I’ve been reading Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists. De Botton’s big idea is that the least interesting thing about religion is whether its claims about God are true. We should be more interested in the fact that religions have had a couple of … Continue reading →

Sitting in those pews transports me back through my memories and even further back into the memories of so many centuries past. Continue reading →

Usual disclaimer: discrimination against atheists is pretty tame compared to the discrimination that blacks and jews and gays have historically faced. It’s not like atheists were ever persecuted or excluded from public office [er, you sure? -ed]. This bloggingheads.tv vialog … Continue reading →

Of all the trends in modern political discourse, the most ridiculous is the tendency in certain circles to go searching for things to be offended by. The latest group, The American Atheists, claim that including a pile of rubble – … Continue reading →

It used to be hard to find well-thought-out justifications for atheism. Most people I knew were atheists but didn’t like to talk about it much (probably because they didn’t know that most people they knew were atheists too). The only … Continue reading →

I gave up on reading or writing about atheism and secularism partly because it struck me that everything that can be said has already been said. If you haven’t heard the arguments by now, you are not listening. But this, … Continue reading →

This is awesome in so many ways that I don’t know where to begin. When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or … Continue reading →

They say that without religion, we would not have the Sistine Chapel or Handel’s Messiah or the cathedral at Rouens. Well, without atheism Julia Sweeney would not have made Letting Go of God. After an hour of listening to Julia’s … Continue reading →

I don’t know why but Pat Robertson is suddenly on my TV and he and his co-host are taking it in turn to say things like: I am sensing that one of our viewers has a torn meniscus but God … Continue reading →

Whenever I read something crazy in the Times – usually by Brooks – I bookmark it with the intention to blog my reaction. I have a whole backlog of Brooks columns to comment on and half-written posts brim full of … Continue reading →