Category: Philosophy

(Inevitably) The Center for Naturalism strikes me as laughable

Thanks to William Dembski’s link, I began reading through the official website for the Center for Naturalism and found myself laughing hysterically. It really couldn’t be helped. I mean, it really couldn’t; it was merely a product of my biological...

/ April 7, 2005

Intellectual vision makes for excellent production.

In an ongoing effort to be radically experimental, the following post is a philosophical dialogue I have written regarding the usefulness of “seeing” what you are going to make before you make it. Please let me know how you like...

/ April 7, 2005

More Moloch…

New Mere O friend John Schroeder of Blogotional is worried that I’m spending too much time in the ivory tower. Apparently, he thinks that I’ve spent so much time up there that he needs to point out when he’s making...

/ March 31, 2005

Moloch will eat his children…..

Check out this provocative piece from Meghan Cox Gurdon in NRO, in which she draws a parallel between cannabilism and stem cell research. It’s written in the style of Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, though it lacks the wit. A snippet: “I...

/ March 29, 2005

Moral Relativism and the Air Force

One week ago I returned from a six week training school in Montgomery, AL. The program, Air and Space Basic Course (ASBC), is the first step in Air Force mandated professional military education and serves as a catch-all for second...

/ March 9, 2005

Humour’s purpose

Hypothesis 1: One purpose of humour is to make palatable truths so horrible and terrible that we would otherwise ignore them entirely. I take “humour” to mean something like the presentation of some speech or image whose intention is to...

/ March 7, 2005

Being skeptical or suitably critical and E.T.

Circular asked me what defines skeptical in response to a comment I made to his post on E.T. Your question is a very deep and important one. The line between being “suitably critical” and being “skeptical” is difficult to draw....

/ February 8, 2005

Literary Criticism and Epistemology

For some time I have been bothered by the phenomenon of 20th C. literary criticism of all varieties: Marxist, feminist, post-colonial and the other smatterings. It just rubs me the wrong way. After remembering Rodrick Chisholm’s insightful article, “The Problem...

/ February 1, 2005

The problem with “Problem” – Part III

… There is one defense of the modern usage of the word that my housemate and award-winning debater put forth. “OK,” he said, “But ‘problem’ has a certain amount of intimidation value. If I can toss ‘the Problem of Evil’...

/ January 25, 2005

The problem with “Problem” – Part II

What is common to all of the cases mentioned below? Here is what I notice: They are all questions. (with the exception of the second “problem of evil” which was stated as a thesis) So in response to the question...

/ January 24, 2005