Posted inPersonal/Stories Reason

Whether it be coffee pods or God, our preferences arise from unknown sources

Why do we like what we like? Because it is what we like. Why do we dislike what we dislike? Because it is what we dislike. Facts require reasons. Preferences are just what they are. I like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate ice cream because I like vanilla more than chocolate. Sure, we can dress up our likes and dislikes in fancy clothes of reasons, but really, likes and dislikes simply are naked preferences if we're honest with ourselves. For 35 years I preferred to believe in God, eastern religion variety. Then my preference changed. Not all at once.…
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Posted inBooks Free will Reason

I’m enjoying The Daily Stoic, but can’t buy into the entire philosophy

Recently Bill Maher had Ryan Holiday on his Real Time show to talk about his book, The Daily Stoic, and Stoicism in general. Maher said that Stoicism was trendy now, so that made me think the book was recently published. Not so. It was published in 2016. Maybe it is Holiday's podcast that has generated the current attention. Regardless, I ordered the book and have been reading ten days worth every morning, since there's no way I want to read a single page for 366 days. (February has 29 pages, to cover leap year.) I'm fairly familiar with Stoic philosophy,…
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Posted inAtheism Reason

Reasonist may be a better term for us unbelievers than atheist

My wife, Laurel, belongs to the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), so she receives their publication, Freethought Today. She correctly thought that I'd be interested in an essay by Robert Pierce in the June-July 2026 issue, "'Reasonist' is a better identifying term." I put the term to use last night in a post on my Salem Political Snark blog about a proposed data center here in Salem. I noted in "Data center proposed for Salem has both potential benefits and problems" that: Like most things in life of this sort, a data center proposed to be built on 75 acres…
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Posted inBooks Reason

Being reasonable sounds like a very reasonable thing to me

I learned about philosopher Krista Lawlor's book, Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue, from a New Yorker article by Nikhil Krishnan. "In Defense of the Moderate" appealed to my sense of moderation, but I was conflicted about the degree I wanted to be reasonable in what so often seems to be a highly unreasonable world. Here's  a PDF file in case that link doesn't work for you. In Defense of the Moderate | The New Yorker Reading Krishnan's article, I wondered if being reasonable amounted to surrendering to the most extreme political, religious, and other sorts of factions…
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