re: What to tell your children about god. There is not one god, there are many. Thousands in fact, all the same and all fictional. Talk about Zeus, Qetzalcoatl, Thor, and Jesus. Explain how these gods were used in the past (to answer unknowns), how followers of these gods were absolutely positive of the god’s […]
Read MoreTechnically, you can’t ‘prove’ Santa and God don’t exist, so you’d have to couch it in terms of probabilities. Also, the question is existential. Are God and Santa ever meant to be wholly ‘existing’ entities? As myths, it can be argued that the idea of them is more real and important than their physical reality. […]
Read Moretoday during church (while in church) i read a few pieces from ARGUABLY(christopher hitchens’ collection of articles) including one about water boarding and his personal experience with it. I agree with the article’s ultimate point. (And I think that George W. Bush was a sad president; i found him misinformed and uninformed, and totally in […]
Read More…For example, the Bible is rife with vileness evidenced by stories of sexual exploitation, mass murder and arbitrary mayhem. How do we harmonize this fact with …an all-knowing God? While many have undertaken to answer this question even in erudite fashion, I found their answers lacking. Once I concluded that the Bible was a thoroughly […]
Read MoreOne hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots! (Bernard Marx’s comments …on the effects of state-sponsored sleep teaching.) “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m […]
Read Morehttp://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/591/print/all — Mark Oppenheimer: Religion responds to a deep, satisfying human need for ritual. And it often organises the human quests for ethics and meaning. To think about the common good, the purpose of life and how to live, it has proven useful to use religious stories or theology. While some religion may be true, […]
Read MoreHitchens’ summary argument is brilliant and wide spanning; watch the first part.
Read MoreI wrote a short book about the Parthenon and the sculpture of the Parthenon, the history of the building and so forth. Without that building, I would feel rather lost. If it were destroyed, for instance, I would feel that something really terrible had happened to the human species. But, I’m able to appreciate the […]
Read MoreQ: You say that nonbelievers, “Distrust anything that contradicts science or outrageous reason” that you respect free inquiry. I am a person of faith and absolutely agree with these two statements. But I do not believe that in order to be religious you have to disconnect your brain. Do you believe that and, if so, why? […]
Read MoreQ: …The Greek myths, their fables, their folk tales that endured are not literally true, but there’s great value in the universal truths that are taught just by the story itself. I see so much of scripture in a similar way including, for example, the creation story. Can you agree with me that some of […]
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