BC

St. Augustine wrote about predestination. Following Augustine, Luther adopted the idea, and Calvin followed Luther. (At least, that's the way I unders...

Negation and affirmation are opposites. What's so difficult about that? They aren't the same thing.

Good work tracking down appointments. Adam Cohen, in his new book SUPREME INEQUALITY, points out that elderly conservative judges have been a bit more...

There is a discontinuity in the extent to which the small ruling class has moved rightward and the extent to which the masses of ordinary people have ...

Your solution had not occurred to me, but it would help the problem of the court becoming unbalanced politically, as it is now. It would also help if ...

And this is of course a huge problem which, even without global warming to worry about, will saddle the next generations of citizens with problems. Ru...

Indeed. I don't see sufficient electoral college majorities voting for a democratic socialist -- any kind of politician who would wear the tag of soci...

Sure. Not all of them, but some, for sure. there are even a few quite aged naive spoiled brats. Like the POTUS.

There are two histories to consider here: a) whatever it was that actually happened b) the account of what is believed to have happened Matthew, Mark,...

No beer, no life. True. Civilization began with the brewing arts. Some go further and claim civilization began with distillation. Like Noel Coward who...

Hope all is going well with you, MOS. Live viruses, being obligate intracellular parasites, are always moist -- maybe not always warm. They don't do w...

The trouble with using masks too often is that one can get confused about who one really is. That kind of invisibility isn't a good thing.

I deeply resent not being included in the spam that everybody else is getting. I want my share!

Right. I agree; for most people it isn't going to be a problem.

Wait a minute: How can one of the flimsy paper face masks help prevent spreading contagion from the infected to the uninfected, but not the reverse? M...

Sorry about that. The most familiar stat form is deaths per 100,000, live births per 100,000, etc.

Let's hope that the mortality rate is less than 1 or 2 percent. But it seems pretty likely there will be a pandemic--given that cases are popping up h...

I'm glad to hear you are still playing golf at 83, and at 83 you deserve a perk or two, so keep on swinging the club and chasing the ball, even if on ...

I've had really bad colds that pushed my tolerance of being sick to the limit; constant coughing, sinus infection, sore throat, sneezing, malaise, etc...

Where do these new diseases come from? It appears that a lot of the new viral infections that have cropped up in the last 30 or 40 years come from bat...

Don't panic yet. There will be plenty of time for hysteria once people start dropping like flies, which hasn't happened so far. Respiratory infections...

From The Everlasting Mercy by John Masefield 1911 The lines are from a very long poem. It would have been a lot of work for me to write it. I came acr...

Did I suggest that I thought male and female psychologies were the same? Don't think so. No, I don't think men and women have the same psychological m...

I do read fiction, (being a one-time English major) but I haven't found it necessary to read fiction to discover that aggression is more likely in you...

At various times, anyone may be celibate, and even involuntarily celibate. I've been celibate for the last 10 years, because at the age of 63 and the ...

I understand where a heterosexual orientation leads to the kind of considerations you are raising here. For men and women, sex and then marriage, or m...

I haven't the vaguest notion of what ails you, but for comparison: When I miss several doses of my antidepressant, I experience a feeling of pressure ...

The statistic is pure invention for rhetorical purposes.

@"IvoryBlackBishop": "Sexual ethics" Is nothing safe from ethicists? Lovely. I like that. One would hope that there are more choices than a strip club...

The problem with both Bernie and Biden is that they are too old. I'm in my 70s; Bernie is 78. He will be 79 before he takes office. Perhaps his health...

I have nothing against cat pictures. My preference is for dog pictures. Wasting time is, indeed, a natural human behavior; I have nothing against that...

Of course. Logic is a fine facility for some kinds of problems, but entirely unsuited for cultural appreciation and participation. The opposite is tru...

They also served who were the butt of somebody else's amusement. Carry on. For me, "atheism" privately means "rejecting the presentation of the God-co...

This observation might not be worth much, but "atheist" appeared in print far more often in the early 1800s than more recently. That from Google Ngram...

By participating in the capitalist economy, you--we--are supporting an establishment that ruthlessly objectifies and exploits men, women, children, an...

IvoryBlackBishop, I think Judaka pretty much nailed it. Conformity and non-conformity can both be either principled or unprincipled. Then too, deviati...

"Lag time" between the recognition that resource depletion or population growth might be a problem, and then deployment of effective solutions is our ...

Happiness is an emotional state--not just simply that, but that among other things. Can you choose emotions like love, rage, fear, etc? Here you are, ...

Since when does the mad axeman ask first?

Thanks for your passionate post. What I fear is that, even with the will to save ourselves and the ecology on which we depend, we may be unable to do ...

One reason is that "leadership" is sort of ineffable. Can you describe for us what traits and features the perfect (or even half-ways tolerable) leade...

There is, sad to say, a lot of truth in your statement. Schools have been described as management of the masses, regulation of the labor pool, keeping...

"Small government" is code for those who wish to endow government with no capacity to interfere with their particular set of interests. So, those who ...

It seems obvious enough: We experience sensations with emotions (and 'qualitative' assessment) because our brains have evolved to do precisely that. T...

What the Trump, Putin, Xi, et al administrations show is that a rather large pile of crap is compatible with the best of all possible worlds formula. ...

Of course; I agree. Actually, I rather enjoy living; I don't agree with Schopenhauer1's consistently (and long-time) downbeat view. I used to feel pre...

Shirley there must be fresh and novel methods!

Who is it that is repeating these lies and slanders about me? Well, sure, I care--a little bit, anyway; medication helps. But the cosmos definitely do...

You're here; we're here. Get used to it. Really, because... In every so many ways, the world is an unsatisfactory place. Happiness is probably not in ...

It's not a very good drama. Boooooring, In order for you to assert that "'this' is the best of all possible worlds" you presumably have knowledge abou...