Reading Time: < 1 minute French Enlightenment philosopher, encyclopedist, and atheist (and contemporary of Voltaire) Denis Diderot succinctly explained religious and irreligious morality in a brief piece he called, ‘Conversations with a Christian Lady.’ It will be most effective if you read this aloud in your best French accent. The characters are no one in particular. La Marechale: Are you […]
Religious Morality
Posted inFilm/TV
Q and Yahweh: Unworthy gods
Reading Time: 5 minutes Star Trek’s omnipotent prankster Q shows the folly of worshipping beings who possess superior power, but not superior morality or wisdom.
Posted inEthics
No, Jesus wasn’t a progressive
Reading Time: 5 minutes Encouraging individuals to do good deeds isn’t the same as calling for reform of oppressive power structures.
Posted inReligion
Beautiful ideas, beautiful buildings, terrible evils
Reading Time: 5 minutes Religion exemplifies the dichotomy of the human spirit: the same churches that gave birth to uplifting philosophies and great works of art are also guilty of horrendous crimes against humanity.
Posted inHistory
Morality evolves
Reading Time: 2 minutes Alan Turing’s life is an example of how bigotry in the name of “God’s law” has gradually been dropped.
Posted inReligion
What makes evangelicals so sure that the pandemic isn’t God’s judgment on them?
Reading Time: 6 minutes [Previous: Are COVID deaths natural selection in action?] Although the Omicron wave is receding, the threat of COVID isn’t over. Over a thousand people are still dying each and every day in the U.S. alone, many more around the world. Vaccination rates remain stubbornly low, and very young children still have no approved vaccine at […]
Posted inEthics
Beyond carrot-and-stick morality
Reading Time: 6 minutes OnlySky · Beyond carrot and stick morality | Jonathan MS Pearce Sarah looks after vulnerable children on weekends at a children’s sheltered home. During the week, she trains to be a social worker. In her early thirties, she is still feeling her way, looking for fulfillment. She doesn’t believe in God. She did once, but […]
Posted inGeneral
Hypocrisy Reveals Christians’ True Morality
Reading Time: 6 minutes If people have a stated morality that they’re not actually living, then they’re being inauthentic. Inauthenticity is not a symptom of sin nature. It’s just being human. For such people, the real morals by which they live can be found elsewhere. Whatever they’re living day-to-day, that is their moral code — not what comes out of their mouths.
Posted inGeneral
The Southern Baptists Face Daylight
Reading Time: 5 minutes I’ve written about the Catholic church’s decades-long conspiracy to protect the sexual predators in the priesthood, and their belated and inadequate efforts to atone once the truth got out. It was evil on an industrial scale – but it wasn’t unique. This is a pattern in corrupt institutions of all kinds. Time and again, when […]
Posted inGeneral
The Southern Baptists Face Daylight
Reading Time: 5 minutes The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention defy, then grudgingly submit to, a demand that they reveal what they knew about sexual predators in the denomination.