The ISHV Cyber Think Tank is a digest of articles, interviews, and other musings compiled by Robert B. Tapp.

• Roy Speckhardt urges humanists not to fight over labels. “any search for purity of name for members of the nonreligious movement is a losing battle that could unnecessarily constrain the movement in the long term and prevent people who don’t believe in a god, even if they still ascribe to religious traditions, from joining.” read
• Alyssa Giacobbe’s story (Boston Magazine) of attempts to re-brand Unitarian Universalism is instructive. What puzzles is the almost complete brushing aside of the history of that movement or of any recognition of humanism and its significant — and continuing — role in that history. read
• Conservatives remain the largest self-identified bloc of Americans. read
• Karl Marx’s analysis of religion, by Austin Cline. read
• Austin Cline contends that strong atheism does not necessarily imply “certainty.” read
• Steve Jobs was interviewed by Robert Cringely in 1996, and the interview was recently found. His views on wealth, creativity, and the humanities make this worth watching. Parts are on YouTube and also rentable. watch
• Tara Haelle on the science denial in both political parties is stronger in GOP but there also in Democrats. read
• The Humanist Society has suggestions for secular invocations at public events. read
• Sam Harris has held a moral essay contest, and Ryan Born is the winner. Here begins their interaction. read
• John Green’s career viewed by Margaret Talbot. read
• David Breeden argues that churches and temples get built to facilitate human communities, and the existence of any “gods” is secondary. read
• Stephen Greenblatt on Shakespeare’s debt to Montaigne. read
• Christopher Ketcham notes, in New Republic, a number of plagiarisms in Chris Hedges’ writings. read
• Gary Gutting surveys the long tensions of analytic and Continental philosophy. “The continental-analytic gap will begin to be bridged only when seminal thinkers of the Continent begin to write more clearly.” read