I received a polite response from James Martin, SJ, the Jesuit priest who wrote a book about the humorous side of spirituality. Last Friday I poked fun at his claim that Jesus had a sense of humor, and Martin replied in a brief response in the comments section of my…
Jesus was a humorous fellow, says James Martin, a Jesuit priest and culture editor of America magazine. He’s even written a book about it, titled Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life. Martin insists that our culture separates us from…
Thumbscrews are for Wimps Three popular methods of torture during the Spanish Inquisition were the rack, the pulley, and – you guessed it President George W. Bush fans – waterboarding. Yay, waterboarding – isn’t religion fun? As writer Cullen Murphy explained recently on National Public Radio, . . . this…
A recent bout of inclement weather sent me in a different direction recently, both physically and mentally. When a snow storm struck the Pacific Northwest last Wednesday, a lane closure forced me to take my children to school using a different route. Along the way we passed a graveyard, with…
I’m proud to live in Oregon, one of the most unchurched states in America. Paired with Washington to the north, the two states provide a fine corner of thought and reason in the Pacific Northwest. The numbers could be better, though, with 2002 statistics indicating that only 17% of Oregonians…
We atheists can be difficult to argue with. We can be direct and persistent. Blunt. Our unwavering commitment to science and skepticism creates hurdles for Christians trying to convince us that a first century Palestinian Jew cured blindness with his own saliva and withered fig trees as he walked by.…
I watched the Tim Tebow Show last night, or as we call it here in America, football. The New England Patriots destroyed Tebow’s Denver Broncos, 45-10, eliminating them from the playoffs. I’m hoping for a short reprieve of all this Tebow nonsense, at least until football starts again in September.…
My previous post rejected the idea that atheists deserve to be known as “angry” and “fundamentalist.” These are baseless and inaccurate terms often penned by critics unduly burdened by presuppositions. Another claim religious apologists make is that modern tyrannical regimes perpetrated “violence in the name of atheism.” In a 2006…
For the record, I get angry sometimes. I’m only human, after all. It has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t believe in god. I’m sure the so-call “Four Horseman” or “New Atheists,” as Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the recently deceased Christopher Hitchens, are called,…
During the early 19th century a man in New York named Joseph Smith claimed to have been visited by an angel. Smith asserted that this angel showed him the location of golden plates. These plates were eventually translated into the Book of Mormon. This book teaches that after Jesus was…
