Reading Time: 6 minutes Religious people all over the world insist that their beliefs should control what everyone else can say, look at, or know about. The bargain of civilization means that these taboos can’t be enforceable.
secularism
Posted inReligious News
Disestablish it for its own good: The Church of England and gay marriage
Reading Time: 5 minutes OnlySky · Disestablish It For Its Own Good – The Church Of England And Gay Marriage | Daniel James Sharp I followed with amusement the recent fracas over same-sex marriage in the Church of England. For half a decade, the Church has been debating its doctrines relating to sexuality, and the thought of gentle Anglicans […]
Posted inArt
Secular freedom, compassion, and controversial spiritual symbols
Reading Time: 4 minutes A recent controversy over Islamic art raises the question of how we ought to deal with art and images in a world of deep diversity. At Hamline University in Minnesota, Erika López Prater lost her job teaching art history because she showed students artistic representations of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. A Muslim student took offense. The University’s […]
Posted inCulture
What the secular shift has done to New Year’s resolutions
Reading Time: 4 minutes In the last few hundred years in the West, we may observe the following progression: Under the influence of secularization, what for centuries had been wrapped in the trappings of faith gets transformed into routine worldly convention—without a religious aroma. Here are some examples: The New Year is no different. Beginning with an air of […]
Posted inThe Secular
Should secularists help build a better idea of God?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Since secularists have no immediate hope of a society-wide rejection of God belief, secularists should welcome a better idea of God. If people are going to have belief in God, then perhaps they can at least embrace a smart and humane idea of God. From the theist perspective, might theists welcome secularist critiques of God […]
Posted inThe Future
The longtermism that works—and the kind that doesn’t
Reading Time: 10 minutes In 2004, a tsunami and earthquake killed almost 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries. Many forms of relief then mouldered on the beaches—used clothes, high heel shoes, expired medicines—because “in-kind” donations are well known not to be effective forms of aid on a global scale. The wrong hair products to survivors of Hurricane Katrina. […]
Posted inPolitics
America is a long argument
Reading Time: 4 minutes Whatever your political views, we need to drop the pretense that the Constitution has One True Meaning we can discover or that the founders had one monolithic opinion we can appeal to.
Posted inThe Secular
Whither the witches?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Some version of the word witch is found in all languages and cultures and it generally refers to a person, often female, who is thought to affect people and the material world through benevolent or malevolent magic. The problem for the word in American and European usage is that it is so laden with connotations […]
Posted inThe Secular
Understanding the secular vote
Reading Time: 6 minutes Already influential, secular voters will soon be the dominant voice in US elections, says political analyst Juhem Navarro-Rivera.
Posted inLeaving Religion
Collapse: Inside Ireland’s stunning rebuke of Catholicism
Reading Time: 9 minutes The speed and conviction of Ireland’s repudiation of the Catholic Church is without precedent in the world—and for good reason.