Reading Time: 4 minutes Thanks to anti-vaccine ideology, diseases long ago vanquished are creeping back—even polio.
Judaism
Posted inPolitics
Ohio senate candidate is a ‘proud Jew’ using evangelical churches to attract GOP votes
Reading Time: 4 minutes Although the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause was intended to separate church from state. But Josh Mandel, hoping to become a US senator, doesn’t believe in church/state separation and is aggressively wooing evangelical MAGA cultists in a bid to become a US senator. He’s […]
Posted inReligious News
Jewish leaders vow to oppose the Sunshine Protection Act: ‘It will affect our religious life’
Reading Time: 4 minutes I have too many damn clocks in my apartment, and twice a year I have to adjust them. After dealing on Sunday with the last of six that require manual adjustment— while reciting the “spring forward, fall back” mantra—I learned that a bill that would do away with the need for these changes is being […]
Posted inReligion
New research says: Most Americans love God but ignore his impotence
Reading Time: 4 minutes (Writer’s note: If you’d like to receive emailed links to each of my columns when posted, please sign up here.) A recent Pew Research Center survey on U.S. attitudes toward the so-called “problem of evil” (and implied divine impotence) brightly underscores how the perpetuating power of religious indoctrination continues into the 21st century to corrupt […]
Posted inReligion
The dabbling, ‘mad alien’ God of Richard Swinburne
Reading Time: 7 minutes In this piece, I will present the views of British philosopher and leading Christian apologist Richard Swinburne, paraphrased by often using his words, in italics. The first question is, which god? He says it is that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Christian god is called God, which distinguishes him from Yahweh or Jehovah, and […]
Posted inHistory
What did Jews ever do to deserve such epic contempt?
Reading Time: 6 minutes Why do so many people around the world seem to hate Jews? This perplexed me as a kid when I first learned about the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in school and watched horrendous black-and-white films of Nazi bulldozers shoving huge piles of dead, emaciated Jewish prisoners into mass graves. And I was […]
Posted inReligion
A brief prehistory of Hell
Reading Time: 7 minutes Today, let’s talk about the prehistory of the Christian notion of Hell.
Posted inGeneral
It’s Not Anti-Semitic to Criticize Israel
Reading Time: 4 minutes Anti-Semitism is real and serious, but the charge shouldn’t be wielded to shut down any condemnation of the state of Israel.
Posted inReligion
A Brief Prehistory of Hell (Journey Into Hell #6)
Reading Time: 9 minutes Today, let’s talk about the prehistory of the Christian notion of Hell.
Posted inGeneral
When Religious Rituals Turn Deadly
Reading Time: 4 minutes If the people who attended these festivals were obeying the will of God, as they believed, why didn’t he protect them?