Author: Jacques Rousseau

Jacques Rousseau teaches critical thinking and ethics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is the founder and director of the Free Society Institute, a non-profit organisation promoting secular humanism and scientific reasoning.

a better future…

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date December 10, 2007
Categories In People, Religion

On a track from Heathen, David Bowie demands “a better future”, and after watching Jesus Camp yesterday, I’m inclined to agree with him. The movie isn’t great, as the basic message could have been conveyed in an 45-minute documentary rather than a feature-length film, but it still serves as a powerful reminder of the insidious and growing power of religious fundamentalism in society, and politics in particular.

Linkage

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date October 5, 2007
Categories In Academia and teaching, Religion

Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion – Jonathan Haidt
Some responses to the above.
One of the respondents above, Marc Hauser, on the neuroscience of morality. A further interview with Hauser here.
Another of the respondents, Sam Harris, gave a typically provocative address at the recent Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C.
And finally, Hitchens’ account of his recent book tour to promote God is not Great shouldn’t be missed.

How to live (I)

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date October 5, 2007
Categories In Headspace, People, Religion

As an atheist of the militant persuasion, it’s somewhat odd that in the past two weeks I’ve spent significant time in deep conversation with a preacherman. Sometimes you need to call in the specialists, and the situation demanded a specialist of his description.

The strangest part of the experience, however, was finding that the urge to label myself inconsistent in having this interaction was insignificantly weak, and in the end rested on something linguistic rather than principled. And I mention this because it’s immensely liberating to realise that one can be as principled as always, without those principles trumping all other interests.

3 signs of the end-times

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date September 6, 2007
Categories In Culture, Politics

My mother always claimed that bad events arrived in clusters of 3. Or maybe it was good things. Either way, the principle – however silly (my logician-brain immediately notes the self-sustaining nature of this hypothesis, in that a careful selection of beginning and end-points to a cluster would make the claim unfalsifiable), came to mind just now when catching up on some local news.

A fresh perspective on gender

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date September 5, 2007
Categories In Culture, Headspace

For those who are still not following A&L Daily, here’s something interesting you may have missed: Baumeister asking “Is There Anything Good About Men?“

Ritual

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date August 17, 2007
Categories In Headspace, Religion

Another potential cost associated with religious belief was brought to mind last night in a conversation over dinner: we have deferred so much of our human symbolic activity to official representatives of social institutions (preachers and the like), that we no are no longer as able to generate ritual significance ourselves.

Facebook

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date August 9, 2007
Categories In Culture

from xkcd – well worth an occasional visit.
Facebook uses

Customer care

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date July 27, 2007
Categories In General

Any South African readers with iBurst as an ISP will relate to the following. Anyone else may be utterly disinterested in this post, so the rational choice would be to move right along, maybe to the ever-excellent Pharyngula…

Human happiness

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date July 23, 2007
Categories In Culture, Headspace

Last night, the bourbon at a local bar led to S and I pondering human development and happiness, and the issue has remained with me since. To what extent is development correlated with happiness, and is that correlation even positive, as many of us assume? An easy way to sidestep the issue would be to say that, if happiness is a subjective mental state, any index you choose to measure it is going to be essentially arbitrary. And as a contrapositive, you could prove either that we are less happy or more happy by picking a convenient index to substantiate your claim.

Strange products

Post author By Jacques Rousseau
Post date July 14, 2007
Categories In General

not a real post, I know, but I thought I had a duty to tell you about:
heated high-tech butt-rinsing toilet seats,
Humping dog USB drives, and
Vibrating soap