Reading Time: 5 minutes Christian nationalism is an idea that is becoming a growing specter in the political landscape around the world. Does Christianity in general, or certain manifestations of it, have characteristics of fascism? Now, please understand that I am not labeling all Christians as fascists. Instead, I am comparing the structure of the Christian church and its […]
Deep Dive
Exploring the big questions—life, death, morality, consciousness, meaning—from a secular point of view.
Posted inReligion
What Christians won’t do to defend God’s Marvelous Plan®
Reading Time: 5 minutes God does nothing to explain his Plan and Christians don’t understand it, but that won’t stop them from defending it. Perhaps nothing is harder for them to justify than hell.
Posted inDeep Dive
Reclaiming human agency in how we think about AI
Reading Time: 9 minutes Online panic about AI models like ChatGPT follows a well-travelled path set by impoverished understandings of evolutionary theory. Can we reclaim human agency?
Posted inFree Expression
That which must not be seen
Reading Time: 6 minutes Religious people all over the world insist that their beliefs should control what everyone else can say, look at, or know about. The bargain of civilization means that these taboos can’t be enforceable.
Posted inWar and Peace
So this is 90 seconds to midnight
Reading Time: 4 minutes On January 24, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists officially moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock, which for three quarters of a century has been used to depict humanity’s risk of global disaster from nuclear war. When the clock was first launched, on the cover of the June […]
Posted inReligion
Christian defense of praise and worship: give praise to get presents
Reading Time: 3 minutes Here’s the selfish side of praise and worship: tell God how fabulous he is, and you get gifts in return.
Posted inReligion
Jesus as the new Moses
Reading Time: 8 minutes Jesus is many things to many people. To the early Christians, authors of the Gospels, he was certainly a construction of sorts. For example, for Matthew, Jesus was written in a way that emulated Moses in order that he appealed to Matthew’s Jewish audience. The use of this formula for a theological agenda strongly calls […]
Posted inDeep Dive
Should Muslims kill me?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Critics of Islam love the Sword Verse. It’s Koran 9:5, or the fifth verse of the ninth Surah, At-Tawbah, “The Repentance”. The bit they like says, “Kill the pagans wherever you find them.” The charge is often applied that Muslims are being instructed by Allah to murder everyone who does not share their religion. At […]
Posted inReligion
How Christians reframe prayer to sound exciting and effective
Reading Time: 7 minutes If there’s one universal complaint I’ve heard from Christians, one monolithic sore spot that seems to affect almost all of them, it is their inability to establish prayer habits. Even the most fervent and gung-ho of them willingly admit that their prayer lives are lacking. But instead of stressing the real-world good of cultivating such […]
Posted inThe Secular
Should Christmas trees be banned in tax-funded public spaces?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Although I’m a committed nontheist and ardent church-state separationist, I’m not inflexible about it. Which is to say I see no good reason to oppose Christmas trees, for example, in public, tax-supported spaces. It’s been a centuries-long American civic tradition to erect Christmas trees all over creation, so to speak—in public and private spaces—and these […]