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The Daily Nugget

The Daily Nugget is the online equivalent of a coffee shop conversation—a place for people to drop in and out of an ongoing informal discussion. To start each day's conversation we post something that can serve as a catalyst, but you can talk about whatever you'd like. Welcome. Sit down. Join the converstion.

  • How "God" functioned in Socrates' life
    Friday September 19, 2008     (1 comments)

    As seen in a previous Nugget, Dawkins denounces "God" as an unnecessary hypothesis which functions to explain the origin and order of material reality. In antiquity this notion of God received very little attention. Instead, God was invoked to explain ultimate moral obligation or truth. Consider, for example, Socrates in the Apology, Plato's version of Socrates defense speech to the court that eventually convicted and executed him (399 B.C.) Socrates says things like this:

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  • Richard Dawkins, identifying a watershed issue between theists and atheists
    Thursday September 11, 2008     (20 comments)

    Quoting Dawkins, The God Delusion 2008 pb. edition, p. 52.

    [beginning with his formulation of "the God Hypothesis"] there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. [He then asserts] This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.

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  • Religion and Politics: Just war and Iraq
    Monday August 25, 2008     (10 comments)

    In early October 2002 a group of prominent Christian fundamentalists sent the following letter to President Bush. The invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.

    I also suggest watching the following video, which takes a somewhat different perspective on war:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRA3QdvY9rQ&feature=related.

    I wonder whether the juxtaposition of these two modes of thinking suggests anything about wise and careless thinking--religious and otherwise.

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  • Life, abortion, and law
    Monday August 18, 2008     (83 comments)

    Excerpt from the Saddleback conference (8/16/08)

    Rick Warren: "At what point is a baby entitled to human rights?"

    Sen. McCain: "At the moment of conception."

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  • Meaning and God
    Tuesday July 29, 2008     (38 comments)

    It is not possible, Theodorus, that evil should be destroyed—for there must always be something opposed to the good; nor is it possible that it should have its seat in heaven. But it must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl about this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible; and a man becomes like God when he becomes just and pure, with understanding.

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  • Religious belief and upbringing
    Saturday July 26, 2008     (59 comments)

    If you feel trapped in the religion of your upbringing, it would be worth asking yourself how this came about. The answer is usually some form of childhood indoctrination. If you are religious at all it is overwhelmingly probable that your religion is that of your parents. If you were born in Arkansas and you think Christianity is true and Islam false, knowing full well that you would think the opposite if you had been born in Afghanistan, you are the victim of childhood indoctrination. Mutatis mutandis if you were born in Afghanistan.

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