Reading Time: 3 minutes As an American traveling the world over the years, I noticed with curiosity that, especially in foreign cities, people generally dressed as Americans do—clad not in their traditional garb but in Western-style (global West, not Wild West) shirts and pants, blouses and skirts. They did this despite their own indigenous fashions being, in my view, […]
Enlightenment
Posted inBiology
Let us all now praise caffeine
Reading Time: 6 minutes Caffeine is a psychoactive and addictive drug, even if we rarely think of it that way. Still, our lives would be poorer without it.
Posted inPolitics
Will faith in a ‘divinely-inspired’ Constitution save us?
Reading Time: 3 minutes During a recent hearing of the House January 6 committee, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) stated that the U.S. Constitution is “divinely inspired.” She was referring to testimony from Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of Arizona’s House. In his testimony, Bowers said, “it is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired.” Bowers was […]
Posted inHistory
The unmaking of Enlightenment myth
Reading Time: 2 minutes In this week’s first column, “The Enlightenment didn’t change everything,” I explored how vaguely gesturing at histories of “The Enlightenment” does a disservice to the present. There was no magical transformation in human neurobiology in the 17th and 18th centuries. No sudden shift from a time of mystic thinking to an era without. Enlightenment myth […]
Posted inHistory
The Enlightenment didn’t change everything
Reading Time: 9 minutes My eldest nephew was three years old the first time I let him down. We were watching a video about deep-space exploration, and I had just finished explaining that “we” had launched Voyagers 1 and 2 in 1977, to study the outer solar system and interstellar space. “We? Did you do that?” “Well, no, I […]
Posted inGeneral, The Secular
Godly philosopher Buber lauded atheism but couldn’t embrace it
Reading Time: 4 minutes Twentieth-century Philosopher Martin Buber Martin Buber understood the beauty of atheism while maintaining a complex sense of the divine.
Posted inPolitics
House GOP faithful ‘executed’ Rep. Liz Cheney for heresy
Reading Time: 4 minutes Make no mistake. U.S. House Republicans figuratively burned Rep. Liz Cheney alive for truthful heresy, not GOP-unfriendly policy differences.
Posted inPolitics
We’re Still Not Going to Hell in a Handcart
Reading Time: 10 minutes I wrote about this years back when Steven Pinker produced his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he set out that things, despite what we are constantly told, are not getting worse. In fact, they are getting better across pretty much every metric (overpopulation and environment aside). Pinker’s new book Enlightenment Now, deals with the […]
Posted inUncategorized
James Madison gave Americans religious liberty. Happy birthday, Jim!
Reading Time: 5 minutes Americans can thank James Madison for their religious freedom — and for keeping faith out of government, although evangelicals keep trying to put it in.
Posted inReligion, Science, The Secular
If you ‘feel’ you have a ‘soul,’ that’s a clue you’re not thinking
Reading Time: 5 minutes Meditators, long-distance runners, young people in love and potheads all feel divine connections from time to time. They’re always mistaken.