thinktoomuch.net

I much enjoy the Evolving Thoughts blog. One reason is John Wilkins’, um, what would you call it, let’s go with “philosophical sophistication”. See for example his thoughts on the whole Wafergate issue. Or my growing collection of Evolving Thoughts bookmarks.
Relevant to the discussions on my blog, Wilkins’ “random thoughts” from a recent post of [...]

[Read more →]

I wrote about Dan Dennet’s TED talk on memes before. Right now, I want to talk about a 25 second section out of it, between 5:00 and 5:25:
I myself am a philosopher, and one of our occupational hazards is that people ask us what the meaning of life is. You have to have a bumper [...]

[Read more →]

It’s 2:45am, I’m back from a long conversation with a good friend, who’s been thinking/seeking/investigating/philosophising for some time, following a religious experience, in the context of a Christian background and culture and possessing an open and inquiring mind. Very philosophical, and digging down to the very basic axioms of meaning and value in life.
The conversation [...]

[Read more →]

This post is nearly 9000 words, my apologies. Writing for many world-views at once takes words. I wrote it for myself firstly, but if you have the time and patience, I believe you will find it to be of interest, no matter your persuasion. I can try to distill it into shorter pieces later, but [...]

[Read more →]

This is the post that I was busy writing when I decided I need to first write On “Richard Dawkins is a Fundamentalist” and “Shofar is a Cult”. That post was mostly about label agnosticism and how I care about what people mean by the labels they use, rather than whether it is the “correct” [...]

[Read more →]

There has been much debate about whether or not Shofar is a cult. I prefer not to take part in such debates, being someone that doesn’t care much for labels. I’m too fluid in my definitions. And besides, those already debating this point are providing more than enough entertainment for the observer. (And more [...]

[Read more →]

In the future, when I share stories about interesting conversations, I want to protect the anonymity of the person I was talking to. If I were to write a number of posts involving the same conversation, I may mix it up a little so that readers can’t build up too much of a profile. It [...]

[Read more →]

My post a month ago on Childhood Indoctrination could spark a number of different posts or discussions, but I don’t want to spend too much time on it. The main point was that I had some first-hand experience on childhood indoctrination. And I think scaring children with hell like that is evil (for some definitions [...]

[Read more →]

Just a quick status update:
I have a draft post that I have been working on for quite some time. I don’t think it is a very remarkable post, but it is rather long. And I’m choosing words carefully while getting my writing strategy figured out. In particular, it deals with the Stellenbosch Gemeente’s children’s church’s [...]

[Read more →]

UPDATE: This post was written in a rush. I’m not sure about the choice of the word “theology” here. Maybe “religion” might have been a better choice, or I could have talked about something like “mythos” or “mythology” instead. Whichever. Hopefully the thoughts I’m sharing are understood irrespective of the imperfect word choice. Words are [...]

[Read more →]