The road to hell is paved not only with good intentions, as the proverb promises, but more often with bad ones.
For example, when Reformation firebrand Martin Luther exclaimed, “Reason is the devil’s greatest whore!” his intentions were apparently pure, as were those of St. Thomas Aquinus and many other medieval Christian sages who also believed trying to rationally understand …

Alabama’s Sept. 26 election of former judge Roy Moore in its GOP primary for U.S. Senate should give everyone pause, believers and unbelievers alike. He beat incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, roughly 55 percent to 45 percent.
Twice suspended (in 2003 and 2016) from his post as chief justice of his state’s supreme court for defying U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Moore has long contended …

I recently ran across a couple of newspaper articles that reminded me of why religion perpetuates, particularly in America. One was a small story in my local daily that promoted the publishing of a children’s book titled Peanut Butter and Aliens. Harmless enough in the grand scheme of things, I’m sure. But it’s disturbing on another level. Teaching kids to flex their imaginations is a good thing, …

If you’ve never heard of a planet called Nibiru, don’t fret. It doesn’t exist. Nonetheless, a lot of people seem to fervently believe this imaginary alien world will slam into Earth today—September 23, 2017, as I write this—extinguishing all life, including humanity. Also today, a lot of people believe a number of planets will propitiously align with the sun, moon and constellations …

In his fascinating Sept. 19 New York Magazine article, Andrew Sullivan argues that aggressively rigid American religiosity is an artifact of humanity’s ancient tribal roots. In other words, according to Sullivan, we communally believe in invisible beings because such shared assumptions were essential to survival during Homo sapiens early evolution in small, nomadic tribal groups. …

One of the reasons we don’t see or hear much about religious unbelief in contemporary American culture is that it is often invisibly, automatically deleted from the public sphere. For example, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) this month has reincarnated its iconic television commercial featuring the son of former U.S. President. Ronald Reagan, Ron Reagan Jr. But the ad …

A dense blind spot often obscures religiously faithful people’s perception of rationality.

A case in point is Michael Gerson’s Washington Post column on Sept. 14, in which he claimed that it was un-constitutional for U.S. senators, during candidate reviews, to question a federal Appeals Court judicial candidate about how her strong Catholic faith might affect her future court rulings.

It’s not exactly like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but still, you should know we’re out here. Living amongst you. Unseen. Demographic survey-takers like to call us “Nones,” as in folks who when asked what religion they identify with reply, “None.” Turns out this is a large, sundry group – about a quarter of the U.S. population now and growing fast – including atheists, agnostics and people so religiously disabused …

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 …