Reading Time: 2 minutes The first Thursday in May every year is a tad significant in the U.S. With roots in the early Republic, a 1952 Congress established this day as the ‘National Day of Prayer,’ one in which the President is required to instruct citizens to pray. How odd a notion while wielding a Constitution that forbids the […]
Books
Exploring the written word and the world of books from a secular perspective.
Posted inTrue Story
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Reading Time: 4 minutes The true story of the librarians who risked their lives to rescue a priceless cultural heritage from the destructive rampage of Islamist fundamentalism.
Posted inBooks
It’s Earth Day, so read this book
Reading Time: 2 minutes In honor of Earth Day, you should consider reading this wonderful book, A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters by Henry Gee. Mr. Gee is a senior editor at Nature magazine and the author of numerous books, and he has been a guest on several radio and […]
Posted inHealthcare
White supremacy is killing us in many ways, including COVID
Reading Time: 2 minutes If you’ve been paying any attention, you know that white supremacy and related hate groups pose a large problem in the U.S. The Southern Poverty Law Center finds in their 2021 report on extremism that extremism has become embedded in mainstream U.S. politics. And USA Today notes an all-time high in white supremacist propaganda in […]
Posted inBooks
Book review: Remembrance of Earth’s Past
Reading Time: 3 minutes Have you ever stared at the stars and thought that, given the unfathomable number of stars and planets in the universe, other life simply must exist? The number of observable galaxies ranges in the hundreds of billions. Surely we are not that special. Yet we still have no evidence of extraterrestrial life. You aren’t the […]
Posted inBooks
Screwing with Darwin
Reading Time: 14 minutes Charles Darwin wrote a terrific book. Loved it the first time I read it, then read it twice more. And the more I read it, the more I liked it. Just super. Not everyone feels the same about this book. Some were so disturbed by what he wrote that they cut whole passages out before […]
Posted inBooks
Babes + booze 4ever: A review of “Girly Drinks” by Mallory O’Meara
Reading Time: 3 minutes When you hear the phrase “girly drinks,” what comes to mind? Probably pink drinks and cosmos, white wine, and sweet fruity stuff. But what if I told you these concoctions are a pretty recent development that actually reflects a centuries-long history of men trying to exclude women from developments in various important aspects of alcohol […]
Posted inBooks
Book review: Gunther Laird’s Unnecessary Science debunks Natural Law Theory from within
Reading Time: 4 minutes Laws like Roe vs. Wade that many secular people hold dear are under threat. Much of how they are threatened is down to the partisan nature of American politics, but it is also underwritten by thinkers who provide an ethical framework from which certain political factions can structure their legal assault. Edward Feser is an […]
Posted inBooks
New book announcement: 30 Arguments Against the Existence of ‘God’, Heaven, Hell, Satan, and Divine Design
Reading Time: 5 minutes “God” is arguably a nebulous term and might well mean a different thing to each of the many people who believe in it. In my new book 30 Arguments Against the Existence of “God”, Heaven, Hell, Satan, and Divine Design [UK], I take the commonality we see in many views, the understanding of classical theism, […]
Posted inPolitics
Christian nationalism in 2022: An interview with Katherine Stewart
Reading Time: 9 minutes Religious freedom advocate Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, has been writing about politics, policy, education, and church-state relations for over a decade. The Power Worshippers won first place in the Excellence in Nonfiction Books category from the Religion News Association as well as the Morris D. […]