Reading Time: 5 minutes Surprisingly, the creators didn’t flinch from depicting the books’ overarching plot: a war against God in the name of human freedom.
Books
Exploring the written word and the world of books from a secular perspective.
Posted inParenting & Family
What rights do parents have over their children’s education?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Religious conservatives want to impose heavy-handed censorship on public schools. We should reject this, but how much control should parents have over what is taught?
Posted inFiction
Dreaming up worse to imagine better: Why I write bleak humanist fiction
Reading Time: 7 minutes My heart is a touch heavy this birthday of mine. Don’t get me wrong: all birthdays are fantastic, so long as you’re on the right side of the green. (And even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t be in any position to complain, now would I?) Moreover, I’m publishing my first novel today, which is a […]
Posted inCulture
The power of storytelling
Reading Time: 4 minutes In my interview with Monica Guzman, author of I Never Thought of It That Way (BenBella Books, 2022) and Senior Fellow for Public Practice at Braver Angels, she spoke about storytelling as a tool that can bridge seemingly intractable divides. Intrigued, I sat down for a conversation with Mark Yaconelli, founder of the storytelling community […]
Posted inBooks
Public libraries aren’t censoring Kirk Cameron. He just wants attention.
Reading Time: 5 minutes In a desperate plea for attention and a pathetic attempt to market his new children’s book, Christian evangelist and former TV star Kirk Cameron claims libraries are censoring him even while welcoming drag queens and hosting LGBTQ-friendly events. Cameron’s publishers at Brave Books told FOX that they reached out to 50 public libraries to see […]
Posted inBooks
New book: ‘2-Minute Christianity’!
Reading Time: 3 minutes This new book presents 50 big ideas every Christian needs to know. Christians can make up their own minds, but they need the facts. Why weren’t they taught this from the pulpit?
Posted inBooks
Learning on the last page what a book is about: ‘When We Cease to Understand the World’
Reading Time: 4 minutes When We Cease to Understand the World is an excellent but very odd book. Kernels of fact are surrounded by glittering shells of variegated fiction. As a genre, it feels different than historical fiction. It might rather be labeled biographical fiction, or fictive biography, or truth that never occurred. I got through the whole book before I found […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Tolkien never solved the problem of evil
Reading Time: 5 minutes Like the Christian theology that inspired him, J.R.R. Tolkien could never explain why a benevolent creator permitted the existence of evil.
Posted inFilm/TV
‘The Peripheral’ plays it safe with William Gibson’s future thinking
Reading Time: 6 minutes In some ways, the opening scene of The Terminator (1984) had to have come as a relief to its first audiences. Gritty, darkly lit, with text grimly informing us that this was the city of Los Angeles in 2029, it showed us tank treads crushing human skulls beneath a machine-dominated gray skyline, with lasers and […]
Posted inBooks
The brisk, thoughtful intro to Satanism you’ve been waiting for
Reading Time: 4 minutes Imagine you’re going to throw a huge party, no limits. You can invite as many people as you want. The setting is totally up to you: perhaps a mansion atop a hill? Or maybe an open meadow surrounded by deep woods. Or a beachfront yacht club. As for catering—whatever you like. Any food is possible […]