Reading Time: 4 minutes Is organized atheism too much like a religion? Is it okay for secular people to participate in rituals? If a humanist holds beliefs, is this dogmatic? Can a nonreligious person say “bless you” after someone sneezes? Probably every atheist or nonreligious person has, at some point in their lives, asked themselves or been asked questions […]
Book Reviews
Posted inBooks
Book review: Remembrance of Earth’s Past
Reading Time: 3 minutes Have you ever stared at the stars and thought that, given the unfathomable number of stars and planets in the universe, other life simply must exist? The number of observable galaxies ranges in the hundreds of billions. Surely we are not that special. Yet we still have no evidence of extraterrestrial life. You aren’t the […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Douglas Adams: There is no normal
Reading Time: 3 minutes OnlySky · Douglas Adams: There is no normal | Dale McGowan If the universe were in any way fair or kind, satirist Douglas Adams would be turning 70 today. Adams was one of those people whose sensibility slapped me awake—not completely awake, but that’s good for a reason I’ll get to. Most of the time, […]
Posted inBooks
Book review: Gunther Laird’s Unnecessary Science debunks Natural Law Theory from within
Reading Time: 4 minutes Laws like Roe vs. Wade that many secular people hold dear are under threat. Much of how they are threatened is down to the partisan nature of American politics, but it is also underwritten by thinkers who provide an ethical framework from which certain political factions can structure their legal assault. Edward Feser is an […]
Posted inPolitics
Christian nationalism in 2022: An interview with Katherine Stewart
Reading Time: 9 minutes Religious freedom advocate Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, has been writing about politics, policy, education, and church-state relations for over a decade. The Power Worshippers won first place in the Excellence in Nonfiction Books category from the Religion News Association as well as the Morris D. […]
Posted inPhilosophy
Divine command theory defended, and re-attacked
Reading Time: 5 minutes Having recently written a piece drawing on fellow OnlySky writing colleague Phil Zuckerman’s brilliant book What It Means To Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, it is always nice to receive critiques of my writing. Just to remind you, the piece was about Divine Command Theory (DCT), which is the […]
Posted inBooks
Metaxas beats a very live horse in ‘Is Atheism Dead?’
Reading Time: 5 minutes Conservative Christian writer Eric Metaxas’ self-serving exercise in apologetics—Is Atheism Dead? (2021)—begins with this florid flourish of biblical triumphalism in his introduction: “We are living in unprecedentedly exciting times. But most of us don’t know it yet. That’s essentially the point of this book, to share the news that what many people have dreamt of—and […]
Posted inParenting & Family
Why I let my son read a children’s book by Rush Limbaugh
Reading Time: 3 minutes First off, I didn’t want to. Let’s get that out of the way right now. If you haven’t heard of it—and I’d be a little jealous if you haven’t—the skid mark on the underwear that is talk radio wrote a book series of children’s historical fiction. The main character is called…wait for it…Rush Revere. My […]
Posted inEducation
Censorship in education is a social justice issue
Reading Time: 3 minutes I just read that a Tennessee school board is banning the graphic novel Maus, and boy am I pissed off. Banning books protects no innocent child, but instead makes it less likely that true education and social justice aims can be reached. Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust is a classic for many reasons: […]
Posted inGeneral
Changing tracks: This is Global Humanist Shoptalk
Reading Time: 7 minutes Do you remember the film Snowpiercer ? You might recall the director, Bong Joon-ho, from Parasite, which famously depicted a lower-class family’s infiltration of an upper-class household. But class has always been a key consideration in his work, and it shows up in the former, too. Today, as I introduce the idea of Global Humanist […]