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H. L. Mencken on the Meaning of Life

Dear Durant You ask me, in brief, what satisfaction I get out of life, and why I go on working. I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism—in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle. The precise form of an individual’s activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity. I do not lay eggs, as a hen does, because I was born without any equipment for it. For the same reason I do not get myself elected to Congress, or play the violoncello, or teach metaphysics in a college, or work in a steel mill. What I do is simply what lies easiest to my hand. It happens that I was born with an intense and insatiable interest in ideas,

Morality Pill?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/are-we-ready-for-a-morality-pill/?sq=agata+sagan&scp=1&st=cse

What happened before the Big Bang?

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/what-happened-before-the-big-bang-the-new-philosophy-of-cosmology/251608/

On Determinism

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/12/05/on-determinism/

What are the chances of alien life?

Galaxy Calc shows Alien Life

The Meaning of Advent

Christians began keeping the season of Advent from the sixth century, first for six weeks, then for four.  However, it took a long time for the season to be given a secure place in the life of the church.  In fact it wasn’t until three hundred years later that liturgical books contained the liturgies for Advent. Not only has the length of the season changed but also the focus of these weeks of the year.  In Rome it was seen as a period of preparation for the first coming of Christ, though this did not exclude the eschatological theme of the second coming (the eschaton) of Christ. In the Middle Ages however this second coming was associated with the Last Judgement.  This would be a time of terror for the whole human race.  One has only to visit the little church of St Peter & St Paul, Chaldon, in the south of the diocese, to begin to understand how our mediaeval brothers and sisters pictured this.  There you can see starkly depicted the punishment that followed judgement.  T

David Hart addresses the New Atheists

Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark