Arbitrary Marks

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Click on the image to view a brief message from me about the Take Back the Blog! Blogswarm. I’d love to hear your thoughts on women bloggers, bloggers of color, lesbian bloggers, blogging anonymously, etc. Leave ‘em below or at YouTube. I’ll be back with more Sunday evening–I’m taking today off.

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Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has written a book about her political and religious vision for America, entitled Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way.  Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Townsend for the Vital Voice.  You can find my conversation with her on their website.  She answered [...]

About the move to make Buddhism the state religion in Thailand.

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This local story (which, I am thinking, has national repercussions) involves some of the topics I’ve written about recently–religion and speech.  The background: a Saint Louis Children’s hospital runs a fundraiser, with Bob Costas (it is the Bob Costas Cancer Center at Cardinal Glennon).  Missouri native Sheryl Crow was to sing at the event this weekend.  The [...]

As a commenter pointed out, my last post was a severe conflation of several ideas.  Bad philosophy blogger.  Bad.  So, to make up for it, I’d like to clarify who the players are in the “brain and religion” discussion that has been seeping into the mainstream media.  There are two major branches, really: cognitive anthropology and what’s [...]

Another blogger (forget who already–sorry!) beat me to the Twin Earth joke, so I’ll just wonder if this planet houses H20 or water.

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Dan Dennett’s “contribution” to the latest Philosopher’s Carnival is about doing philosophy.  The metaphor he uses, of studying “chmess” (in every way like chess, but the king can move two squares), is intended to show that while analyzing chmess may require prowess, generate papers and positions… it may not be worthwhile. This paragraph stuck out to [...]

I have a few thoughts about the role religious presuppositions should play in our public debate. The clip is ten minutes long, and features quotations from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s Failing America’s Faithful, as well as the Catholic thinker Jacques Maritan. An excellent article outlining some of these ideas is "Charitable Interpretations" by [...]