Reading Time: 3 minutes A wide-ranging report into the relationship between religion and the state in the UK is set to be released in the coming weeks. The “Independent Faith Engagement Review” has been compiled by Colin Bloom, the former head of the Conservative Christian Fellowship (an organization within the Conservative Party that aims to “inspire and equip believers […]
Deep Dive
Exploring the big questions—life, death, morality, consciousness, meaning—from a secular point of view.
Posted inReligion
Did Jesus die by crucifixion?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Easter is fast approaching… Apologists like William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and Mike Licona often use the “Minimal Facts” argument to “prove” that the Resurrection of Jesus can be shown to be a historical “fact.” This approach seeks to establish—or take as givens—certain claims that most everyone will agree to, and these then supposedly lead […]
Posted inHistory
Israel and the West: How we lost nuance with Jewish state politics
Reading Time: 6 minutes On May 14, Israel will celebrate seventy-five years since its Declaration of Independence in 1948, when the British Mandate of Palestine was terminated early after a UN resolution promoting partition between Arab and Jewish sectors led to a breakdown in British regional authority and sparked a massive civil war that stretched well into 1949, and […]
Posted inPhilosophy
On final solutions
Reading Time: 3 minutes One of the failings of religion is inflexibility. Religious people may conclude that a god is the source of objective morality. Therefore, they are externalizing and objectivizing a relative, subjective concept. Also, they are obviating the possibility of error correction and progress. Religious people sometimes see arguments inside their movements and assume that they are […]
Posted inReligion
Polygamy (and other outdated institutions that God approves of)
Reading Time: 6 minutes Let’s look at what the Bible actually says about polygamy and how God regulates it (like another institution we’ve explored …). Our Christian apologist is still confused about critiques of polygamy vs. polygamists.
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Do we need the opiate of religion?
Reading Time: 4 minutes These are hopeless times. A widely-cited study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 42% of high school students report persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness. Rates of sadness and hopelessness have increased steadily since 2011 when only 28% of high schoolers reported the same. A variety of explanations have been offered […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
A life that’s more than a bucket list
Reading Time: 4 minutes For the past two years, my friend Paul Louis Metzger has devoted untold hours and a huge portion of his energy to something that would never appear on anyone’s bucket list—driving to a care facility several days a week to care for his young-adult son Christopher. Christopher suffered a traumatic brain injury and remains in […]
Posted inMyth & Folklore
What the world can teach us about religiosity at home
Reading Time: 8 minutes The man who sells newspapers in my barrio is an Evangelical Christian, and also a deeply angry person living in a lot of pain. He lost his wife to COVID-19, he spent the vast majority of his life barely making ends meet, and he attributes not killing himself to the knowledge that his god will […]
Posted inViolence
‘Guns don’t kill…transgender terrorists do’—the latest in culture war opportunism
Reading Time: 5 minutes The news has sent waves across America: A former pupil returned to their Nashville elementary school to gun down three children and three adults. What happened was horrific. As we discuss the terrible ordeal, no discussion should take away from this reality. What the shooter did was disgusting, and when we seek understanding of what […]
Posted inReligion
The problem of polygamy: how to refurbish the Bible’s good reputation?
Reading Time: 4 minutes A Christian apologist wrestles with the fact that many of the Bible’s good men were polygamists. How could God do this? Things make more sense if you consider that the Bible thought polygamy was fine.