Faith, Fiction and Force in Medieval Baptismal Debates by marcia colish cua, 384 pages, $69.95 B aptism seems so simple: water and the formula “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” But like so many religious practices, it can be celebrated in different ways, with . . . . Continue Reading »
To say, as people do from time to time, that science is the only source of meaning available to human beings is to consign large swaths of everyday experience to insignificance. (And to offer an open goal to any quick-footed apologist for religion who may be passing.) The implication of the maximal . . . . Continue Reading »
Seated next to me at dinner was a man about my age. Like me, he’d retired to Maine. We hit it off, and after our dinner, we began an email correspondence. At the dinner, my friend said he admired a book I didn’t like, so I sent him a copy of a review of the book I’d written. The review tipped . . . . Continue Reading »
Buzzy Jackson is dismayed by “inspirational” books. Not so much because they exist, but because she “never encountered a single one that spoke directly to those of us with a secular outlook.” “Where was the motivating quote of the day for nonbelievers?” she asks. What she wanted was a Chicken Soup for the Soulless, depressing as that sounds on its face, for that one-fifth of Americans who claim no religious affiliation. She wanted a source of hope and comfort for “the atheists, the skeptics, the agnostics, and the ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ among us.” Yet, on going to the bookstore, she found a void. If Chicken Soup for the Soulless didn’t exist, would it be necessary to invent it? Yes, apparently. Continue Reading »
The world was a dark and gloomy place until the Enlightenment came along, after which people began to think for themselves and break free from the shackles of religious authority. So we are told, once again, in The Moral Arc, a book by journalist Michael Shermer. For him, the Enlightenment did not merely accelerate humanity’s moral progress, but rather it reversed the moral regress characteristic of pre-Enlightenment human history. Since then, science and reason have been guiding humanity on a path toward justice, truth, and freedom. Continue Reading »
Last month, American Atheists sent a letter of complaint to the chancellor at Troy demanding an apology. Continue Reading »
One of the strangest claims often made by purveyors and consumers of today’s popular atheism is that disbelief in God involves no particular positive philosophy of reality, much less any kind of religion or creed, but consists merely in neutral incredulity toward a certain kind of factual . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrew Ferguson informs and amuses at The Weekly Standard about that other orthodoxy in, “The Heretic: Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him?” It is longish, but I liked it and for possibly unnatural reasons, thought some of you might like it, . . . . Continue Reading »
A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by lawrence m. krauss free press, 204 pages, $24.99 Acritic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical . . . . Continue Reading »
This whole article is interesting, but one point in particular provided a new perspective for me to consider. Frank Furedi is a British sociologist and author. The claim that religion scars children for life is symptomatic of the tendency of New Atheists to express themselves through the language of . . . . Continue Reading »
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