The Browser - Philosophy & Religion

Note To Our Readers: RSS Feeds | Robert Cottrell | The Browser | 28 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:06:01 +0000

As part of our move to a new platform and new hosting today, we are consolidating our RSS feeds into a one full feed, to which you can subscribe at this address (if it's not live now it will be soon): http://thebrowser.com/feed

More about this article

What Can Atheists Learn From Believers? | Alain de Botton et al | New Statesman | 25 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:13:58 +0000

"Atheists should learn to rescue some of what is beautiful, touching and wise. What is good within the faiths belongs to all of mankind, even the most rational, and deserves to be reabsorbed selectively by the supernatural’s greatest enemies. Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone"

More about this article

Richard Dawkins Dies

The Browser — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 06:32:22 +0000

Derrida: The Excluded Favorite | Emily Eakin | New York Review Of Books | 25 March 2013

The Browser — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:00:32 +0000

Good, clear primer on Derrida's life and thought. "Derrida sought to show that speech is inextricable from writing, no more or less authentic. The difference between the two depends, as all differences do, on a process of enforced absence or repression: a is a only because it is not b, and thus b is never entirely out of the picture"

More about this article

Seder Night's Platonic Form | Judith Shulevitz | Tablet | 24 March 2013

The Browser — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 12:45:43 +0000

"There’s a reason the haggadah feels goyish: Formally speaking, it’s Greek. It’s a Judaicized version of a Greek genre called 'symposium literature'. Plato loved the form. So did Xenophon. The symposium enshrined the most appealing traits of the Hellenic personality: conviviality, Epicureanism, a love of good conversation"

More about this article

How To Pick A Secular Pope | James Traub | Foreign Policy | 22 March 2013

The Browser — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 08:28:53 +0000

"While the pope and the UN secretary general are more or less the sacred and secular versions of one another, the processes by which they are selected are pretty much the opposite. The consequence is that Catholics get Pope Francis, while the world gets Ban Ki-moon. Francis feels like exactly what the Church needs. Ban is disappointing-by-design"

More about this article

Ask Me Anything — I Am Nassim Taleb | Nicholas Nassim Taleb | Reddit | 20 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 08:56:49 +0000

Online Q&A with Black Swan author. Good questions, good answers: "Are there cases where Skin-In-The-Game is the wrong heuristic? Should judges, jurors, and prosecutors have skin in the game? Also, the whole idea behind corporations is to remove skin from the game. This has made possible large scale enterprises. Isn't this a good thing?"

More about this article

Explain Like I'm Five: Existentialism

The Browser — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:25:26 +0000

Religion Without God | Ronald Dworkin | New York Review Of Books | 18 March 2013

The Browser — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 07:52:38 +0000

"The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious. ... We should treat this attitude as religious, and recognize the possibility of religious atheism"

More about this article

Religion And The Fear Of Death | Susan Jacoby & Sophie Roell | Five Books | 14 March 2013

The Browser — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:14:23 +0000

Discussion of five books about belief, reason and atheism by St Augustine, Thomas Paine, Richard Dawkins, Rebecca Goldstein, Christopher Hitchens. "Atheism seems to me to be reasonable, but should everyone be an atheist? I don’t know. To me that’s like asking, should everyone appreciate art? I would never set forth a dictate like that"

More about this article