Ponderous Ruminations, Maybe Tedious
The world is too much with us, late and son. Before long, it can begin to seem reasonable. I have my doubts. The usual always seems reasonable. For example, existence seems reasonable. We wake up every morning and there it is. Actually it isn’t reasonable. It’s just customary. We avoid thinking about this so as...
Read MoreHeaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing, by Peter Kreeft
Seeing that the first sentence in the first paragraph of the first chapter of Peter Kreeft's book Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing is a quote from C.S. Lewis, my suspicions were aroused right away. Kreeft hastened to confirm them, quoting Lewis again four pages further on, and again eleven pages after that, then four pages...
Read MoreShall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, by Eric Kaufmann
Did you know that Osama bin Laden has twenty-five children? And that his Dad had fifty-four? (Osama seems to be number 17.) Bin Laden Sr. was careful never to have more than four wives at a time, though, divorcing older wives in order to marry younger ones, thus staying within the proper Koranic bounds. Like...
Read MoreThe Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, by Nicholas Wade
With this new book, New York Times science reporter Nicholas Wade positions himself as a serious challenger to Steven Pinker for the title Best Living Popularizer of the Human Sciences. Wade's 2006 book Before the Dawn was a masterly survey of current knowledge about our deep ancestry, informed by recent discoveries in genetics and archeology....
Read MoreDo I mock Evangelicals?
As a child I was indoctrinated with some basic precepts regarding life among other human beings. Don't put your elbows on the dinner table. Don't speak with your mouth full. Blow your nose into a handkerchief. (I pause to notice how quaint that one seems now, when linen handkerchiefs have wellnigh vanished from the stores....
Read MoreI am entirely against government bans on “cults.” Such a ban would be an instrument for public administrators trying to control undesirable social and cultural values. In all likelihood this law would be used in a discriminatory fashion, to go after politically incorrect Christians far more than to restrict orgiastic sun worshippers in Arizona or...
Read MoreI just heard on the radio that the publication of O.J. Simpson’s new book has been canceled. Literature’s loss, I guess. This particular Literary Event of the Season was aborted because of widespread disgust that Simpson was still profiting from crimes he says he didn’t commit. Like many other observers, I take his denial with...
Read MoreThough I try to keep abreast of new ideas, the conclusions of modern science are often, as they say, “counterintuitive” — that is, contrary to what common sense might lead you to expect. In the realm of physics, this is true of the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the currently fashionable...
Read MoreWhat people ask, what I say.
Q. Are you a Christian? A. No. I take the minimal definition of a Christian to be a person who is sure that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, or part-divine, and that the Resurrection was a real event. I don't believe either of those things. Have I ever? Well, up to about three years ago...
Read MoreIn the modern West, Islam is thought of as a violent religion, and I’ve done my part, along with some fanatical (but not necessarily typical) Muslims, to reinforce this view. It’s fatally easy to mistake the nuts for the norm. But I think there may be a better way to look at the situation. “Error...
Read MoreNearly every Christian, I suppose, has had the experience of being belabored by unbelievers about the putative sins of what is termed “organized religion” — the Spanish Inquisition, the trial of Galileo, the Salem witch-hunts, and so forth. What surprises me is that Christians have been so slow to turn the argument around and point...
Read MoreMelancholy, long withdrawing roar, etc.
Beginning this week, homosexuals in Britain can sign up for "civil partnerships," giving them most of the tax and legal benefits of marriage. Near the head of the line for this new arrangement were Sir Elton John and his boyfriend, who made a low-key ceremony out of it. My current issue (dated Dec. 3) of...
Read MoreAround this time of year, my American friends ask me about Guy Fawkes night. What's that all about, they want to know? Is it really a big thing over there in England? Well, I am totally out of touch, but when I was a kid, Guy Fawkes Night — November Fifth — was a huge...
Read MoreGod's Rottweiller
Marx was wrong. Religion isn’t the “opium of the masses”. Its effects are never that benign. No, religion is a shackle clasped to the mind of man, keeping him from utilizing the one thing that lifts him above the primordial swamp of fear and superstition; his inquiring mind. The appointment of the new pope, Joseph...
Read MoreThe End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris
There is a certain kind of atheist — we have all met him — who is not merely indifferent to organized religion, or puzzled by it, or scornful of it, but who is inflamed to purple rage by the contemplation of it. My own father was of this kidney. He would open conversations with perfect...
Read MoreThe New York Times reported recently that many churches are in effect backing President Bush for reelection. I find this disturbing because I find Bush disturbing. But judging by the flood of letters to the editor this story provoked, many liberals find it disturbing because they find religion in public life disturbing. One Times reader...
Read MoreLoyalty Oaths are Undemocratic
Michael Newdow deserves credit for persevering in his crusade to have the "under God" clause removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. But there's a larger question to answer before he continues. Why bother? America is securely ensconced in religion's withering grip and Newdow's case does nothing to loosen it. It's difficult to imagine that someone...
Read MoreGod-haters storm the capital.
Did you read about the Godless Americans March onWashington being organized for this coming November? The nation's atheists, agnostics and skeptics plan to make their presence felt in the way made traditional by blacks, feminists, homosexualists and gun-hating Moms. Now, before proceeding, I should like to register a complaint about the name of this event....
Read MorePriestly celibacy.
I have been reluctant to write anything about the current travails of the American Catholic church because it's not my church. Religion is, as the U.S. constitution wisely recognizes, a private matter. To insert oneself into the internal troubles of a church you don't belong to seems impertinent — like stepping into a family feud....
Read MoreIn addition to being a useful prop for pushing gun control, the massacre at Littleton, Colorado’s Columbine High School, turned out to be a bottomless bonanza for other pet causes of liberalism. While grieving members of the community are planning a memorial in honor of the victims, others are busy planning how to exploit the...
Read MoreYet again a group we’d never heard of has become, overnight, the topic of obsessive national discussion. The mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate “cult” also throws an interesting light on “pluralism.” Those who killed themselves wouldn’t describe their deaths as “suicide.” The word begs the question of religious truth. Their definition of the act...
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