Category Archives: science
Theological Rivalry
The other day, Jerry said to me over brunch, “Why don’t Jews move to claim Jesus as their own?” I thought about that a minute, then answered, “The evangelicals are the most significant American voting bloc that still supports Israel. … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, Renaissance, roles, romantic love, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged ancient Jewish miracle workers, anti Judaism and the erotic factor, anti-Judaism and Christianity, archaeology and Roman Judea, archeology and ancient synagogues, archeology and Jesus, Bible movies, Christ of faith, Christian Jewish friendship, Christian missionaries in the ancient world, crucifixion expiating Original Sin, David Flusser’s Jesus, early Christians, evangelicals and Israel, fate of Judas, God incarnate, historical Jesus, Israeli and Christian scholarship, Israelis and Israelites, Jesus and contemporary followers, Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries, Jesus and loving your enemies, Jesus and miracles, Jesus movement in classical times, Jesus the Israelite, Jesus the miracle worker, Jews and Jesus, Jews and loving your enemies, Jews outside Judea, Judaisim in Roman occupied Judea, Judaism and miracles, Judaism and Paul, Luke’s Gospel, mind power, miracle workers as God’s intimates, miracles and laws of nature, miracles and physicalism, non Jewish friends of God, original sin, Paula Fredriksen’s When Christians Were Jews: The First Generation, Pauline doctrines, politics of persecution, Pontius Pilate, Rabbi Irving Greenberg and Jesus, religious competition, Resurrection of Jesus, righteous Gentiles, Roman occupied Judea, Sadducean doctrines, Sadducees, synagogues in the Roman Empire, The Passion of Christ, theological rivalry, theology of contempt
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I Never Got A Cat
Cats are greatly to be respected. For that reason, I never wanted to treat a cat as Abbie’s Plan B, to have and to hold just in case she didn’t obtain what she really wanted – Abbie’s Plan A – … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, immorality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a good woman, a woman’s virtue, beauty of women, believing victims, Bill Clinton and women, castration fear, cats as feminine, dishonored man, dishonored woman, feminine normality, femininity of cats, Freud and masculinity, Freud and women, honor in men and women, I know what you need, Juanita Broaddrick, Kierkegaard and women, Kierkegaard on marriage, Kierkegaard on the ethical, Kierkegaard’s Either/Or Volume 2, Kierkegaard’s ethical woman, Kierkegaard’s misogyny, male normality, MeToo movement, Monica Lewinsky, mystery of cats, NBC’s Lisa Myers, normal women, Oedipus complex, Oedipus Rex, ordinary women, ostracized women, outing a woman, respect for cats, respectable women, social exile, Sophocles, Soren Kierkegaard, spinsterhood, unmarried women, vulnerability of women, war between the sexes, what do women fear, what do women want, woman endangered, womanhood threatened, women and notoriety, women in the spotlight, women’s fears, women’s honor
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What Do Women Want?
At the beginning of the American feminist movement, a distinguished philosophical journal, The Monist, brought out an entire issue on the subject. It included my contribution, “Feminism Without Contradictions.” There I pointed out some of the dangerous rocks, shoals and … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, bigotry, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, immorality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, motherhood, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged a female perspective on Freud, American feminism, caricaturing women, castration fear, civilized discontent, compensating women, confidences between strangers, cost of sublimation, European women, female role models, females as defective males, feminine models, femininity and womanliness, feminism and philosophy, Freud's map of consciousness, Freudian inner life, Freudian New York, Freudian sublimation, Freudian unconscious, gender balance, gender identity, gender norms, gender specific, idealizing women, incestuous passion, liberated women, men as the enemy, nonbiologic aims in Freud, Oedipus complex, opening up to strangers, pre-feminist America, pre-feminist double binds, pre-feminist fashion, pre-feminist women, primal defect, protective privacies, protective rights, rollback of rights, sexual identity, sisterhood, sisterhood and feminism, social constructs, southern women, sublimation in Freud, The Monist, unconscious strategy, unequal power dynamic, unisex facilities, what women want, woman as social construct, women as castrators, women as defective, women on a pedestal, women writers, women's bathrooms, women's Freudian compensations, women's Freudian sublimation, women's locker rooms, women's prisons, women's right to achieve, women's rights, women's sports, women's vulnerability, World of Desire
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Fine Tuning and Blunt Retooling
Lately I’ve been reading a lovely little book by Owen Gingerich, Harvard Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science. It’s titled God’s Universe, and – as you can guess – its aim is to make clear that faith and … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, Bible, Biblical God, books, Christianity, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, id, Idealism-, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, institutional power, Jews, journalism, Judaism, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, memory, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, ontology, oppression, past and future, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Abraham and Pharaoh, Abraham's obedience, anthropic principle, asteroids and extinction, atheists vs theists, battle of gods and giants, book of Genesis, cosmic fine tuning, cultural diversity, Darwinism and Evolutionary theory, design argument, dinosaurs and the Flood, divine history, divine partnership, divine purpose, divine trial and error, evidence of design, expulsion from Eden, fine tuning argument, Garden of Eden, generation before the Flood, global culture, God's and our work in progress, God's call to Abraham, God's partnership with us, God's promise to Noah, Harvard science professor, His eye is on the sparrow, human trial and error, intelligent design vs survival of the fittest, lech lecha, Mark Twain on the bible, mass extinction, New Atheists, Noachide commandments, O-O-O God, origin of life, our partnership with God, Owen Gingerich's God's Universe, Pierre Lecomte du Nouy, Plato's war between gods and giants, postlapsarian, prelapsarian, providence versus chance, religious diversity, Sarah and Abraham, social engineering, teleological argument, Torah Study, Tower of Babel, utopian thinking, war between gods and giants
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What’s Unconscious?
