July 01, 2008
Not just a flash in the pan
Fourteen months later, participants in the Hopkins study of psilocybin and spiritual experience are still reporting benefits.
August 20, 2007
My confession of non-faith
My objections to obnoxious atheism are to its obnoxiousness, not to its unbelief. If you need a label for my religious stance, "atheist" will do as well as any, which is to say, not very well at all. "That which alone is wise and just does, and does not, allow itself to be called 'Zeus'."
Empirical evidence on the content of American religiosity
If 80-90% of Americans believe that "chanting their wishes to the sky might get them granted by a magic being," as P.Z. Myers insists, then why did none of the Democratic candidates express that belief when the question was put to them squarely?
July 19, 2007
Bigoted atheism redux
P.Z. Myers, not satisfied with a single dose of correction, requires another. It's astonishing how proud some people are of not being able to understand religious language, like tone-deaf people telling you that you can't REALLY be enjoying music because there's no such thing.
July 18, 2007
If an adman had written Genesis ...
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Not just for the profit, either. God wanted a place where beings could find products that could make a difference in their lives.
July 17, 2007
Atheistic bigotry and religous metaphor
I understand religious bigots. Atheistic bigots are harder to take. If religious language is inherently metaphorical, there's no point debating its empirical content. Taken as a proposition in comparative primatology, "God created Man in His own image" is just gibberish. Taken as a proposition in botany, "My love is like a red, red rose" is also pretty silly.
April 08, 2007
"Nobody ever went broke
underestimating the intelligence of the public"
There's a natural human tendency to believe what ain't so; sometimes it takes religious forms, other times it's called astrology or motivational lecturing or self-help.
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January 28, 2007
Mushrooms and mystical experience
There's now good scientific support for the claim that psilocybin, the active agent in "magic" mushrooms, has a better-than-even chance of generating a full-blown mystical experience in properly selected and prepared subjects. Now what?
September 23, 2006
"He obtains his bread by the peril of his life"
On the meaning(s) of Rosh ha-Shanah, and a piece of its liturgy.
April 30, 2006
The Bible and genocide
How do contemporary believers in the inerrancy of the Bible deal with the clear statement in the text that God ordered on several occasions actions that would now count as genocide?
April 16, 2006
Divine payback
The Schulchan Orach has a warning for those who invoke the wrath of Heaven against their enemies.
April 03, 2006
Who knew?
The CEO of Borders is proud to say he hates Muslims as much as anyone, even if he did dump a magazine for carrying the infamous cartoons. Suddenly the boycott Red Blogistan has been calling for seems like a fine idea.
April 01, 2006
All prayers are answered
If you count "No" as an answer. A study of heart-surgery patients shows no effect from having them prayed for.
January 02, 2006
Chanukah update
The rabbis didn't like the Hasmoneans, and tried to take their holiday away from them with an invented miracle.
December 17, 2005
December 08, 2005
December 05, 2005
Headline of the month
Intelligent Design Might Be Meeting Its Maker Interesting story, too. It turns out there's a downside to disguising your theological/political hokum as science: people start to evaluate it by scientific criteria. As a result, the "Intelligent Design" scam lacks staying power. The Templeton Foundation, for example, is backing away, because ID folks weren't willing or able to do any actual...
November 18, 2005
Daily Lesson
Jonathan Zasloff writes: Early yesterday morning, the House Republicans passed a budget resolution severely cutting Medicaid, food stamps, and child care. Meanwhile, their allies in the Senate passed a resolution extending tax cuts for some of the wealthiest investors. Class, the Daily Lesson comes from Amos, 8:1-8: Thus the LORD showed me: Behold, a basket of summer fruit. And He...
November 17, 2005
Thanks to the Dalai Lama from a neuroscientist
Despite the boycott, there were 29,000 people registered for the Society for Neuroscience meeting where the Dalai Lama spoke.
November 15, 2005
A religion for grown-ups
The Dalai Lama says: "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change."
November 14, 2005
November 09, 2005
Evangelicals speak out for liberal churches' rights
The National Association of Evangelicals is working with the National Council of Churches to defend All Souls Episcopal Church against an IRS audit aimed at an anti-war sermon. Good.
November 06, 2005
"Creation care": a wedge to split the GOP coalition?
When the National Association of Evengelicals considers a call for limiting carbon emissions, Democrats face an opportunity and Republicans a potential nightmare.
November 03, 2005
National science = pseudoscience
Francisco Ayala says that "Intelligent Design" and other anti-Darwinist movements are almost entirely an American phenomenon. John Derbyshire points out that real scientific work is always cosmopolitan rather than national.
October 25, 2005
October 13, 2005
October 10, 2005
August 27, 2005
Myth, science, and "discrimination"
It isn't "relgious discrimination" when an academic institution refuses to treat superstition as science.
August 23, 2005
On wedges
Yes, the Discovery Institute wants to repeal the Enlightenment and go back to reading sacred texts instead of doing science. But not everyone worried about teaching "evolution" in the schools is signed up for that larger agenda.
July 06, 2005
Didactic v. critical teaching
Should teachers invite students to think critically about evolution? And were the ancient Greeks dumb enough to believe the Homeric stories as historical accounts?
