Reading Time: 6 minutes All I could think of when a searing pain spread across my chest as I sat on a bus last week was “No, no, NO! This is not the way I want to go.” Dying of a heart attack is just so…mundane. And that manner of passing would certainly not earn me a place in […]
Death & Dying
Grappling with the difficult questions of death and dying from a secular, nonreligious point of view.
Posted inGeneral
Man arrested for placing flowers on fiancée’s grave after complaint from her preacher dad
Reading Time: 3 minutes Rev. Tom Ford III won’t explain why he demanded the arrest of his once-future son-in-law who was mourning his dead fiancée.
Posted inVideo
An impossible choice
Reading Time: < 1 minute A short film about the dichotomy between faith-based and science-based approaches to death and suffering. Written, directed, and edited by Steve Alvarez.
Posted inDeath & Dying
A prepaid funeral plan? Over my dead body!
Reading Time: 5 minutes This morning I did a double-take when I read the following sentence: “Despite amazing advances in medical science and technology, the mortality rate for human beings stands at a whopping 100 percent.” I had to read it twice before concluding that someone was having a laugh. A line like that could only be delivered by […]
Posted inCritical thinking
How ghost stories helped me live my life to the fullest
Reading Time: 4 minutes It was a dark and stormy night. Really. A few weeks ago, we had a crazy storm blow through. I was snuggled up in my bed with the house to myself. My favorite gardenia scented candle was burning, my nose buried in a book, and a cup of chamomile tea on my nightstand. The only […]
Posted inDeath & Dying, General
Bob Enyart, Who Mocked AIDS Victims and Spread COVID Lies, Has Died of COVID
Reading Time: 3 minutes Bob Enyart was a victim of his own damn ignorance.
Posted inDeath & Dying, General, Politics
Rural, White Evangelical, and Republican: A Deadly Combination in a Pandemic
Reading Time: 3 minutes It is hard to stay hopeful when your own family refuses to see reason.
Posted inDeath & Dying, General
Despite Prayers and Fasting, Pastor Whose Church Downplayed COVID Dies of COVID
Reading Time: 2 minutes Center Point Church told people not to worry about COVID because God used suffering “to draw people to Himself.”
Posted inDeath & Dying, General
Tom Flynn, a Longtime Leader in the Secular Humanist Movement, Has Died at 66
Reading Time: 2 minutes Tom Flynn, the editor of Free Inquiry magazine, was a champion of the freethought movement for decades.
Posted inDeath & Dying
The Greatest Fear
Reading Time: 2 minutes Fear of death is a great motivator. Everyone has this instinctive fear, and its counterpart, self-preservation. Religious belief allays that fear with the promise of an eternal soul. Children learn early that all people eventually die. They are especially susceptible to the promises of “salvation” through religious belief. Once implanted, those ideas become a virtually […]