Category: Philosophy

Nathan made a long series of comments on my earlier post on terrorism and Just War theory. I’m going to try to reset a bit. In that post I argued, I think correctly, that terrorism is not justified under Just War theory. But: is Just War theory applicable today? Do we believe that everybody should…

Various people have argued that religion is hardwired into the human psyche, that most of us can’t help but believe in something larger than ourselves. Sometimes people go a bit farther and argue that some sort of religion is actually necessary for a healthy society. (Sorry I don’t have useful references here, I’ve forgotten them.)…

One of the things I try to teach my daughter is how to live in historical time. By this I mean something in between deep time and the present. I try to regularly explain what is new in our environment and what is old. “When your mother and I were young, nobody had cell phones.”…

This is an unkind thought, but I sometimes wonder what percentage of the people who declare themselves to be followers of Jesus really take to heart what the Bible says that he said. I know the percentage is way above zero, but I suspect that it’s also way below one hundred. Look at quotes like…

Douglas Hofstadter sketched out a theory of super rationality in a couple of his Metamagical Themas columns in Scientific American in the mid-80s (he later collected his columns into a very interesting book). It was an attempt to solve the prisoner’s dilemma. The basic idea was that you should act as though everybody else is…