An updated, categorized list of links to all my Medium articles
Here you can find any of my Medium articles at a glance. I’ve divided the series into categories and tried to order them logically, beginning each category with more general or primary writings or with ones that explore the historical background to the problems at issue. I’ve also tried to arrange the categories logically, starting with some of my more foundational writings, and ending with the social applications.
My older writings, going back to 2011 (I started writing on Medium in late 2019), can be found here. …
How a documentary series shows that American culture is unlikely to be upgraded
Although the title of this documentary series about Rajneeshpuram, a religious community that followed the guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and that moved from India to Oregon in 1981 isn’t so memorable, “Wild Wild Country” is perhaps the strangest true story you’ve never heard.
An Influx of Unamerican Pioneers
The cult-like religious community didn’t just move to the United States. The community bought Big Muddy Ranch, near Antelope, Oregon, for around $6 million, and several thousand followers arrived and built an entire town from scratch with everything from bulldozers and excavators to architects and lawyers. …
How to understand the conflict between classical theists and theistic personalists
Imagine the thrill of being a spy, of seeing or hearing something important that wasn’t meant for you. There happen to be internal disputes between Christians that are so revealing, I think, that a skeptic would have that kind of thrill were she to eavesdrop on them.
Take, for example, the clash between classical theists and theistic personalists. Granted, this feud has raged out in the open rather than being a secret. But the debate has been framed in abstract, metaphysical terms so that most Christians, let alone non-Christians wouldn’t be interested in following the controversy or in pondering the…
How we play the odds with rational generalizations
Why does atheism confuse theists and atheists alike?
Perhaps the confusion is because atheism and irreligiosity in general used to be beyond the pale. But then came the Scientific Revolution when the tides turned, and now theistic statements are no longer regarded as self-evident in educated parts of the world.
Thus, the connotations of “atheism” have changed, which means theists and atheists may be talking past each other or switching between the pre- and post-scientific conceptions. Even if you’re clear on the word’s present dictionary definition, that doesn’t mean everyone agrees on atheism’s epistemological context.
Some Historical Context of Atheism
Even in the ancient world…
Why real debating is alien to politics and to television
Why do the televised so-called “debates” between political candidates in elections in Canada and the US differ so profoundly from the tens of thousands of real debates on various subjects that you’re free to watch on YouTube? Why are these politicians and broadcasters seemingly incapable of producing a genuine political debate?
Take, for example, the Canadian federal election debate held in English on September 9, 2021. Of course, compared to the circus-like travesties in 2016 and 2020 in the US, featuring Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, the Canadian “debate” comes across as worthwhile and substantive. …
How Woody Allen wrestles with God’s absence in a rotten world
Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) brings out the highs and lows of the argument from evil against God. The highs are the misdemeanors, as it were, and the lows are the crimes.
Incels, Sexual Injustice, and the Misdemeanor
The misdemeanor treated in the film is an early American formulation of the incel complaint. Clifford, the quintessential Woody Allen character, is a conscientious intellectual and documentarian who’s cursed with artistic integrity and is therefore ill-equipped to succeed in the real world. …
Bourdain’s life, suicide, and quasi-enlightened alienation
If you have a slightly ghoulish fascination with what led Anthony Bourdain to take his life, you might be disappointed by most of the documentary, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021), since that film is mainly about who Bourdain was, not about the circumstances of his death.
But that disappointment would be doubly mistaken. First, that’s because we shouldn’t be more interested in his death than in what he accomplished in his life. And second, it’s because there’s no way to understand his suicide without understanding who Bourdain was.
The catalyst that led to his death is a matter…
Comic book subversions and the dread of superpowers
American comic books from the so-called golden and silver ages are full of esoteric and shamanic ideas as well as transhumanist philosophy, all packaged with pictures and cartoonish narratives for children and teenagers to counter the oppressive Christian sermons they had to endure to fit into the repressive mainstream, normie culture.
You might not have thought young people are ready to digest cosmic truths and subversive speculations, but looking through comic books, it’s hard not to notice the symbols.
WWII, Nietzsche, Lovecraft, and Marvel Comics
Two main influences on comics are WWII, which delimits the Golden Age, and the psychedelic 1960s, which define the Silver Age…
How a documentary uses its characters’ vices against them to present the deeper truth
Dramatic monologues in literature are known for revealing the character’s hidden motivations. The character’s given enough rope to hang himself or herself. But when an interview has the same effect in a documentary, life can imitate art and the real person can come across as a fictional character.
This is what came to mind when I watched the Netflix documentary, Amanda Knox (2021), about the young American exchange student who in 2007 was accused of murdering her roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Italy. …
When a hapless Christian runs the gauntlet of reason
Dan Foster, the editor of “Backyard Church,” is tired of what he calls “some very noisy atheists out there who deride people of faith as unintelligent, misguided, or downright stupid for choosing a path of faith.” In “Relax, It’s Okay to Believe in God,” Foster means to show why these dismissive atheists are misguided, by rattling off, as his subtitle says, “Ten reasons why believing in God is perfectly reasonable.”
Foster hedges only a little before he presents these arguments when he says, “I don’t think all of these arguments for the existence of God are necessarily equal, but I…
