by VorJack
Atheism and skepticism are siblings. They’ve been close at least since Paul Kurtz founded both CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. But like all siblings they don’t always get along, and they frequently to go off in their own direction. But every now and then there’s a reunion, such as [...]
Johann Hari reviews Lisa Miller’s Heaven:
In Heaven, Newsweek’s religion correspondent, Lisa Miller, has written a fascinating millenniums-long history of the idea of heaven, spliced with some surprisingly mediocre reporting on present-day believers. At its core is a (very politely administered) slap to the American consensus. The heaven you think you’re headed to—a reunion with your [...]
By Vorjack
This is a continuation of my review for Robert Kunzman’s Write These Laws on Your Children: Inside the World of Conservative Christian Homeschooling.
Getting Testy about Testing
For an atheist who’s only experience with Christian home-schooling is the movie Jesus Camp, this book may come as a surprise. Many of the families are open minded [...]
By Vorjack
My mother recently admitted to me that if she had it to do over again, I would have been home-schooled. This was a shock, since my mother recently retired after 40 years of being a middle school science teacher. My mother has resisted all attempts to get her to teach outside her [...]
by VorJack
There’s a story that comes down to us from ancient Rome, during the period in which Hannibal Barca was ravaging Italy. Legend has it that the Roman dictator Fabius Cunctator (“Fabius the Delayer”) built a number of temples to beseech the Gods for aid. These included a temple to what we would translate [...]
by Vorjack
I first became aware of Robert Jensen’s work when his essay about rejoining the Methodist Church appeared on Killing the Buddha. Jensen is basically an atheist and a naturalist, but he had been invited to speak before a Methodist congregation by a progressive preacher. Jensen was taken by the aesthetics and the [...]
by VorJack
I’m reading Robert Jensen’s work All My Bones Shake for an eventual review here, but I’d like to discuss one concept now, since I don’t think a full discussion would fit in the review.
A Relabeling of the Unknown
Pullquote: God is what we call all those things about the universe that we don’t or can’t [...]
by VorJack
It’s a truism that history is done to serve the interests of the present, so it’s not surprising that we look back on Charles Darwin as the major player in the faith vs. reason debate. However, in doing so we ignore the arguments that concerned Darwin himself most of all. In Darwin’s [...]