I find Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent essay on her conversion to Christianity to be pure nonsense, and after reading it myself I'm not sure why it is being used as an exemplar for anything at all. But now two of my favorite columnists have written about it for the same reason --> that supposedly it is an exemplar of motivated spiritual reasoning. She's ( Read more... )

It's not just the Jewish residents of the US who compel both Democrats and Republicans to support Israel, the largest recipient of cumulative US foreign aid since WW2 ( Read more... )

"Society cannot successfully condemn conspiracy theorists while at the same time promoting and valuing theism, because theism is a conspiracy theory."-- adapted from a reader comment on a NYT article ( Read more... )

"I’m not a socialist; I believe in capital markets."

--Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI)

I try to remember that socialism and capitalism are best used as tools rather than as belief systems. Sometimes market forces are helpful. Sometimes public ownership is helpful. Sometimes we need to regulate markets, sometimes regulations are counterproductive ( Read more... )

I keep listening to this audiobook about Dark Green Religion, and,

this is me,

dark because it isn't going to work out, green because I care about all living things (not only the humans), and religion because there is no rational way out, I only have my faith, and my doubt,

I think the doubt is more important,

you cannot have faith without

I don't go to church, I don't identify as a "Christian" per se ( Read more... )

Issue polling finds that the largest divide between white Democrats and black Democrats is over the importance of believing in God -- black Democrats have long been more likely than white Democrats to describe themselves as Christian and to attend religious services more frequently ... on these measures, the views of black Democrats are similar to ( Read more... )

Reading science fiction written during the early 1940s, I'm struck by the extreme faith in nuclear power expressed at that time ( Read more... )

believing in a monotheistic omnipotent God is an act of spiritual submission

instead ... you are a conscious wave rippling through spacetime, among countless other conscious waves rippling through spacetime ( Read more... )

I didn't realize there's a tug of war between left-wing Christians and right-wing Christians over whether Jesus was a "refugee" or not.

I learned about this conflict because Pete Buttigieg tweeted something on Christmas about Jesus being a refugee. Presumably in reference to the Gospel according to Matthew, and its claim (in 2:16) that King Herod ( Read more... )