On Dec. 20, 1954, a small religious group in Illinois was hugely disappointed when the world did not end that day as expected. This apocalyptic cult, described in a 1956 social psychology book titled When Prophesy Fails, believed that a flying saucer would swing by earth on the date above and rescue them from certain destruction. When it didn’t happen, unsurprising to virtually everyone else, …

In her May 22 post, Love, Joy, Feminism blogger Libby Anne reiterates the important truth that evangelical Christianity “approaches sex in a strongly dichotomous way.”
In the post, titled “Evangelicals’ Double Bind,” she notes that the faithful who lean toward biblical literalism and uber-focus on Jesus portray sex outside of marriage as “bad, sinful … sick and corrupting” but “good, godly …

A fascinating cover story in the May 2017 edition of National Geographic suggested to me, inadvertently, that we may embrace religious faith for the same reason we tell lies: both tendencies, however ill-advised, appear to be hard-wired into our being. And related.
In the article, “Why We Lie,” writer Yudhijit Bhattacharjee observed: “Our capacity for dishonesty is as fundamental …

Reasonable people can see President Trump’s recent actions as criminal.
When he demanded an oath of loyalty from the chief of a federal probe into his presidential campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, that’s obstruction of justice. When, failing to get this oath, he then fires the chief, thus beheading the probe, that’s obstruction, too. And when he then threatens to publicly unveil …

Sitting in my favorite recliner reading the paper, I was distracted by Razi, my gray tabby, rearranging his sleeping position on my lap.
Of course, I recognize that reading the paper should have precedence over my cat’s predictable habits – he shifts his weight, turns around, often returning to his original position. But I stopped to pay attention because in a holistic sense, Razi was offering

A very rapidly growing number of people in the world don’t believe in supernatural beings or realms. In other words, they don’t believe in gods or demons, heavens or hells, the unseen and unsensed, the actuality of what is only imagined.
But they are not necessarily atheists, a word that implies, often unfairly, active antagonism. Untheists are simply unbelievers, …

In a sense, religious doubt began with the ancient Greeks, the first to robustly question the concept of divinity.
The death of seminal Greek philosopher Socrates in 399 B.C. was a harbinger of how the consequences of religious skepticism would play out in ensuing millennia. While questioning the consensus “truth” of just about everything in his day, Socrates, fatally it turned out, …