Recent content by TarSpiel

My kid likes it...

Chef's kiss I actually think I should probably start talking about him like that, for real

RIP Jane....she was a fascinating woman. Talk about living a full life...

I don't know that it does...but giving the fundamental foundation of the material universe as something other than "matter" or "energy" is a lot closer to the traditional worldview. Not the same, clearly, but they have more in common with each other than does the view that everything is...

Well that's exactly my point...there's a lot more to religion than just "knowing where they belong" and being given "rules" The very terms your using to characterize religion are the really one-sided and oversimplified view I was alluding to.

An interesting point that comes closer to the traditional worldview than modern materialist reductionism... "For more than a century, physics has been built on two great theories. Einstein's general relativity explains gravity as the bending of space and time. Quantum mechanics governs the...

I apologize if I come across that way...it's not my intention. But it does get tiresome for me to hear people define religion as basically a form of science based on trying to understand things - and it's much more complex than that - and then to disparage religion based on that starting point.

No. Don't pick this hill to fight on, man. The "White" is the point here.

It's a common misconception that religion is basically about people trying to answering questions. Wrong, but a whole lot of people make that mistake. And it often comes with a kind of sniffy sense of the superiority of the modern western materialist worldview.

Equally no reason to believe their philosophy was inferior to it.

If there was one city where violence was most likely to break out, it'd be Portland. Which I'm guessing is the point here.

Course, cultures all over the world for as long as anyone can remember have said that it's god all the way down. Brahman, Tao, Great Spirit, Great Mystery, Kami, Celtic Otherworld, Australian Dreamtime...it's cool how the world's different pre-modern traditions are near univocal on this question.

Wow, I did not know that. That's huge.

I'm teaching an online version of "Intro to the Hebrew Bible" this semester, first time I've ever done it, and we started with the Babylonian Exile. Probably one of the best moves I've made teaching that material...everything unfolds so well if you start there.

I'm guessing there are a few people who knew this announcement was coming who are going to make a lot of money in the stock market off of it