- Blog
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I’m an NPR Daddy
Much to my surprise, I was part of a panel of daddy bloggers on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michele Martin, which aired today. The piece is the latest of the show’s discussions on the recent New York Magazine article about a trend of parents finding no joy in parenthood. This installment obviously focuses on the perspective of fathers,…
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In Which I Am Flummoxed by a Reverse-Charitable Act at Burger King
I was at a Burger King near my office (stop glaring, wife!) and they were collecting donations for the charity Jerry’s Kids. If you donated a buck, they’d scribble your name on a construction paper shamrock and stick it up on the wall behind the counter. I was happy to donate the dollar, but I…
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Go Ahead and Organize Your Life around Atheism
Michael De Dora has written in a recent controversial piece that, in essence, questions the wisdom of “organizing [one’s life] around atheism,” and at the same time bemoans the tone of the New Atheists in their condemnation of religion. Some have suggested I write in response to this post, and so I’ll take on both of these…
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Hypoliteracy
I am not reading a book. Washington, DC is shut down today, and besides doing some catch-up work here and there, I essentially have a bonus day off. Hooray! What a rare and often-wished-for opportunity to do some quiet, relaxed book reading! Visit my Goodreads page and you can see that I am juggling several books that I…
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Bryson’s “At Home”: A Delightful Slog through Human Misery
About halfway through Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life, one can’t help but come to a couple of stark conclusions. One, that most of humanity’s domestic life, for the vast majority of time time we had domestic lives, was full of suffering and misery the likes of which we moderns can barely imagine. Two,…
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Armstrong’s “The Case for God”: A Case Not Made
Few religious thinkers have eased the consciences of spiritual liberals, anti-fundamentalist religious moderates, and functional nonbelievers unwilling to stake any affirmatively atheistic ground than Karen Armstrong. For years she has been making the assertion that her scholarship proves that the “great” monotheisms ought not be associated with the fear, xenophobia, irrational faith in the absurd,…
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Parade of the Fanatical Ignoramuses
All photos in this post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/progressohio/ / CC BY 2.0 It is almost becoming a ritual in our house these days. At the end of a long day at work, the wife and I turn on MSNBC and watch, stunned, as Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart put on the parade of angry right wing lunatics. We…
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The Evolution of God: Brilliant and Maddening
Robert Wright, in his latest book The Evolution of God, promises up front that he will make a plausible case for the existence of some force or intention behind the universe that could be called “divinity,” and does so in the midst of making a different case altogether: that our notions of the illusory “one true…
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Disbelieving Outside the Lines
Ross Douthat writes in defense of the Yahweh concept, reminding we stuffy atheists that it’s not as silly as Russell’s teapot assumes: This analogy – like its modern descendant, the Flying Spaghetti Monster – makes a great deal of sense if you believe that the idea of God is an absurdity dreamed up by crafty clerics in darkest antiquity and…
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Elizabeth Dole and the GOP Tell Me to Go to Hell
My day was flat out ruined by a political ad. I’m very passionate about politics to begin with, but usually if a political ad upsets me it’s in the direction of worry (”this is gonna kill us!”) or rage (”that’s a filthy lie!”). But this ad ruined my day because it made me feel a…
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