Jessica and Diego continue the conversation with Massimo Pigliucci on Stoicism from last week, and Barry interviews Susanne Claxton on her book: Heidegger’s Gods: An EcoFeminist Perspective.
Audio can be found here!
Show 556: Massimo Pigliucci on Stoicism
Massimo Pigliucci on Stoicism
(From Publisher): Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great viagra cost emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that focuses our attention on what is possible and gives us perspective on what is unimportant. By understanding Stoicism, we can learn to answer crucial questions: Should we get married or divorced? How should we handle our money in a world nearly destroyed by a financial crisis? How can we survive great personal tragedy? Whoever we are, Stoicism has something for us – and How to Be a Stoic is the essential guide.
Audio can be found here!
Show’s 326: ‘Nonsense on Stilts’ w/ Massimo Pigliucci
‘Nonsense on Stilts’ w/ Massimo Pigliucci
Audio 1 here!
Audio 2 here!
(from book description)
“Recent polls suggest that fewer than 40 per cent of Americans believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, despite it being one of science’s best-established findings. More and more parents are refusing to vaccinate their children for fear it causes autism, though this link has been consistently disproved. And about 40 per cent of Americans believe that the threat of global warming is exaggerated, despite near consensus in the scientific community that manmade climate change is real.
“Why do people believe bunk? And what causes them to embrace such pseudoscientific beliefs and practices?
Continue reading “Show’s 326: ‘Nonsense on Stilts’ w/ Massimo Pigliucci”
Show 247: Religion is Not about God!: A Conversation with Dr. Loyal Rue
Religion is Not about God!: A Conversation with Dr. Loyal Rue
Audio here!
Thousands of religious traditions have appeared over the course of human history but only a relative few have survived. Volumes have been written attempting to prove the existence or non-existence of supernatural being(s) including the recent best sellers by the so-called ‘new atheists”; Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. But like biologist David Sloan Wilson and anthropologist Scott Atran both argue, there is far more nuance and complexity regarding the story of humanity and its myths than these best-selling authors want to admit.
If Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are considered by some humanists to be the amateur polemicists of atheism, then Wilson, Atran and Rue are the scholars secular humanists need to turn to if we want to begin to learn what we ought to do concerning the future of religion.
So, if religion is not about God, then what on earth is it about? Co-host Paul Eckstein explored with Dr. Rue this question and more!
Show 231: Ubuntu, Humanism and South Africa
Audio Here!
A person is a person through other persons”. This rather humanistic concept articulated by the Zulu philosophy of “Ubuntu” is enjoying a renaissance in the 21st Century, serving as a fashionable touchstone for progressive ideals from African diplomacy to the Free Software movement. But what is Ubuntu, and how can its history and present use be instructive to humanists around the world? Eckson Khambule, a Phd candidate in the Programs in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, joined Michael O’Neil to discuss.
Show 198: Victor Stenger
Audio here!
Atheism has taken a turn toward the right, some have said, as writers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and others have penned best-selling books on religion and faith which tend to see religion as the major problem in today’s society while leaving out politics and the economy. And while the Left ought to recognize the inherent dangers in religious fundamentalism, they also should understand the many complex reasons religion exists in the first place, and how fundamentalisms arise.
While on this program we have featured what some critics have dubbed the evangelical atheists in the past, we have also had folks like DS Wilson, Scott Atran, Robert Dreyfuss and Robert Pape on to take us deeper into the many facets of religion, its causes, and how we could begin to reign in the more dangerous verities.
Still, it is always useful to listen to anthropologists like Hector Avalos who cut to the roots of certain sorts of religious violence, and today’s guest, physicist Victor Stenger who takes a purely scientific view on the supernatural. Can science prove God does not, can not, exist? Many scientists, atheistic scientists in fact, disagree on the answer to this question.