Surveying the British philosopher’s pacifist writings and activism, Jonathan Rée isn’t quite persuaded by how he formulated the nature of war: The peace agenda of Russell and his followers was always based on the assumption that war is simply a euphemism for the madness of state-sponsored mass murder, and that we could prevent it by … Continue reading Bertrand Russell, Peacenik?
Despite the philosopher’s reputation as a staunch unbeliever, Clare Carlisle argues that he walked the line between atheism and agnosticism: [T]he same intellectual integrity that made Russell unable to accept religious beliefs also prevented him from embracing atheism. Rather like the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, Russell maintained a sceptical attitude to metaphysical questions. He … Continue reading Bertrand Russell’s Brand Of Unbelief
It got drier as he got older.
In an excerpt from his new book, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us, Nicholas Carr tackles the increasing automation of our society: Machines are cold and mindless, and in their obedience to scripted routines we see an image of society’s darker possibilities. If machines bring something human to the alien cosmos, they also bring something alien to the … Continue reading Against Mindless Automation
Richard J. Mouw suggests that believers should all have a few because “it can be healthy for Christians who love ideas to be challenged regularly by perspectives that we can disagree with in productive ways.” One of his? The famed British philosopher Bertrand Russell, author of Why I Am Not a Christian: For a while, … Continue reading Who Are Your Favorite Heretics?
by Dish Staff Frank Sinatra discussed his approach to faith in a 1963 interview with Playboy: Playboy: All right, let’s start with the most basic question there is: Are you a religious man? Do you believe in God? Sinatra: Well, that’ll do for openers. I think I can sum up my religious feelings in a … Continue reading He Worshipped His Way
Ross Perlin is intrigued by the Dictionary of Untranslatables, a compendium of words with no direct equivalent in other languages: [T]he Dictionary is revealing for the way it sketches, lexically, a set of parallel but alternate intellectual traditions. What language teachers call “false friends” are everywhere, inspiring a constant alertness to nuance. Did you know that French classicisme summons up Versailles (which we’d … Continue reading Say What?
Literally: The graph … shows the relationship between working hours and “potential years of life lost” (PYLL), both of which were taken from the OECD. PYLL is a measure of premature mortality, which estimates the average number of years a person would have lived if they had not died prematurely. It gives more weight to … Continue reading Working Yourself Into The Ground
by Jessie Roberts In an interview, philosopher and Immortality author Stephen Cave discusses ways to manage a fear of death: Thinking less about yourself, more about other people and other causes, so your own death doesn’t seem as important to you, because these other causes and people will live on. Those other things will help … Continue reading How To Approach Mortality
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that it will take more than science and atheism to stave off fundamentalism: In one respect the new atheists are right. The threat to western freedom in the 21st century is not from fascism or communism but from a religious fundamentalism combining hatred of the other, the pursuit of power and contempt for … Continue reading Fighting Religion With Religion?