What’s Unconscious? In recent columns, I’ve written about the mysterious effects of mind on body and their unpredictable intertwinings. One reader has left Comments on these columns, twice urging me to read John E. Sarno’s book, The Divided Mind: … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, bigotry, books, childhood, chivalry, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, nineteenth-century, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romantic love, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, violence, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged "the past isn't past", Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Philosophic Foundations of Feminism", amoral id, analysand, anger internalized, appetitive spirited and rational, Aristotle's psychology, cure for neuropathy, cynicism, dangerous emotions, ego repressing the id, failure of chivalry, female powerlessness, Freud's Dora: An Analysis of A Case of Hysteria, Freudian explanations, gaslighting mechanism, gaucherie, higher psychic levels, iatrogenic, id ego and superego, John Sarno's The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders, mainstream medical practice, man to woman disrepect, mind/body connection, moral lobotomy, prudent repression, psychogenic, psychological repression, psychosomatic, reductive explanation, seeing and seeing through, self-mistrust, somatic distractions from unacceptable feelings, somatic refusal, spiritual lobotomy, Sublimation, suffering somatized, the Freudian years, the gap in modern medicine, the symptom imperative, transcending negative experience, tripartite psyche, unconscious rage, undiscovered treatments for psychogenic illnesses, unwelcome advances, vulgarity, women misdiagnosed as hysterical
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My Mind Is Not My Brain
My Mind Is Not My Brain How much hangs on that denial – or on its contradictory, that my mind is my brain! If our minds are our brains, as I once thought, and as our educated contemporaries mostly still … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, anthropology, art, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Biblical God, books, bureaucracy, Christianity, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, hidden God, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, immortality, institutional power, Judaism, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, masculinity, medieval, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, ontology, past and future, philosophy, poetry, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, romance, romantic love, science, scientism, secular, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged ambition, anguish, anxiety, attitudes toward death, brain and memory storage, brain death, brain death and consciousness, cardiac arrest and consciousness, cardiac care, computers and brains, conscious state and neural correlates, cruelty, cynicism, dealing with death, death and denial, death as escape, death as the end, despair, Does God make a difference?, EEG, God hypothesis, God question, identity theory, intellectual courage, life review, localizing conscious experience in the brain, manipulativeness, Materialism, mind/body problem, MRI, NDE, NDE research, NDE studies, near death experience, oblivion, paradigm shift, PET, Philosophical Materialism, physicalism, Pim Van Lommel, Pim Van Lommel's Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience, placebo effect, prejudice, reductionism and culture, reincarnation, right pathway, search for purpose, success fixation, surviving brain death, surviving death, terminal lucidity, the absurd, verifiable afterlife reports, willful blindness
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In Quest of Healing
We are just back from one of our weeks in California, in quest of healing for my neuropathy. As I’ve said here before, the experimental treatment on offer at Loma Linda’s neuropathy clinic sees the illness as the result of … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, art of living, autonomy, books, cities, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, heroes, hidden God, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, Jews, Judaism, life and death struggle, male power, masculinity, memory, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, oppression, past and future, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public intellectual, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, theology, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged anti-semitism, body shaming, consulting psychics, curable hurts, diagnostic mistakes, Director Mark Busssell, experimental treatment, finding meaning, harmful psychics, harmful shrinks, hypocrisy, incurable hurts, inflamation blockage, insider wounds, life review, life strategies, living honestly, lost innocence, medical frontier, mind/body, NDE, near death experiences, neuropathy, neuropathy treatment, placebo effect, processing suffering, psychoanalysis, psychosomatic, self-blame, somatizing painful experience, spontanious remissions, Thomas Nagel's subjective and objective in Mortal Questions, walking handicap, women friends
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