Dennis Earl Fehr | November 30, 2007
Prologue to the novel Girl Willow
A note from the author:
God’s Servant Guthrie Bodkin is excerpted from a novel titled “Girl Willow.” Guthrie and his sister Willow grow up in a secluded fundamentalist community. Willow watches helplessly over the years as her brother is subjected to increasingly violent, Biblically justified abuse from their mentally [...]
Marilyn Westfall | November 28, 2007
Ex-Jesus freak turned gay
stud, you still quoted from Job when,
roughed up and rolled, you begged
for quick healing; not that you
believed a word you prayed, nor
did I, both apostates, both teenaged
outcasts, and I was hardly surprised
when one night, bruises faded,
you fled Texas without a note.
Driving through Wisconsin, three a.m.,
you stopped to photograph a town,
you wrote, was [...]
Kenneth E. Nahigian | November 27, 2007
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 [...]
Tibor R. Machan | November 25, 2007
A charge that’s often leveled at atheists is that their position encourages moral relativism. Only religion can provide us with morality or ethics that is firm and stable, the charge continues, because, after all, religion rests ethics or morality on God’s word.
Yet the very opposite is the case. In America alone [...]
Jay R. Strisik | November 23, 2007
Big mountains make ants of men.
But ever adolescent fellows,
Feel their Sir Edmund rush.
“Get on top of her,” rises an old chant.
So intrepid mountain climbers,
Legs straddling outcroppings,
Pitons inserted into crevasses ascend.
Until they stand on dome-shaped summits,
Arms up, ape-like, the conqueror!
But placidly mother mountain remains,
Unaware of ant-man’s puny feat.
Michael W. Jones | November 21, 2007
“So, if you don’t believe in God, what do you do on Thanksgiving?”
I have heard that question a few times. Over the years I have developed an answer, of course, but I have never written it down. It has served me well in those moments at mixed atheistic / theistic table when some of those [...]
Carlton Coon | November 19, 2007
The title of this essay is “Let Our Conscience Be the Guide.” Not “your conscience.” Not “Our consciences.” By using the term “Our Conscience” I want to start right off with the assertion that everybody has the same kind of conscience, it is part of our genetic inheritance, and it is something every human being [...]
Marilyn Westfall | November 16, 2007
Annie Laurie Gaylor is Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) since 2004, along with Dan Barker. She was the organization’s co-founder in 1976, when she was a college student, with her mother Anne Nicol Gaylor. The FFRF now has a program on Air America Radio, “Freethought Radio,” broadcast weekly on Saturdays. FFRF works to protect the constitutional principle of [...]
Marilyn Westfall | November 15, 2007
Susan Sackett is best known as a production associate and writer for Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as the assistant to Gene Roddenberry, with whom she worked closely until his death in 1991. She has written or co-authored 10 books, several about Star Trek, such as Letters to Star Trek, The [...]
Michael W. Jones | November 13, 2007
Prayer is ubiquitous in the religious world. It is the way in which believers reach out to their gods, almost always asking for something for themselves or others. Much has been written about this remarkable phenomenon. Believers see it as a personal connection to their god, while non-believers see it as asking for favors from [...]
