Reading Time: 4 minutes An elderly scientist in India is working hard to teach rural villagers how to think rationally.
Critical thinking
Understanding critical thinking—what it is, why it’s important—from a secular point of view.
Posted inCritical thinking, General
Bullet in Chest Won’t Send You to Heaven
Reading Time: 3 minutes What crazy notions would cause a young woman to willingly shoot her boyfriend, the father of their unborn child, at his request?
Posted inHistory
Christian Coercion: From Tolerated to Dominant
Reading Time: 10 minutes We’ve been talking lately about the early history of Christianity and how different it is from the history offered up by most Christian apologists and leaders. This definitely is not a history I learned growing up Catholic or as a fundamentalist lass! If anything, it’s even more fascinating to me than the fictionalized version–and shows me […]
Posted inCritical thinking, General, Religion, The Secular
C.S. Lewis and the Argument from Spilled Milk
Reading Time: 4 minutes I see a quote from C.S. Lewis circulated quite a bit, and I’d like to give my response to the argument it presents. Perhaps when I am done explaining what’s wrong with it, you will start to see why Lewis admitted later in life that: Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work […]
Posted inCritical thinking, General, History, Philosophy
FAQ: Errors in the Bible, Freewill and the Problem of Evil
Reading Time: 5 minutes This week a new friend wrote me about his own deconversion, and he asked me a few questions that I thought I should share for the benefit of any other readers thinking about the same things. After I’m done answering, I’d like to hear more suggestions from you: I’m wondering if there are any resources you […]
Posted inCritical thinking, General, Philosophy, Religion
Religion and the Nepotism of the Mind
Reading Time: 7 minutes Nepotism happens when a person in a position of power or privilege rewards a relative with another position of power simply because they are related. As long as there have been human beings, there has been nepotism. I’m pretty sure it happens in every living species with a social hierarchy, but humans generally denounce the practice because […]
Posted inCritical thinking
The motive of the questioner is beside the point
Reading Time: 3 minutes When a system of belief lacks evidential support, it must compensate for this weakness by surrounding itself with defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms do nothing to address the flaws themselves, rather they attempt to divert attention away from the vulnerabilities of the system, drawing fire in an alternative direction. By far the laziest (and therefore the […]
Posted inCritical thinking
Being Toto
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Wizard of Oz is a secular humanist parable. I’m not the first to suggest this possibility. But the eye roll I got from my 17-year-old son when I said it at dinner the other night could have cleared the dishes from the table. He’s currently soldiering through an AP Lit class in which the […]
Posted inCritical thinking, Death & Dying, Parenting & Family, Science
Scooby meets The Shining
Reading Time: 5 minutes Back from an EPIC two-week family vacation in California, probably our last big trip as a family unit. We ended in Yosemite, the most sock-off-knocking place on Earth, staying outside of the park in the tiny Gold Rush town of Coulterville at the Hotel Jeffery. It was an unmissable opportunity. The Jeffery, you see, is […]
Posted inCritical thinking, Science
In which a really smart man makes me sad
Reading Time: 3 minutes I just finished writing a short piece on the ways in which “atheist” and “agnostic” can both describe the same worldview: it is my considered opinion that God does not exist (atheist), and because you can never be quite sure of such a thing, I’m not quite sure (agnostic). While doing the research, I came […]