Category: religion
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Retroview: Happiness: A Guide
Matthieu Ricard’s Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill is probably the most important book in my life. No work has ever influenced so many aspects of my life or caused me to see the world so differently. Were there only one book that I could take with my to a desert island, […]
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OPW: The Ethics of Belief
Since I’ve been writing about ignorance, I thought a quote on a similar topic was in order. This quotation is from W. K. Clifford, an atheist philosopher and mathematician, who argued that faith is both irrational and immoral. You can read the (almost) full text of “The Ethics of Belief” online, if you’re interested. It […]
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Being Under Attack: War, Genocide, Terrorism & Nuclear Proliferation
I’m fairly certain that the most dangerous people in the world are those that nihilistically believe that their group–especially one they find essential to their identity–is under attack. Many relatively powerless people with such fears, rational or otherwise, resort to terrorism. Having no ability to defend their group through conventional warfare, they strike anything and […]
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OPW: The Dilemma of Belief
Today’s “Other People’s Worlds” is about the age-old question of belief versus atheism. It’s also a rather oddly cited quote, for which I apologize. It comes from the philosopher William James’s “The Will to Believe,” one of the most famous Christian apologetics. In it, James argues that belief (in God) is a choice that one […]
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The Two Greatest Commandments
While trolling the internet, I came upon a rather pedestrian claim that in the coming election the liberals will try to “get God” as a way to convince Americans that there are issues more important than ending abortion and stopping gay marriage. The claim is profoundly absurd, not least of all because by now most […]
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The Problem of Heaven and Earth
This idea arose from something E. O. Wilson, the famous biologist, recently told Bill Moyers. He was essentially giving reasons that people, in this case Christians, use for not concerning themselves with the impact of human activity on the planet and other species. I hope I can lay out the argument with some clarity, separate […]
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Random Reincarnation
I’ve often felt that people are too quick to deny that others’ lives in other parts of the country or world affect their own. They find it easy to vote, think, and act in ways that are largely self-serving. I can’t fault anyone for this, after all, I often do it myself. It’s exceptionally easy […]
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On Missionaries, Religion, and the Police
This Saturday, two white men in white shirts with holy books in their hands rang my doorbell. I didn’t answer. I assumed, for lack of a better explanation, that they were missionaries. I wasn’t expecting anyone to ring, and these certainly weren’t men I knew. At first I thought nothing of not answering. Then I […]
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Review: Jesus Camp
Jesus Camp is a documentary that examines the Evangelical movement in the United States. It does this by following a few Evangelicals (I believe they’re mostly Pentecostal) for a time. And on the whole, it does a fairly even-handed job of this, not seeming to judge its subjects, merely to present them. This may be […]