About Kenneth E. Nahigian

Kenneth E. Nahigian, a freethinker and Bright, now in his 55th year, still slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, unwilling to ask for directions. He serves as treasurer for Atheists and Other Freethinkers of Sacramento. He is part of a philosophical think-tank consisting of himself, four cats and some shrubbery. He has no web page. Why push his luck?

The Revelations of Joanna

The messiah’s mother was born in Devon, England, in April of 1750. What, you didn’t know? It was a strange day, featherstitched with endings and beginnings. Mobs stormed the French royals, Thomas Paine published The Rights of Man, Voltaire sewed seeds of doubt and sedition, and everywhere were new prophets and seers, feeding on spiritual anomie like the wild mushrooms of a wet, warm spring. In England was Joanna Southcott. A simple farmer’s daughter, former domestic servant and fairly bland … Read on…

I Believe Because it is Absurd

tertullian.jpeg

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was his name, or to most of us, Tertullian: a remarkable man. Born in 160 CE to a Roman centurion, he grew up to be a Carthaginian lawyer, a Christian convert, a prolific apologist and the most influential of the Church Fathers. He invented the terms “Trinity” (trinitas) and “Old” and “New Testament” (vetus/novum testamentum), as well as the classic formula, “Three Persons, one Substance.” He was first to call Christianity the vera religio, the True … Read on…

The Pyramidologists

We are the pattern-seers, the dream-chasers. We see castles in clouds and omens in our tea. Why not? Imagine a primitive human, mistaking a shrub for a leopard—he might detour to avoid it, be inconvenienced, and live to have children. But what of one mistaking a leopard for a shrub? He is food. So it was the pattern-seers who made the next generation and the next. The need for patterns and meaning sank into our bones, became a hunger, deep … Read on…

The Knights Templar: Rise and Fall

This is about Jacques deMolay and the Knights Templar, a romantic tale with a certain mystique, but mostly a story of bad luck, of being in the wrong place and wrong time, with the wrong people owing you money. It begins with the First Crusade. The Crusade was a boondoggle, but a successful boondoggle. After killing nearly everyone in the city, Jew, Muslim and Coptic Christian alike, the Crusaders won control of Jerusalem for about 88 years, from 1099 to … Read on…

Cromwell’s Head

Oliver Cromwell came from ambitious stock, which brought him to a bad end—two ends, in fact—and quite a long journey. His great-great granduncle, Thomas Cromwell, was chief advisor to old King Henry VIII, the one with the wives. When Henry broke with the Roman Church (1534), Thomas egged him on, even inciting the arrest and execution of his old friend Sir Thomas More, who remained loyal to Pope Clement. See “A Man for All Seasons,” a wonderful movie, for that … Read on…

Billy Graham’s Better Half

Faith is personal, if nothing else—for some a font of life, for others a wound that never closes, but bleeds mystery, fear and grief, and aches within them long after leaving. And some leave but then heal, grow stronger, and return with a power of mind to face down the fear, to glean it and find gold. This was Charles Bradley Templeton. Who remembers him? We know Billy Graham, of course, who has the grudging respect even of many who … Read on…

The Banality of Evil

In September 2007, at the American Atheist International conference, Sam Harris recalled the American racial lynchings of the first half of the 20th century, when huge crowds in the Deep South-bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, ministers, newspaper editors, police, sometimes even Senators and Congressmen-turned out as if for a family picnic to watch the torture-death of some young man or woman, then the body hung on a tree or lamppost for public display. If you have doubts, click to this link … Read on…

A Scientific Test of Intelligent Design

The dispute over Intelligent Design (ID) was percolating in my mind as I read an article about Paul Davies, physicist, science writer and winner of the 1995 Templeton Prize for progress in religion. Davies is a rarity: a hardheaded physical scientist with a spiritual streak, the author of about 25 popular books, including God and the New Physics, The Cosmic Blueprint, The Mind of God, The Last Three Minutes, and a new one, How to Build a Time Machine. ID … Read on…

Logic in the Gospels

A first look at Christendom is like a first peek into a kaleidoscope, a snowflake, or a magic-mirror lantern.  In fact, the World Christian Encyclopedia, 2001 edition, counts 33,830 Christian variants and sects, often divided on even the most basic tenets of belief.  More conservative counts suggest about 9000 groups1.  By contrast, Islam has about 20 sects or denominations, or maybe a few more, depending on how finely you tune your focus; Judaism perhaps 15; and Buddhism is in a … Read on…

One Cheer for Faith

The change winds* are blowing, are blowing – do you feel them? They are bringing to us a new zeitgeist. Suddenly, atheism is almost mainstream.  Look: Militant atheist authors on best-seller lists and talk shows: Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins. Atheist comedians on major network media: Julia Sweeney, George Carlin. Popular atheist TV characters: Lisa Simpson, Dr. Perry Cox on Scrubs. Even atheist politicians: the late California Assemblyman B.T. Collins, Rep. Pete Stark. And now, amazingly, atheist comic book … Read on…