You probably haven't heard of him, but Massimo Pigliucci is a biology professor who writes for
Free Inquiry and
Skeptical Inquirer and whose Rationally Speaking column is
linked to on the Council for Secular Humanism's web site. More than that, he is one of the people that inspired me to start this blog and to apply the principles of secular humanism and skepticism to politcs (he wrote one of the chapters in the excellent
Toward a New Political Humanism,) and he generally writes pretty interesting stuff about the philosophy of science and what not (he had one of the best discussions of the purpose of debate that I've ever encountered up in the Lecture section of his website -
Massimo's Skeptic Web - at one point.) Well, now he's started
a blog (this Aug.) and I'm amused to see that he happened to pick the same board design that I'm using. I started adding to the comments as soon as I found it.
In his essay, "
Secular Humanism and politics: an unapologetically liberal perspective," Pigliucci makes an important point about the aim of political humanism
Secular humanists realize that humans are a kind of animal, partly conditioned by its biological evolution. We also recognize the power of cultural change and of rational thinking. We should therefore use these crucial starting points to engage in public discourse for the betterment of humankind, whenever possible, and regardless of whoever is sitting on the other side of the aisle. It is the humanistic thing to do.
2 comments:
Thanks for the link. The professor makes a number of good points on his blog that I agree with. Especially the one where he advocates a mandatory draft.
I agree that a return to the draft would raise our investment in war and thus concomitantly make us more cautious about going to war, but I worry that the military-industrial complex has become so invested in war that propaganda efforts would also be redoubled in order to offset the public's trepidation about war.
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