Reading Time: 2 minutes This was written a few years ago, but it’s still good for a chuckle. The Catholic Church here in Orange County, California has yet another controversy to deal with along with their pedophile priests. In an LA Times article today, I learned that kneeling can be dangerous to your spiritual health. The pastor at St. Mary’s […]
Bert Bigelow
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Does Faith Give Meaning To Life?
Reading Time: < 1 minute Religious believers say that faith gives “meaning” to their life. As a lifelong nonbeliever, I do not understand that. My life is what I make of it…what I DO with it. How does sitting and praying to God or believing in God give meaning to life? It may give some people solace…to believe that death […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
The Problem is Self-Righteousness
Reading Time: 2 minutes Everybody suffers from it…except me, of course. Well, I sometimes get up on my high horse about gas-guzzling SUV’s, but that’s different. I’m right, and I am just trying to help out all those poor deluded people who don’t get it. Even when I ascend the pulpit and thunder, “Repent, ye wastrels!” That’s not self-righteousness. […]
Posted inReligion
A Question of Grace for Nonbelievers
Reading Time: 2 minutes A nonbeliever friend recently posed a question to me. He recounted an experience that he and his wife had at a family dinner during a recent holiday season, and asked what my response would have been to the situation. Most of the people present were either nonbelievers or what I will call “Nominal Christians.” They attend […]
Posted inPolitics
News Flash – Ohm’s Law Questioned
Reading Time: 2 minutes The following little satirical spoof was written during the George W. Bush Presidency when the Religious Right was pushing hard to get their creationist Trojan Horse called Intelligent Design included in high school biology textbooks. News Flash!!! Religious Right questions Ohm’s Law. Says it’s “just a theory with no proof.” WASHINGTON – Religious Right leaders […]
Posted inUncategorized
Creation vs. Big Bang
Reading Time: 2 minutes I have been reading a lot of Thomas Paine recently. I just finished “Age of Reason.” I know that Robert Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic” of the 19th Century, admired Paine, and it is clear that many of his ideas came from Paine’s writings, especially “Age of Reason.” The phrasing that Ingersoll uses to describe the […]
Posted inThe Secular
Religious Freedom…even if it breaks laws?
Reading Time: 2 minutes A few years ago, the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the separation of government and religion, ruling that members of a Christian sect could use a hallucinogenic tea as part of their religious ritual. The Santa Fe, New Mexico-based group has about 130 members, and imports a substance known as hoasca which is […]
Posted inPolitics, The Secular
A Letter to a Believer
Reading Time: 8 minutes It was more than ten years ago that two court cases made it to the Supreme Court. They dealt with the display of religious messages, like the Ten Commandments, in publicly-owned facilities. An elderly cousin of mine was horrified by those decisions, claiming that they violated the Constitution. He disparaged the SCOTUS justices as know-nothing […]
Posted inUncategorized
Cars vs. Guns
Reading Time: 3 minutes I was arguing with a guy about gun control. He says cars kill more people than guns. So we need car control more than we need gun control. There’s a difference between a car accident and shooting someone. Accident. That’s the difference. We have traffic laws, car safety laws, drunk driving laws, drivers license tests. […]
Posted inUncategorized
Adam Smith Would Be Shaking His Head
Reading Time: 4 minutes As economics has come up on another thread, I thought I would take this opportunity to talk a little more about, well, economics. Adam Smith proposed in his 1776 book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” that if each individual in a society operates in his own best interest […]