Reading Time: 5 minutes This is our moment: this secular moment. The question of the moral and spiritual foundation of secular civilization is everywhere. You can see it in New York Times columnist David Brooks’s recent piece in The Atlantic: How America Got Mean. In the article, Brooks describes a 1950s, post-war America on firm moral/spiritual foundations in contrast […]
morality
Posted inReligion
Revisiting Hitchens’ challenge and the value of hope
Reading Time: 6 minutes Atheist Christopher Hitchens made a famous moral challenge to Christians. Let’s consider a second Christian response.
Posted inEthics and Morality
What is a ‘real man,’ according to the Bible?
Reading Time: 3 minutes A conservative Christian site has a list of biblical rules for a modern man of God. But why stop there? Let’s look to the Bible to make a more thorough list.
Posted inEthics and Morality
When living kids become organ donors
Reading Time: 4 minutes The passage below, quoting “Anna,” the traumatized child protagonist in Jodi Picoult’s disquieting novel, My Sister’s Keeper, sets the messy table for this essay: My parents tried to make things normal, but that’s a relative term. The truth is, I was never really a kid. To be honest, neither were Kate and Jesse. I guess maybe […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
The illusion of choice in what we believe
Reading Time: 6 minutes There is a phenomenon that has been taking place, particularly in the US, with greater regularity over the last few decades—the behavior of “church shopping.” The congregant attends a church and listens to the pastor making moral-political statements, and they think to themselves, “This pastor is off the track here. I need to find me […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
The United States has an atonement problem
Reading Time: 6 minutes Throughout our history, but particularly since 2016, when Donald Trump first rode down that ill-fated escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential candidacy, it has grown ever clearer that Americans have a serious problem with atonement. We tend to run hellbent away from public accountability. It’s not just Trump, who is still trying mightily […]
Posted inDeep Dive
Who owns morality?
Reading Time: 4 minutes At some point during our merry journey through secularism, we all encounter some benighted religious people who incredulously ask: “If you don’t believe in a god, where does your morality come from?” Religious people believe that the source of their morality is their god and that their religious belief is the exercise of that morality. […]
Posted inLaw
Scientology isn’t on trial—but yes, it is
Reading Time: 10 minutes CW: Sexual assault and harassment Over the years, Scientology has skillfully avoided open challenge, often operating in clandestine ways, well under the radar. But there is no escaping the bright lights and media attention of a huge court case, and for Scientology, the Danny Masterson rape trial is huge. It may also include testimony by […]
Posted inThe Secular
20 secular moral beacons
Reading Time: 15 minutes Mother Teresa. The Dalai Lama. Martin Luther King. Gandhi. If you ask most people to think of prominent individuals who represent the highest of moral activism, the apex of humanitarianism, the aspirational essence of care, compassion, and justice —these are the names that will spring quickest from their lips. It’s a fine list. Aside from […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
What might 100,000 more years of evolution do for the future of morality?
Reading Time: 2 minutes It was a bawdy planet for hundreds of millions of years; the whole of it reeked of sex without a whiff of morals in the air. Then, rather late in the day, a mere several thousand years ago, humans began offering moral codes recommending ‘licit’ sexual expression. But humans found it difficult to live up to those […]