Given the damage that religion has wreaked in our modern world—and no religion is exempt—one would think that in attempting to rehabilitate the role of religion in modern life, one would seek to avoid association with violence.
But instead, with “The Book of Eli,” that is what we get: Violence. Post-apocalyptic violence justified by the Bible. [...]

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Defining marriage as “one man and one woman” may seem an appropriate boundary for society to define. But in the process, defining marriage serves to re-define family, or at least re-defining the legal protections available to a family.

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I’m miserable.
Or so I’ve been told, at least.

Sharing their misery
John Wallace
It is tragic that there are people who apparently have no hope and are so hollow inside that they will spend huge amounts of money to spread their misery to others (”Atheist group spreads word on billboards,” Nov. 12). I guess it makes them feel [...]

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Over the last few days, there has been much ado about the state and future of the Republican party and the “conservative” politics it holds so dear. However, I would like to note that there is a significant difference between the classic conservative politics of people like Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley—people whose political [...]

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I generally try to avoid hot button topics like abortion. Really, I do. By and large, abortions are difficult, if not impossible, to justify. By the same token, there is little benefit to anyone n forcing a mother to carry an unwanted fetus to term.
This year, Colorado has an initiative, “Amendment 48,” to make a [...]

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Hand in hand with the lunacy that God uses weather to smite the sinful is the lunacy that by thinking hard enough, the invisible man in the clouds will read your thoughts and do your bidding. So we get what we had here a couple weeks ago, which is Focus on the Family praying for torrential rain of “biblical proportions” during Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday.

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I’ve more or less been staying away from politics until after the national conventions because right now the political cycle is simply a morass of various messages and screeds being floated as test balloons. The real campaigning won’t start until mid-September.
But Sunday, I awoke to read this story and had to do a double-take:

Obama, McCain [...]

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Jesus-Freaks and God-trolls are an inherent nuisance for those who engage in an ongoing dialogue about the nature of religion, belief, and the role that spirituality takes in giving meaning to our lives.
Yet the admonishments continue that there is only one “God” and we only need cease questioning, cease seeking, cease giving rein to our [...]

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As I’m in London for the next couple of months, I’ve had a chance to observe many of the differences between the U.S. and the U.K. Aside from the more obvious ones, such as language (”American English” vs. “The Queen’s English”), I recently came across one that I found particularly interesting.
In the U.S., where our [...]

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Previously I took some time to look at the Declaration of Independence and its status as a legal, binding document for America. In briefly addressing Jefferson’s use of “the Creator” and “Nature’s God” in the Declaration, I wrote this:

Yet the Declaration’s language of “Nature’s God” and the “Creator”—tenuously religious terms of 18th Century Deists, skeptical [...]

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