July 04, 2005
Wittgenstein on religous belief
Why the sentence "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" should not be evaluated as false.
"Endowed by natural selection with certain unalienable rights"?
The Declaration of Independence builds directly on the Genesis myth about human origins.
June 26, 2005
June 23, 2005
June 21, 2005
May 06, 2005
Since when does "Christian" mean "right-wing fanatic"?
Is the right going to succeed in seizing another key symbol?
That-word-doesn't-mean-what-you-think-it-means Dep't
A Baptist church excommunicates its Democrats. Not with any political motivation, though.
May 05, 2005
April 26, 2005
Religion, politics, and bigotry
No, the Democrats in the Senate aren't "discriminating against people of faith."
April 24, 2005
April 05, 2005
Sex, exploitation, and theology
Mary Edsall points out the benefits of a tough stance on sexual activity.
April 04, 2005
March 03, 2005
Should we fear the "evangelical atheist"?
Is Mike Newdow a bigger threat than Jerry Falwell? No, I don't think so either.
February 19, 2005
David Hume foresees Osama bin Laden and Ralph Reed
Once someone starts acting in the name of God, God only knows what he will or won't do.
June 05, 2004
Remembering Amalek
How are we to remember forever to wipe out the memory of Amalek? I attempt an explication of a Hebrew koan.
May 28, 2004
May 19, 2004
A Unitarian is someone who believes in, at most, one God
The Texas State Controller has ruled that Unitarianism isn't a religion. That would have been news to Isaac Newton.
April 02, 2004
One Nation, under no god in particular?
Leon Wieseltier argues that the argument that "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't actually refer to the God of Moses ought to outrage lots of people: Jews and Christians, for example.
March 29, 2004
Ceremonial deism in classical times
If ceremonial deism is so harmless, why do Christians honor their early martyrs for refusing to burn incense on the altar before the statue of the Emperor?
March 26, 2004
Does banning the hijab enhance freedom?
"We received testimonies of Muslim fathers who had to transfer their daughters from public to (Catholic) private schools where they were free of pressure to wear the headscarf. Furthermore, in the increasing number of schools where girls wear the hijab, a clear majority of Muslim girls who do not wear the headscarf called for legal protection and asked the commission to ban all public displays of religious belief."
February 28, 2004
Avodim hayyinu l'Pharoh b'Mitzrayim
So the Bush Administration is supporting the anti-gay marriage FMA on the almost certainly false claim that otherwise the Full Faith and Credit clause will convert the decisions of the Massachusetts Supreme Court into a nationally binding mandate to recognize same-sex unions. And the right-wing media are loudly cheering for Gibson's Passion, with its blatantly anti-Semitic retelling of the Crucifixion...
January 03, 2004
Another bigot heard from
The always disgusting Cal Thomas weighs in on Dean's Jewish wife, throwing in a completely extraneous reference to oral sex just in case anyone thought it was OK to have children read Thomas's column. (Thanks to Atrios for the pointer.) Cal also seems to have a rather strange view of Congregationalism, one that would have considerably puzzled Congregationalists such as...
Christianity, love, hatred, and politics
Anyone who wants to see a sample of the sort of hate-mongering that too often passes for Christianity in American political discourse these days should take a look at this screed by someone named Matt Grills, is featured at Townhall.com, which is a significant conservative website. The thrust of the piece is that since Howard Dean isn't a fundamentalist, he...
December 29, 2003
Christianity in theory and practice:
second update
Steven Bainbridge replies here to an earlier post that criticized his views on the Cardinal Martino affair. Bainbridge and I had a brief email exchange, but I missed one of his messages (thank you, spammers) so I was negligent twice, first in not responding to him and then in not linking to his response when I did a follow-up post....
December 21, 2003
A solstice greeting
Today marks the winter solstice; at 5:14 Pacific time today (1:14 GMT December 22nd) the Sun touched the Tropic of Capricorn at 23 degrees 30 minutes south latitude, and started back north. (At least, that's how it looked from earth. The Sun probably didn't notice.) Under whatever name you celebrate it, to all of us in the Northern Hemisphere the...
Christianity in theory and practice: update
Not surprisingly, my post on Christianity and politics attracted some vigorous commentary. Some of it, written by people who like the label "Christian" but don't like Gospel ethics, merely denied that the texts say what they say. But much of it was quite serious. I should have been more emphatic -- though I don't think I could have been clearer...
December 19, 2003
Christianity in theory and in practice
I am not a Christian. That's a statement not only about my ethnicity but also about my belief system. Even putting aside the mathematically challenging concept that Trinity equals Unity and the accompanying (no doubt metaphorical, but still puzzling) attribution of familial relationships to the Godhead, the ethical claims in the Gospels seem hard to reconcile with common sense. Loving...
January 31, 2003
More Monkey Business
Some responses to my mailbag, and to the comments section of Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Electrolite: 1. I shouldn't have said "fool." Other than one action which I took (take) to be foolish, I have no knowledge of Prof. Dini; even if I'm right about the folly that's no reason to think that he's a fool generally. A bad inference,...
