Some relevant comics 4 Jan 201221 Jun 2018 As always, click to go to the originals. Evolution Humor Religion
Humor We may never fully understand it 16 Jun 2008 … why M. Night Shamaylanananan gets to make more movies. OK, Sixth Sense was cool, but really… So read this summary script of The Hapeninening and save your ticket money. Hat tip to Louanne Miller. Read More
General Science Etruscans 20 Jun 200718 Sep 2017 In a well known quote, the nineteenth century historian and classicist Theodore Mommsen said that the origins of the Etruscans was “neither capable of being known nor worth the knowing”. He had no idea of the results made possible by molecular genetic studies, naturally, as nobody did at that time,… Read More
Ecology and Biodiversity Supernatural selection 2 6 May 20104 Oct 2017 Part one is here. Rossano divides naturalistic explanations of religion into five distinct types: (1) commitment theories, (2) cognitive theories, (3) ecological theories, (4) performance theories, and (5) experiential theories.I want to discuss this taxonomy. Read More
Don’t want to kill the joke with pedantry, but it occurred to me that, taking Zach’s summaries at face value for a moment, you could argue that Bentham’s “maximise happiness” was supportive of, and in a sense a general approximation to Darwin’s point: I can’t speak for other species, but in H. sap. the sex drive is centred on the anticipation of considerable, if not always lasting, happiness; maximising the amount of sex in society would be (done right) one contribution to maximising the happiness in it (just sayin’). You could even stretch a point and argue that Socrates is at least in the right ball park, since “justice and right thinking” should tend to create an environment which favours the survival and reproduction of more individuals than would be the case in an unjust and arbitrary one. But I’m afraid poor old Aquinas is waaaay off beam, there. Not asking the right questions, not even wrong.