essay
Questions relating to the historicity of the personages and episodes mentioned in religious literature have been vexing scholars for at least two centuries. It is difficult for some to take as a historical fact that Moses met with God and received the Ten Commandments personally from Him. Many papers and volumes have been written on…
Posthumously published in 1779, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work written by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. The text takes the form of a letter from a young Pamphilus (who also serves as a narrator in the text) to his friend, Hermippus. In the letter, Pamphilus reconstructs a conversation between three fictional characters–Demea,…
Did you have a great holiday, or just a good one? Were you hoping to get a bit more done, and at the same time to take it easier? Vacations can be disorienting. This year I noticed a few reasons why: They’re rare. They’re a treat and a reward. We’re anxious not to squander them…
Religion has been defined by philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and others in different ways. In certain traditions, the Judeo-Christian notion of religion does not even hold. Some Hindu and Buddhist scholars contend that the Western model of religion was inappropriately imposed by colonial writers on their systems of shared beliefs and behaviors where some the Abrahamic…
Life is a game, though not because it’s casual, unimportant fun, which is what’s implied most often by that cliché. Indeed, that’s the greatest dissimilarity between games and life. Life is very much a big deal. How we do at it defines us personally. It shapes those who depend upon us, even people we don’t…
This excerpt from the Dickens’ classic is taken from the final two chapters. Scrooge is here reaching the end of his timeless evening, arriving at his last stop with the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It…
While I’m confessing, I should also say that I was once a fire chief in rural Tennessee. I was fortunate during my tenure. No one got hurt. Just a few hay barns went up in smoke. Sometimes an idea sticks in your head for no obvious reason and later you find all sorts of uses…
I’ve never admitted this to you before, but twice in my life I had five years of four-day-a-week psychoanalysis, complete with the couch. The first time I was between the ages of 8 and 13; the second between 25 and 30. It’s a cultural thing. For the Chicago Jewish upper-middle class in the early ’60s,…
About all my huffs and furies, I have to admit to a double standard. In my anger and disdain, I ignore all similarities between me and the objects of my wrath. I’m not typically hypocritical in real time, though that too is sometimes a possibility. When I’m angry or annoyed with someone, I’m probably not—at…
We only notice difference. In experiments, a subject’s eyes are stabilized staring out into a still room. Within a short time the eyes see nothing. With nothing changing—no differences to notice—the eyes go blank. This Thanksgiving I’m conscious of my gratitude for a great many things. My gratitude is deeply biased, however. I’m unconscious of…