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The aspiring rationalist
The brain is an inelegant and inefficient agglomeration of stuff…Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer…The brain is built like an ice cream cone (and you are the top scoop): Through evolutionary...
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The power of two
A few days ago, Erin, my eighth-grader, made me incredibly proud. That alone is not news — she continually emits a parental pride induction field, that girl. But in this case she showed a bit of...
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Time to get your ween on
“JesusWeen is a God-given vision which was born as an answer to the cry of many every October 31st. The dictionary meaning of Ween is to expect, believe or think. We therefore see October 31st as a...
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“I thought it over and believed it by myself”
Scrambling to finish the complicated manuscript for Voices of Unbelief: Documents from Atheists and Agnostics by the December 1 deadline. Rather than go to complete radio silence on the blog, I’ll...
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Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011) has had a profound influence on me for years. It’s hard to think of a greater artist with the language or a more incisive thinker. He took a different approach than I...
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Born this way?
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact that all children are Atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so…[T]here is no religion in human nature, nor human...
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Unnatural
(Part 2, continued from “Born This Way?“) You’ve got to be taught to be afraid / Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade / You’ve got to be carefully taught....
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6000 days
Part 3 of 3. Go to Part 1 or Part 2. The aim that the child should grow up to become confidently independent is synonymous with the aim that the child should grow up mentally healthy. Psychologist John...
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Coming (religiously) unglued
The religious shall inherit the earth. Last sentence of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? by Eric Kaufmann Between his titular question and confident answer, Kaufmann lays out his reasons for...
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Scooby meets The Shining
Back from an EPIC two-week family vacation in California, probably our last big trip as a family unit. We ended in Yosemite, the most sock-off-knocking place on Earth, staying outside of the park in...
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Being Toto
The Wizard of Oz is a secular humanist parable. I’m not the first to suggest this possibility. But the eye roll I got from my 17-year-old son when I said it at dinner the other night could have cleared...
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Q&A: Lean on me
(Here’s the first in my new occasional Q&A series. Click Ask a Question in the sidebar to submit your own question.) Q: I saw a note on Pinterest recently that really grabbed me, and I’ve not been...
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