]

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Character As Fate And Environment As Variability

In reply to this post from late last night in which I took a first pass at trying to sketch out my views on fate, George writes: Dan, Again I find myself thanking you for this blog. Good blogging is all for naught without good readers (and especially without good readers who contribute excellently and […]

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On The Meaning Of Meaning

In reply to some remarks I made about the recognition of genuine meaning without reference to religion, George replied with this challenge: Dan, Now you have got me thinking…. I’m not entirely clear about your point of meaning in everyday events. My logic tells me that a completely statistically probable event happens and I impart […]

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What Does Dexter Reveal About America?

Michael C. Hall discussed the European response to Dexter and how it differs from the American one. …people are fascinated.  And I think in some markets overseas, they’re interested in the show in that it’s an American show, interested in what it might say or might not say about American culture, so that’s an added […]

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Turning Ease Into Virtue

Yglesias makes a dynamite observation about part of the reason leaders of social conservatives put so much energy into anti-gay crusades rather than any of a number of other matters of social concern (via Patrick Appel): Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex […]

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The Evolutionary Advantages And Present Disadvantages Of Our Conformist Minds

John Wilkins has a good post on the value of our minds’ readinesses to defer to authorities from an evolutionary standpoint: The evolutionary justification for this is, of course the following: if evolution were a designer, trying to ensure that thinking beings learned and knew what they had to to survive, a cheaper rule than […]

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Are Sex and Morality Merely “Evolutionary Tricks”?

Francis Collins trots out a familiar old argument against atheism.  The argument is that if there is no God then our morality is an illusion.  Collins’s presentation of this argument features an unusual and suspicious spin.  Collins knows that arguments can be made from evolutionary psychology that broadly moral thinking seems to have evolved in […]

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Some Qualifications Of My Suggestion For Moving Philosophy Debates To The Internet

I appreciate Professor Harman’s willingness to exchange a couple rounds of debate with me across blogs against his stated desire to avoid such exchanges and so I will remain grateful to him even if we do not hear further reply from him.  Here are his reasons for rejecting my notion of having a centralized message […]

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On The Pros And Cons Of Blogging As A Preferred Medium For Philosophy

Graham Harman has an excellent (and lightning quickly delivered) reply up in response to my remarks earlier on the profession of philosophy looking into blogging as a preferred medium for more efficient and multi-vocal exchange.  I’m quite grateful and want to address a few of his key observations and expand on some of my own […]

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Rwanda’s Amazing Reconciliation

I was so inspired by the story of Rwanda’s ability to overcome its genocides through a process of confession and forgiveness.  Here is Fareed Zakaria and Rwandan President Paul Kagame from last Sunday. In the spirit of Zarathustra’s prescription: for human beings to be redeemed from revenge—that is for me the bridge to the highest […]

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Invisible

The Thinking Atheist takes on an invisible God:

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Sincerity, Hypocrisy, and Mark Sanford

I loathe witch hunts over people’s personal lives.  What interests me are some observations on sincerity and hypocrisy which seem apparent to me watching the bizarrely unself-aware and narcissistic way that Sanford has acted as though he is a character in the Bible or some other morality tale in which he is the star. I […]

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