A Romantic Rationalist

I was recently asked two questions by a long-time family friend – who also happens to be an ordained Assembly of God minister. One was how an “intellectually honest” atheist could deny the “historical fact” of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? The other was one atheists have heard (and answered) too many times before: “How is atheism not a faith too?” Intellectual Honesty There is nothing “intellectually honest,” at all, in asserting that any miraculous, supernatural phenomena is a “historical fact.” This is so obviously wrong – and on so many levels – that it was difficult to know where to begin. Here is a partial (and abbreviated) list of what is, and is not, intellectual honesty: Intellectual honesty... does not allow one to ignore evidence that goes against whatever it is that they want to be true (e.g. “So, Mr. President, what was it that made you think Saddam had all those WMDs in the first place?”) is implacably opposed to compartmentalized thinking (...

I love to read. I love books and the written word in general. One of the greatest pleasures of my life is to curl up on my couch or stretch out on my bed with a good book‒a real book, with a binding and pages made of paper‒no batteries required. I like having good books on my shelves, and when invited into someone else's home, the presence or absence of tangible, physical reading material, and when present, the subject(s) of the reading material can often, fairly or unfairly, inform my opinion of those whose home it is. I am not rich, or even well-off, by any measure, but I am proud of the depth and breadth of the works in my library of bound books. As long as there are at least some people that like to collect things like stamps, baseball cards, music and motion pictures recorded on a physical medium (i.e. CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays), I suspect there will also be those that will enjoy, and continue to purchase physical, bound books. From a marketing standpoint, if book publishing w...

In my most recent post introducing my on-going series on the 2012 elections, I went on at some length about “doing one's homework.” I hold myself to that same standard ‒ with at least some consistency, I hope. A reader might have noticed that I cite my sources in many, if not most, of my posts and thought I should give a brief account of my thinking regarding citation styles. As an undergraduate I took upper-level classes from many different disciplines: physics, engineering, geology, biology, and political science...to name a few. The default citation format I cut my teeth on was the venerable Modern Language Association (MLA) style. This makes sense when one considers that most undergrad's are introduced to writing “scholarly” papers not within their own major, but in courses taught by faculty from the English department. One of the things I like about the MLA style is that it is set up to handle a very wide range of sources, from peer-reviewed journals to on-line vi...

Election years in the United States typically feel long, and 2012 is shaping up to be a very long election year. Indeed, one could even say it began as soon as the last polls closed on November 4 th , 2008. This post was originally intended to be a one-off, however, like so many other posts, as I wrote it, I was constantly saying to myself "If I cover this fact or concept here, I also need to mention that supporting (or contrasting) bit from over there"‒and the whole thing snowballed from there. The original impetus for the stand-alone piece was the blow-up over Rush Limbaugh's juvenile, schoolyard bully-style attacks on the character of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke following her testimony before Democratic members of a House sub-committee. The subject of her testimony was contraception availability and the impact it has on women's reproductive health. Not surprisingly, as I noted above, instead of challenging the factual claims made in Ms. Fluke...

I just got home (late on Dec. 2) from a five-day conference of Veteran's Employment Representatives on the new materials for the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) for service members about to leave the military and I wanted to get my thoughts out there with little polishing. The conference, my "classmates," and especially the "trainer," Dr. Beverly Hyman were the best part of the experience. Dr. Hyman and her husband are the co-authors of the book, How to Know If It's Time to Go: A 10-Step Reality Test for Your Marriage – which I will be buying and reading – and I have been divorced almost ten years now. I have written before of my ADD/ADHD and anyone that knows me would not be surprised that I was that annoying student that was always raising their hand to contribute something to the discussion. There were times I had to force myself to remain still and let others have a chance. It is not (I hope) that I am really that self-absorbed, it is just that, d...

Picking science fiction movies apart for their scientific gaffes – both major and minor – has a long and venerable tradition. When I first saw J.J. Abrams' Star Trek "reboot" in the theater (twice) I enjoyed it immensely. However, the weaknesses of the whole idea of a "supernova" taking out a single habitable planet, the home-world of the movie's villain, was not lost on me at the time (I will not address the "red matter" MacGuffin in detail here). While watching it again the other day on DVD, I thought of a minor tweak that would make the plot element of the destruction of a planet more scientifically plausible and still retain the following storyline benefits: the plot would still involve a black hole (cue ominous music) the word “supernova” (hereafter: “SN”) would still be used on-screen the word “hypernova” (i.e. a really bad-ass big brother to a mere supernova) could be used as well an opportunity would be created for some re...

Right now, the United States economy, and that of the world in general, is in turmoil–arguably the worst economic disaster since 1929. In my day job, working on the public side the workforce development arena (i.e. Job Service), I see many people that feel strangely out-of-place seeking new employment in the 21 st century world, many of whom were with their former employer for decades. Even my co-workers are not immune to this sense of bewilderment. The particular branch of my state government for whom I work is in the midst of transitioning, after nearly a decade using Windows XP ® and MS Office XP/2003, to Windows 7/Office 2010. In speaking with my managers and co-workers, I have likened the experience of my co-workers starting up their computers one morning, only to be faced with a completely unfamiliar operating system, to what a blind person would likely experience if they awoke one morning to find their furniture has been rearranged while they slept. One of my younge...